Let me tell you why clickpass fails. After seeing your comment about clickpass, I decided to go try it. So I went there and the initial frontpage pitch was really nice. So I clicked on my google account. It showed me my different google accounts. Nice. I clicked next, and then it asked me if it should be allowed to access contacts. Hella NO! Why should I give clickpass access to my google contacts. So I figured I'd still be able to login without that. Umm, no, it tells me the process failed.

This is the fault of google, but what can clickpass do? Google gives, google takes.

Gears will win out of the sheer will of force -- a.k.a Google's war chest. Considering that it's only been in development for about a year makes calling a pipe dream premature.

OpenSocial and Android both plays the heel to the the bigger and better counterparts. But like all things in life, it's much better to have decent alternative than none at all. They may not ever achieve dominant positioning but they don't have to, no one will outright give up on them.

OpenID is just weird but god bless those folks that keep wanting to get a crack with this.

My first reaction was "no - gears has been out for ages"... but no, you're totally right.

Gears + Android might be an interesting play for Google as well. http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/03/power-up-you...

Wasn't the sell for Gears originally offline apps? And now it is supported on a mobile phone... which has always-on internet access...

This makes it even more useful. Bandwidth on a mobile phone isn't unlimited and it can be extremely slow loading.

I believe that is the grand plan.

GOOG is in an enviable position in that they experienced extreme rapid growth, amassed legions of brilliant people, and had a high margins to have billions in cash. I'm not in a rush to bet against this juggernaut and their singularity plans.