Could There Be More To Google, Android, Chrome, & Gears Than Meets The Eye?

My guess is that Google sees an offline technology like Gears as being so fundamental to the future of Web applications, that it can't not be built into the browser.

Unless that offline technology is based on the HTML 5 client-side storage recommendation and isn't named Gears. In that case it should be ripped out and replaced with Gears.

For small pieces of data, we can already use cookies as a client-side storage.

Google doesn't care that you use gears or not. They want you to use the internet to get to it. If your on the internet chances are your seeing their ads.

Developers don't want to have to develop for multiple platforms. There are two ways to solve that: Either develop for a platform which has a monopoly share, or develop cross-platform.

Web Applications' ability to work on every platform, combined with an increasing feature-set (thanks to Gears), makes it a very viable platform.

The web is Google's domain: The better the web stack works in all platforms (including mobile), the better chance they'll have to beat out Microsoft, Apple, and all the rest.

I would add Google App Engine to the list and see it a direct competitor to Microsoft's Live Mesh.