Published in Hindustan Times on September 14th, 2007

There are winds of change sweeping the global software market— and you could see it next in the most ubiquitous activity on the Internet: e-mail.

If current indications are anything to go by, Microsoft’s popular Outlook software and IBM’s Lotus Notes could see a part of their markets chipped off by free alternatives, though one could always argue about the richness of features.

Gmail is the service from Google that literally changed the way e-mail is accessed and stored. Three years ago when Gmail was launched it gave the flexibility which no other e-mail, not even your very own POP and SMTP (that enabled downloading of your e-mails on your desktop computer) offered.

Combined with virtually unlimited storage (currently at 2.9 gigabytes (GB) and increasing by the second), flexibility using the Ajax software framework, Gmail has been a dream-come-true for users needing large amounts of space and an easy manageability which search features provide.

Gmail and e-mail have today become almost synonymous for many, with built-in features like a browser-based chat and other applications that have added to the traction.

Currently Gmail stores your e-mail online. Which means you cannot access it when you are not connected to the Net. But all that may be about to change.

According to highly placed sources, Google has developed an offline version of Gmail. Gmail Offline will allow users to browse, reply, save drafts and do everything that currently Gmail does in an offline mode even when you don’t have an Internet connection. On current indications, this would mean that you would download a software client for this. When you get online your Gmail client would automatically synchronise (sync) with the Gmail server (network computer) and send and receive e-mail. A Google spokeswoman in India officially denies such a thing but there is ample evidence to believe Gmail Offline is in fact a reality and may soon be hitting a browser close to you. This has tremendous implications for corporate e-mail, but more on that later.

The ground for Gmail Offline was set on March 31 this year when Google launched Google Gears, an open-source technology platform under which software developers could create offline Web applications. The following three features that Google Gears provides are noteworthy – and here is where the framework for Gmail Offline is based. Read more