Firefox 3 To Support Offline Apps

"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... Although Mozilla is an open source organization, some of its top workers are employed by Google."

This is very interesting. There are a number of companies out there building add-on utilities and system extensions for synchronizing traditional desktop apps with online counterparts. For example, Spanning Sync for Google Calendar. If the browser can do this for you, and support a wide variety of online apps, then one of the largest barriers for web app adoption will be knocked down.