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May 30th Google announced that it is providing developers with an open source software (OSS) technology called Google Gears for creating offline web applications. There was a lot of immediate discussion about the benefits of offline applications, which anyone like me who labored in the old days of downloading Compuserve inboxes (or the real old days of waiting three days for your report printout to emerge from the "Data Processing Room" ) finds quite funny. At least those that tout the benefits of being offline have dropped the buzzword "disconnected."

But what this announcement is really about is Google enlisting the OSS community to bail it out of a big hole. The company's need arises because Google's growth rate, though still impressive, is falling simply because it is getting so large. At the same time, financial markets have anticipated a Google growth rate that continues to rise into infinity and Google executives would like to oblige its investors. Therefore they need some other products/services other than their cash-cow search engine.

That's where you in the OSS world come in. Google wants applications that will compete with Intuit, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, which will be no mean feat. Although all of these other developers use OSS (including Microsoft believe it or not), they do not develop applications in the OSS culture .(Oracle has some non-applications software OSS projects in process.). If the gambit works, it will be the true test of whether OSS development is really quicker and of higher quality than "closed-source software" development.

As for the Google Gears technology itself, it's a browser extension purportedly tackling "... a key limitation of the browser in order to make it a stronger platform for deploying all types of applications and enabling a better user experience in the cloud," according to Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google. As I have written over at Research 2.0 (see button to right), the portal is a possible enabler of the SOA generation of applications. Google Gears works with all major browsers on all major platforms: Windows, Mac and Linux. It is more likely that a wider platform including a message bus, rules engine, integration server and other features will win out over portal servers as the major SOA enabler in the long run but Google's need is short term (as are most IT-investment-related needs unfortunately). Google needs a more complete apps portfolio in place before its advertising-revenue-based growth declines to normal ranges in the next 12-18 months.

Google says it will be working closely with all members of the web community to converge upon a standard so developers have one consistent API for offline functionality. Those statements make it a little unclear whether Google's effort is really OSS or a good-old-fashioned market-creating attempt to build a standard around its apps.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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