Goodbye to Web 2.0, Welcome Web 3.0 (taking your webapps offline)

It’s very obvious where Google is going with Google Gears - they are offering developers to take their web applications available offline. Isn’t that a smart and bold idea? It is! And probably the best thing since Avantgo. This will now offer users (with limited Internet connection) to sync-and-go. Google Reader now offers this functionality by the way.

Having Google Gears installed on your computer means a lot to people living in areas where Internet availability is still scarce.

Google Gears also enables the road warrior to sync common offline corporate applications like a contacts manager (Plaxo or Highrise offline), rss feeds (Google Reader), marketing/sales leads management, todo lists (tada list), project management (Basecamp), etc. This offline service has been available to PDA (personal digital assistant) users a long time ago (like Avantgo who has been offering offline content).

It will now enable web applications developers to produce offline applications that can sync-and-go and extend their existing ones to be available offline.

When offline web applications becomes mainstream, users can use them even when there is an Internet outage, a virus outbreak on the server, a server crash or even the worst things like Cyber Terrorism. And according to the Business Roundtable’s 2006 report, a lot of businesses are not even prepared for such attacks. Having your web application work offline in these kind of scenario is vital to what they call business continuity.

Still don’t know the cost of an outage? Here, a very old (year 2000) guestimate of an outage cost:

* Brokerage operations $6,450,000
* Credit card authorization $2,600,000
* Ebay (1 outage 22 hours) $225,000
* Amazon.com $180,000
* Package shipping services $150,000
* Home shopping channel $113,000
* Catalog sales center $90,000
* Airline reservation center $89,000
* Cellular service activation $41,000
* On-line network fees $25,000
* ATM service fees $14,000

Source: InternetWeek 4/3/2000 + Fibre Channel: A Comprehensive Introduction, R. Kembel 2000, p.8. ”…based on a survey done by Contingency Planning Research.”

So, how much do you think an hour’s outage it is now? Maybe 10x or 20x or even 100x? What if you can save any transaction from a website even if it was offline? Then sync it when you become available online. Wouldn’t that be kinda cool?

I would think having your existing app offline with a thorough understanding of the subject is the holy grail of web applications.

What this means to corporate executives is they can now not worry of having those frequent outage from lousy Internet Service Providers which we all know are abundant.

So, welcome to the Web 3.0 people and say goodbye to Web 2.0. That (web 2.0) will be a thing of the past from hereon.