Google hates HTML5, pushes Gears?

don't want no google gearsSo you bought this brand new HTC Hero and you tell everyone it’s on a par with the iPhone 3GS and its great browser? I mean, both are very recent Webkit-implementations aren’t they? Safari Mobile on iPhone OS3 is based on AppleWebKit/528.18, Chrome Mobile (or don’t they call it that?) for Android 1.5 on AppleWebKit/528.5+, and between 528.5+ and 528.18 there can only be minor differences? So HTML5-goodies (such as geolocation, localstorage and app cache) which Google is actively promoting, will work out of the box, just like on that dreaded iPhone 3GS, won’t they?
Sorry to bust your bubble, but Google seems to have decided otherwise; there’s no navigator.geolocation, no localstorage and no app cache on my HTC Hero (which is running Android 1.5 aka cupcake). You can access similar functionalities by calling the built-in Gears plugin, but mobile web-developers can’t assume that these HTML5-draft-specs are available on all modern high-end mobile handsets at all. Hell, even “big” Chrome 3.0.195.10 (which is based on Webkit 532!) does not seem to support these killer-features. Must be that Google is secretly pushing for Gears to become the default “rich internet enabler” instead of HTML5?

2 thoughts on “Google hates HTML5, pushes Gears?”

  1. performed some tests on the palm pré emulator (from the sdk) and the palm pré browser (based on webkit 525.27.1) does not seem to support any of these html5-functions, which is kind of weird, as the mojo-framework uses geolocation, local db and others extensively.
    as there’s no google gears to fall back on, it seems there’s no geolocation, local db or appcache for normal webpages/ apps available at all on the pre? such a shame that palm decided not to expose these functions in the browser!

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