While Live Documents Yaps, Zoho Delivers

While some startups issue boastful press releases promising the world, India and Silicon Valley based Zoho is actually doing the software thing. This morning they launched full offline access for Zoho writer, based on the Google Gears open source platform.

In August the company launched partial offline functionality that let users read documents. Documents can now be edited offline as well after this most recent release. Google still does not offer offline functionality for Google Docs, although presumably it’s coming shortly.

Zoho continues to lead the pack in offering a useful online Office alternative. Competing with Google is hard enough for the big guys, but Zoho is winning ground as an independent startup. Adobe has thrown its hat in the ring with Buzzword. Microsoft continues to dither as it contemplates the half-life of its massive Office revenues.

Yahoo remains silent…but some have said they’ve at least sniffed around at acquiring Zoho. Seems like a good fit to me. A big draw of Zimbra, which Yahoo acquired this summer for $350 million, is their offline functionality. Email and Office apps go hand in hand.

Overview video is below. Zoho says offline support for their other applications will come as soon as the platform is stable.