Google finally delivers Offline Gmail access through Labs

Google finally delivers Offline Gmail access through Labs

Google has finally launched the Offline Gmail feature on their popular webmail service.

Offline Gmail is being delivered to Gmail users through Google Gmail Labs.

It is being rolled out in a phased manner so you might not have it yet on your Gmail box.

This was one of the most important feature request by the users of the service. Especially after the company launched the Gears technology sometime back.

Google Gears enables offline access to web services. It is already being offered by the company on their Google Reader service.

Rajen Sheth, senior product manager for Google Apps said that it took a lot of time for them to make this feature available on Gmail due to the high volume of messages accounts can store.

The company said that they are not going to download the entire Gmail boxes of users on the computer as it can turn out to be in Gigabytes of information.

Instead, the company would download important messages which they believe are more likely to be required by the user of the service.

Sheth said: “We had to make it such that we’re managing a sizable amount of information offline and doing it well in a way that’s seamless to the end-user.”

If turned on, this feature is still likely to download several thousand messages on the user’s computer. More recent information would of course be preferred.

Google is also implementing this technology on their Google Calendar service for Google Apps account holders.

Checkout: New in Labs: Offline Gmail