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Comment by boucher | Hacker News Reader

Window is bundled with flash. So is Mac OS X. That's why it's so prevalent. So most people never have to actually install flash.

I don't see any reason to believe this particular plugin will take a different trajectory than Gears, which has almost no adoption.

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Most sites that have Gears support don't force the user to install Gears to use the site. There is no pop-up telling the users that they should get Gears to run the site - Google docs just has a nice little link at the top that says "Offline". There is no impetus to click it, and I bet many users don't even realize this feature exists. When the plug-in becomes required to use a site, and the user is presented with a pop-up telling him so, I think that changes things quite a bit.

OEMs bundle the ActiveX version of flash with Windows, so it works in IE by default for almost all users.

For Flash to work in any Windows browser not based on IE, somebody has to install the separate NSAPI flash plugin.

Yes, but you realize that this is a self defeating argument, right? People who aren't using IE had to install the plugin themselves. Doesn't impact people who do use IE, the target market for this Google plugin.

I did recognize the irony: users who've installed browsers have needed to install plugins, users who haven't installed browsers haven't needed to install plugins.

The extremely wide spread of IE toolbars and other ActiveX plugins shows that Google will garner installs. They'll probably also have the OEMs they're paying to bundle Chrome install Chrome Frame too.

Hell, they might even stuff it into the Google Toolbar for IE -- which has tens of millions of mostly paid-for installs.

Gears didn't provide users anything special, that's why it never caught on. But in this case, it provides users with a better web browsing experience. Our site doesn't support IE6 at all, in fact we just send those users to a web page saying that we'll support you guys in the "near" future. We could use their meta tag if the users are using IE6 and prompt them to install the Google plugin so that they could still use our website using IE6.

That's a very good point about it being bundled already. However, has Gears really been pushed that much by Google? I mean, even as an advanced user, I know that it exists and that various web apps use it, but it seems to be in the background and not all that advertised. I don't even use it myself.

I think a new browser engine offers a lot more opportunity for more tangible, up front enhancements to a user's web experience than client-side offline storage would, at least in an immediate sense.

The difference is that gears enables new uses, whereas chrome frame can be used to make existing web sites better (canvas, faster JS, full CSS) and make web development easier. It benefits far, far more people at a much lower incremental cost than gears.

But Gears had as many useful features, and it benefits people who actually care about their experience rather than people who arguably don't. Why do we believe Google's going to push this in ways they never did for Gears?

Offline gmail uses gears.

Flash got it's biggest install jumps when MySpace required it for uploading pictures.

You're leaving out the fundamental detail -- Myspace was forcing upgrades to Flash 9, and the impetus was active Myspace worms that were exploiting security holes in Flash.

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