SEARCH ENGINE wielding un-evil empire builder Google has announced that, from today, Google Docs will start to roll out off-line functionality.

The MS Office-baiting suite of applications has, until now, been in the exclusive domain of the online community. But a post on the official Gogglebog by software engineer Janani Ravi makes it clear that the connection is about to be severed.

To make it work you'll need to install the Google Gears plug-in, but apart from that it's exactly the same.

Any changes made to documents whilst offline will be updated next time you connect to the Internet.

The new features are only available in English language versions of the application as yet, and some parts of the suite, including spreadsheets, are read only, but fully localised, fully functioning versions should be rolling out to a park bench near you very soon. µ

L'Inq
Google