Offline Access to Main Google Apps, Chrome Web Store Launched Worldwide and More

Google has been on a roll at their I/O conference. You might have read by now that the consumer version of the Chrome OS notebook, which everyone knew that it’ll come one day but didn’t know when, was finally introduced and it will hit the stores on June 15 (yes, this June 15!).

Apart from the above mentioned major announcement, there have been a number of other developments that have brought cheer to both the developers and the average computer users. Lets check out some of them here.

Offline Availability of Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs

You might remember Google Gears that enabled offline access for popular Google apps. It was good but it wasn’t without its flaws. And it was slowly phased out as Google introduced Chrome because it the browser wasn’t compatible with that technology. Well, come this summer you’ll have offline access to Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs.

As reported by TechCrunch’s MG Siegler, Google has been internally testing and using the offline versions of these services, and it will be rolled out to consumers this summer. Neat!

Chrome Web Store Now Open to All

Chrome Web Store was launched with much fanfare few months ago, but as with any new Google product, it’s availability was limited. Not anymore. It is now available to all 160 million Chrome users without any sort of discrimination based on the version of Chrome they are using.

In-app Purchases in Web Store

In-app purchases have also been introduced in the Chrome Web Store, and to the delight of the developers, Google will only take a flat five percent cut out of their pockets. And it is extremely easy to add the functionality to their app codes. Overall a win-win for developers.