- published: 17 Nov 2014
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Gears, formerly Google Gears, was software offered by Google that "enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser. It allows some online files to be used offline". Released under the BSD license, Gears is free and open source software.
In late November 2009, numerous online news sources reported that Google was going to migrate to Web Storage rather than use Gears in the future. A Google spokesman later clarified that Google would, however, continue to support Gears so as not to break sites using it. On 22 November 2011, Google announced that on 1 December 2011, Gears support would be removed from Gmail and Google Calendar. Gears was removed from Google Chrome stable on June 7, 2011.
There are several major API components to Gears:
Several web applications from a variety of companies have used Gears at some point, including Google (Gmail, YouTube, Docs, Reader, Picasa for mobile, Calendar, Wave), MySpace (Mail Search), Zoho (Writer, Mail), Remember The Milk, and Buxfer.WordPress 2.6 added support for Gears, to speed up the administrative interface and reduce server hits. However, after Google announced in February 2010 that there would be no further development of Gears (see End of life section), several of these applications have discontinued their support for Gears, including Google Reader and WordPress
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provides the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it. Software refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of the computer for some purposes. In other words, software is a set of programs, procedures, algorithms and its documentation concerned with the operation of a data processing system. Program software performs the function of the program it implements, either by directly providing instructions to the computer hardware or by serving as input to another piece of software. The term was coined to contrast to the old term hardware (meaning physical devices). In contrast to hardware, software "cannot be touched". Software is also sometimes used in a more narrow sense, meaning application software only. Sometimes the term includes data that has not traditionally been associated with computers, such as film, tapes, and records.