Gears drives the Next-Gen Web

Nik Cubrilovic at TechCrunch has an excellent piece on Gears that’s worth a few minutes of your time, if you’re interested in finding out how this little plugin is driving web development.

I’ve written about Gears (formerly Google Gears, now open source) a few times, usually starting with my excitement over being able to access web apps offline – apps like Google Reader, Zoho Writer, Google Docs, and Remember the Milk, among others. As Gears celebrates its first year, it’s begun to appear in new places, like MySpace, where it’s speeding up online functionality.

Cubrilovic gives an overview of the development of Gears, its commitment to standards-based architecture, and its potential on the playing field with Flex and Silverlight.

Also worth reading: Josh Catone’s piece at ReadWriteWeb.

Firefox 3 users: Gears is now available for the updated browser, which launches officially on Tuesday, June 17!