Google Gear Vs. Web Browsers

A few days ago, Google released a beta (of course) version of a new open-source project called Gear.

Gear's main aim is to enabled online applications work offline as well.
Notice I didn't say web-based as the Gear API is open for RIA solutions as well - even more - Adobe's Apollo (Adobe's answer to WPF) project manager said it would have integrated support for the Gear API.

What Is This Gear Anyway?
Well its a very good question, since it's current release is really in its early beta stages and is probably due for some major changes, but its basically a browser plugin (currently supports only FireFox & IE under Window) which exposes a complete framework of utilities to store and retrieve... anything!
Whether it's image or script resources or applicative user-data - everything can be stored (per user of course) and retrieved easily like a hash map or using a simple ansi-sql like language!

This really sounds amazing, but what does this really means?
For the last decade or so, web browsers has become allot more that just an html engines, they now offer local cache, storing user-based data using cookies and saving your forms data.

But then Gear came.

But Why Is Gear Better Than My Existing Browser Solutions?

Because it does everything the browser does, only better.
Here's why:
1. Caching: Although client-side cache is a good thing, its one of the web-developer's worst nightmares - think of updating a script file and not knowing if your clients are using the new version, or the old and buggy one since their browser decided to store it.
Using Gear, you get the power to store resource files by version and retrieve them using a simple sql-like query or key-based!
You then not only don't have to worry if a new version is used or not, but you could also force a selected resource to be cached!

2. Cookies: Not only cookies have a limit on size and content data (cookies have a content security policy), but you don't know if cookies are enabled and if they do, if the client decided to delete them or not.
Using Gear you can save your data per-user using a secure manner, and retrieve no matter what browser your client uses.

There are many other reasons why Gear is good, but I haven't got to Gear's main goal - offline accessibility.

One of the biggest web-based mail client draw-backs is the necessity of being connected to the net.
Think of connection to your gmail or hotmail - for that matter - even while not connected to the net! or even better - to your online Google docs!

Summary
Gear is a set of client-side utilities that enable you to get a bigger handle on how and what data is stored on your client machine without worrying about his\hers browsers settings, allowing you to build a complete offline-accessible web-based solution!

Could this be a knockout to Web\RIA based solutions over the smart-client technologies?