Gmail goes offline

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 28 Jan 2009 at 07:59

Gmail is closing the gap on traditional email services by offering users access to their inboxes while offline.

The new Labs feature uses Google Gears to cache a copy of the user's inbox on their PC.

Google claims you'll be able to do everything you normally do online, including labelling and starring messages and opening attachments.

Emails can also be composed while offline, with messages queuing in the Outbox until an internet connection is re-established.

The inability to access messages offline has traditionally been regarded as one of the biggest barriers to business adoption of Gmail - indeed our recent review of Google Apps Premier Edition makes that very point.

The addition of offline access moves Gmail one step closer to services such as Microsoft Exchange, although whether businesses will entrust their messaging to a service that remains in beta is debatable.

Indeed, Google warns users that the offline experience may not be perfect. "Offline Gmail is still an early experimental feature, so don't be surprised if you run into some kinks that haven't been completely ironed out yet," Gmail engineer, Andy Palay, writes on the Gmail Blog.

"We've been using offline Gmail internally at Google for quite a while (I've read thousands of messages and answered hundreds en route to visit my son and my daughter). And it's saved me more than once when my home network connection ran into issues (we have squirrels at home that love to chew through outside cable wires)," he adds.

Gmail already offers offline access in the latest version of its mobile phone app, while other PC-based services such as Google Docs are already Gears-enabled.

The offline access will be rolled out to all users of the UK and US English versions of Gmail over the next few days, and can be found in the Labs tab of the Gmail settings.