Google finally brings Gears to an end
It has been announced on the Google Gears blog, that the four-year old plug-in will now finally be brought to an end: it will be removed from the Chrome browser as of version 12, and new browsers, specifically Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9, will not be supported. The source code will continue to be available as open source under the terms of the BSD licence.
The functionality that was provided by Gears is now becoming available in most browsers. Google has implemented application caches, enabling web applications to be run when a user is offline. Also, native now in Chrome are the HTML5 File API, and APIs for geolocation, notification and web workers. All these functions, and more, are available in HTML5, making Gears redundant.
See also:
- Google officially jams Gears, a report from The H.
- Google Gears to grind to halt, a report from The H.
(ehe)