Dare Obasanjo: "Remember all those rumors back in the day that Google was working on
their own browser? Well they've gone one better and are working on the
next Flash. Adobe likes pointing out that Flash has more market share than any single browser and we all know that has Flash has gone above and beyond the [X]HTML
standards bodies to extend the Web thus powering popular, rich user
experiences that weren't possible otherwise (e.g. YouTube).
Google is on the road to doing the same thing with Gears. And just like
social networks and content sharing sites were a big part in making
Flash an integral part of the Web experience for a majority of Web
users, Google is learning from history with Gears as can be seen by the
the recent announcements from MySpace. I expect we'll soon see Google leverage the popularity of YouTube as another vector to spread Google Gears.
So
far none of the Web sites promoting Google Gears have required it which
will limit its uptake. Flash got ahead by being necessary for sites to
even work. It will be interesting to see if or when sites move beyond
using Gears for nice-to-have features and start requiring it to
function. It sounds crazy but I never would have expected to see sites
that would be completely broken if Flash wasn't installed five years
ago but it isn't surprising today (e.g. YouTube).
Prediction: if Gears (or something like it) becomes ubiquitous (and it will), then eventually XMPP will become a protocol option alongside HTTP, allowing data to be pushed down into the client.
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