Google's announcement of Google Gears is getting a lot of attention around the blogosphere today.  I don't need to rehash what the technology delivers.  You can get Scott Hanselman's take on it here and follow the links on his post for more information.

However, I was reading a post by Lazycoder that calls into question whether having online apps go offline is all that cool or useful:

See, taking a web application offline isn’t as neat as it sounds. Why would I want to work with my document using Google docs offline when I could just edit it using MS Word and upload it later? Why would I want to use Google Reader offline when I have NetNewsWire or RSS Bandit? If I’m going to work with data offline, I sure don’t want to use a browser interface. I want something that’s snappier, richer, and mo’ better. I want a desktop application.

I wanted to leave feedback on his blog, but comments were disabled, so here is my forum. 

I can see that point of view, but for my personal situation, having web apps available offline would be very useful. 

Let's consider Google reader first, since I have a stronger use there.  I use reader because I find myself at multiple computers each day,so I don't want to be tethered to a single machine just to be able to view my news feeds.  However, since I use my laptop frequently and since I occasionally find myself in places with no Internet access, the offline capabilities of reader would be handy.

Same goes for Writely docs/spreadsheets.  Granted, I have used Writely only for simple tasks and it has a long way to go to catch up to MS Office.  However, most of the things I do with docs/spreadsheets are simple tasks, so I find Writely handles almost everything I need to do.  And, if I can access them offline without having to buy a license for office and get plugins, perfect!

Since I am online 99% of the time I am at a computer (including my laptop), I find myself using desktop solutions a lot less than I used to.  If a web app gets the job done and now can be available the 1% of the time I am without Internet access, it is yet a more compelling reason to use them over their desktop counterparts.

As far as desktop apps having a snappier, richer interface, that gap is narrowing.  I find Google Reader's interface to be superb.  The keyboard shortcuts allow me to navigate quickly and the Ajax functions built in gives it a nice feel.  Once Adobe Flex and MS Silverlight get more exposure and more developers become familiar with their capabilities, that gap could close even further.