Gears, formerly Google Gears,[2] is a discontinued utility software offered by Google to create more powerful web apps by adding offline storage and other additional features to web browsers.

However, Gears was discontinued in favor of the standardized HTML5 methods that eventually became prevalent.

There were several major API components to Gears: Several web applications from a variety of companies used Gears at some point, including Google (Gmail, YouTube, Docs, Reader, Picasa for mobile, Calendar, Wave), MySpace (Mail Search), Zoho Office Suite, Remember The Milk, and Buxfer.

[15] WordPress 2.6 added support for Gears, to speed up the administrative interface and reduce server hits.

[28] 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.