At Cantina, we use Google in practically everything we do. We make heavy use of Google Apps for Domains to manage our email, calendars, and internal documentation. YouTube is a constant distraction, er, research tool. Some of us share photos via Picasa. SketchUp can be a handy tool for working on game development. And every once in a while, we have to do a Google search (yes even we sometimes have to look things up).

As time marches on, it is becoming clearer that Google is focusing on the browser as the primary application development platform. This is evident with their release of Chrome, their first foray into the browser market which attempts to make browsing faster and more reliable, and even more clear with the more recent news that Google has managed to get Gmail to work offline, with the use of Google Gears.

While I find the ability to have a fully browser-based application running offline impressive, my first thought upon hearing such news is: why? I may be old fashioned, but I still use an actual email client to read my mail (Apple’s Mail application). I’ve been able to read my mail offline for as long as I can remember. Mail clients have been around for years (decades?) and have been admirably solving the problem of reading and writing email for a long time. I realize that web-based email simplifies the process of reading and writing email by not requiring you to have to configure an email program with the necessary settings. But what about the other issues that make it a challenge? Being a developer, my browser is always crashing (and sometimes it’s not even my fault). Flash 10 on the Mac, for example, is constantly having me reload my Firefox instance and trying to pick up where I left off. This makes the browser an undesirable place to keep my email open.

Beyond Gmail, I must say that I’ve been burned enough times in writing long form content, be it emails, or blog posts, or bug reports, you name it, that I’m cautious and reluctant to do that in a browser. I’m a keyboard shortcut guy, and on the Mac, many times the go to beginning of line, or go to end of line key commands actually force the browser to hit the back button. I’ve lost a lot of work this way (my own fault), but the key command is a system standard, and the browser breaks that. In fact, I’m writing this blog post in an offline application, to later cut and paste it into our blogging system.

I’d also put web-based instant messaging into the category of “why do we need this in browser as well”. There has been a proliferation of web-based instant messaging, with Google Talk and Facebook, which requires me to hunt down the appropriate tab in Firefox to see what people are writing to me. This makes the whole instant messaging process far less “instant”.

So while all of what I have just mentioned might make me an oddball in the Web 2.0 world, where many (most) people I know read their email in the browser and have a Facebook window open at all waking hours, I have to take a moment to realize the lesson here. If history has taught us anything, it has taught us that the most technically correct or appropriate solution is not always (or rarely is) the solution that ultimately becomes successful, or popular. Take MySpace for example. The user experience is arguably miserable, yet MySpace paved the way for large scale adoption of social networking. Just because I think that my trusty old email client, which I have been using for years, can already do what Gmail’s miraculous new offline feature can do, and better, I have to appreciate the significance to the throngs of people that use Gmail via the browser and have never looked back.

P.S.

In other Google news, I must say I was excited to find that the defunct JotSpot blogging platform, which has consumed by Google has made its way into Google Sites. I was a fan of JotSpot wikis back in the day, and Google’s transformation of the product seems like a great addition to the product line.

In other news, if you’ve ever used another one of Google’s acquisitions that goes by the name of GrandCentral, it’s coming back and I’m looking forward to see what has been done to it.

To round out the Google rumor round up, there have been hints of a Google Web Drive. This seems like a natural progression in their cloud-based computing offerings. I’m an avid user of Jungle Disk so I’m curious to see what Google can whip up.