Google Apps aren't ready for Chrome OS

Google recently announced their Google Chrome OS project that will see release some time in 2010. It certainly looks to be a promising idea, though I can't help but think that the project's success lies heavily on a very small window of implementation decisions. The slightest deviation from the "perfect" solution could make Chrome OS more a gimmick than anything. As the OS aims to be the most web-driven ever designed, it's clear Google will use their slew of online applications to support the OS. In their current state however, the use of Google Apps as a true replacement for desktop applications is laughable. The biggest flaw in the implementation of all Google's online applications is the necessity to sync the app before going offline. In their current state, if I were to go offline and maintain my current online experience, I would have to sync my Google reader feeds, my Gmail inbox, and my Google Docs files before going offline. How is Chrome OS going to be useful when it's applications are worthless during unexpected spurts of offline use?

You might assume that Google's offline technology, Google Gears, just isn't capable of seamless online/offline transitions, but a quick look through their developer tutorial proves otherwise.

In a "background sync", the application continuously synchronizes the data between the local data store and the server. This can be implemented by pinging the server every once in a while or better yet, letting the server push or stream data to the client (this is called Comet in the Ajax lingo).

The benefits of background synching are:

• Data is ready at all times, whenever the user chooses to go offline, or is accidentally disconnected.
• The performance is enhanced when using a slow Internet connection.

The downside is that the sync engine might consume resources or slow down the online experience with its background processing (if it's not using the WorkerPool). Using WorkerPool the cost of synching is minimized and no longer affects the user's experience.

This is exactly the type of synchronization feature that Google's apps need to make Chrome OS possible. Without it, Chrome OS will never succeed. Gears has been capable of background synchronization, yet each time Google adds offline capability to one of their apps they force you to manually sync your data before going offline. I've never understood this strategy and now it appears they must revise their offline strategy for the Chrome OS project. I'd imagine Google to think more ahead than this, but let's hope they catch on and we start seeing background sync rolled into their web apps as the Chrome OS launch nears.

Update (2009-12-23): It looks like Gmail has the most robust offline support of all the Google web apps now. Reader still forces you to manually sync, you can't create new documents in Docs if you're offline, and Calendar still only lets you look at your events without changing anything. This is promising though, as Gmail is now a suitable replacement for a desktop e-mail client. One step at a time.