Firefox 3 to Support Google Apps Offline

I caught this interesting piece from Richard over at Read/WriteWeb, apparently FF3.O will allow the user to use web apps offline as well as on:

Robert O’Callahan from Mozilla…..spoke about how Firefox 3 will deliver support for offline applications. This is significant because you’ll be able to use your web apps - like Gmail, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, etc - in the browser even when offline.

This sounds very interesting and really enables something that been discussed a lot — the Google Office Suite. What is interesting to me is that Google usually claims no interest in building an Office Suite to compete with Microsoft yet everytime I turn around they’ve built/bought something very close to that…

Is Google just playing coy to keep MS at bay for as long as possible? I mean come on, once FF can run web apps, what more does Google need to satisfy most users with a fully functional Office Suite? Admittedly it will be a bit different than any Office tools we know today — but it can still be a very serious competitor when you realize most people use so little of the MS Office Suite as it is.

I love MS Office myself (especially the new version) BUT in reality, how much do you or your kids use of it? Not much in most families. Now in comes Google with free apps that never need upgrading, you don’t need to back up your data, access from anywhere, hmmm…

Linux/FF3.0 = Google OS
Google Apps/Every other web app on the planet = Google Office

Wouldn’t the above suffice for most people’s computing needs? Thoughts?