Gears Adopters Face Rough Transition as Google goes HTML5

Google has announced that it plans to discontinue active development of Gears, a browser plug-in that enables Web features like local storage and geolocation services. The search giant says that emerging Web standards offer increasingly viable alternatives to the specific capabilities that are provided by Gears.

Rather than implementing experimental new Web functionality in a cross-browser plug-in, the Gears team intends to focus on advancing new and existing Web standards that can be included directly in Chrome and adopted by other browser vendors. This approach to enhancing the Web is more in line with how the other major browser vendors operate. It makes sense for Google to move in this direction now that the company has a browser of its own.

Although Google will not be adding additional features to Gears, the company says that it will continue to support the plug-in in a reduced capacity. For various technical reasons, it will be discontinued entirely for Safari on Mac OS X. The Firefox and Internet Explorer versions will continue to be supported for the immediate future.