Gmail is probably Google's biggest product after search. It's also been around for a long time, so you do have to keep that in mind. I would presume the Gmail

Gmail is probably Google's biggest product after search. It's also been around for a long time, so you do have to keep that in mind. I would presume the Gmail team are still working on offline, but Google prefers launch + iterate, rather than waiting for things to reach a "finished" state. This was the quickest way to get people to an offline Gmail product. DISCLAIMER: I'm an intern at Google, but have no information about these products apart from what is publicly known.