Microsoft 365
A day after Microsoft had poked fun at its major competitor for Office 365 with a note called “Whither art thou, Google Apps offline” that chided the Mountain View company for failing to deliver on its promise to replace the previous offline mode enabled through Google Gears, Google added the ability for its applications to work offline on August 31, 2011. It almost seemed that the two companies were in perfect step with each other, which must be a first. Gmail is the first application to boast renewed offline access with further updates for Google Calendar and Google Docs following. All of the applications are in beta status and access for Google Docs will remain read-only for now, which lessens its usefulness somewhat. Google Calendar functions as you’d expect, with the ability to answer to incoming meeting requests or schedule new events.