Google Gears represents the prototype of one of tech industry’s most important current trends; it is an application that can keep browser-based applications running while also offline, thus, allowing people to use their computers even if they have no connection to the Internet. Google Gears was launched less than a year ago, but now Google seems to have thought about mobile phone users too, as it announced on Monday that the open source technology became available also on Windows Mobile.

“Today we're announcing the launch of Google Gears for mobile, a mobile browser extension for creating rich web applications for mobile devices. The first version is now available for Internet Explorer Mobile on Windows Mobile 5 and 6. It's a fully functional port of Google Gears v0.2 that can be used to develop offline capability into your mobile web applications,” said Charles Wiles, Google Mobile Team’s Product Manager.

Google Gears is expected to reach also Android, as well as other mobile platforms in the following period of time.

For less than one year, desktop and notebook users have had the possibility to test Google Gears and the advantages it brings. Although still in beta testing, the software program offers people the opportunity to continue to work with the web-based applications they need also after they have gone offline. At the moment Google Gears is available for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer on Windows XP and Windows Vista, as well as for Mozilla’s Firefox on Windows XP, Vista, Mac OS X and Linux. Google Gears for Mobile is a port of this software.

Google’s smart application for mobile phones was highly necessary, as phone owners are likely to be at the mercy of their carrier network when coverage comes in and out. Thanks to Google Gears’ ability to cache data on phones, developers can now create web-based applications that will be usable also offline and when networks suffer delays.