Google Gears for Windows Beta: Google Gears is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using following JavaScript APIs: Store and serve application resources locally; Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database; and Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness.
Info and download: http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Google_Gears_for_Windows/1180625731/1
Official homepage: http://gears.google.com/?platform=win
There is Mac and Linux versions too.
Much more (technical) info? http://www.betanews.com/article/Could_Google_Gears_Make_Cookies_Obsolete/1180642624
Polonus, any comments? 
Hi Tech,
This is adding some features to off-line browsing, while we will have far more mobile “digicitizens” in the near future. In this form there is nothing new on the horizon. But the attention comes because this is another move in the positioning chess play between the two big rivals Google and Microsoft.
Code is like a hammer. It is just what it is being used for. You can sculpt with a hammer, and you can ruin with a hammer. But it is all interwoven, as you block Google, you can no longer use Google translating services, so you switch to Yahoo or promt as a translating service to work your Firefox translator add-on.
As Microsoft embedded their browsers deep into the OS, we now see that rivals like Google and Yahoo embed their code deep into the browsers they are associated with. We live in a world that is driven by ads and corporations. Some 70 years ago some states owned corporations, now it is just the other way around. Nothing wrong with that as long as their is some counter-balance and this development can be checked in some way.
That is all I had to comment,
polonus