Google to drop Gears for HTML5

Search giant Google has ceased development of Google Gears, and has shifted to focus on the development of standards-compliant HTML5 as a replacement. This in itself is not completely unexpected news, though the blog entry on the Gears API blog confirmed that Google will not be investing in the "active development of new features" where Google Gears is concerned. 

In a blog titled "Hello HTML5," Ian Fette from the Gears Team noted that there is no simple, yet comprehensive way to move from a Gears-enabled application to HTML5. Fette wrote: "We will continue to support Gears until such a migration is more feasible, but this support will be necessarily constrained in scope."

Due to the amount of engineering effort required to support certain platforms, gears support for Safari on OS X Leopard and later will be dropped. However, support for Firefox and Internet Explorer will continue--for now.

For more on this story:
- check out the article at Gears Blog
- check out the article at The Inquirer 

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