If you click on the ’settings’ link in Google Calendar today you’ll notice a new area, ‘offline’. Though not fully functional yet, Google is obviously close to launching the ability to use Google Calendar when Internet access is not available.

This offline access is achieved by using the Google Gears web browser plugin. Basically the plugin goes up to Google’s “cloud” (its server farms where you data is stored online) and pulls down the information needed so that you can use the app offline. The offline Google Calendar will download enough data to allow you to see appointments for the next three months. Google Gears currently only works with Firefox 1.5 and up and Internet Explorer 6.0 and up.

The Calendar app going offline follows RSS feed reader Google Reader’s move offline last year. When you factor in the recently found “experimental offline access” found in Google Docs, the trend is clear: Google wants to users to be able to use its office suite applications even when they are not online.

The reason why should be obvious: Microsoft. If Google truly wants to compete with Microsoft’s behemoth Office, this offline access is crucial. Sure, more and more places are gaining Wi-Fi hotspots and access over mobile broadband technologies such as 3G, but many people still do not want to have to be on the Internet all the time in order to get work done. In fact, on an airplane you still wouldn’t be able to use the online Google Apps of course.

Google is going so far in its push to go offline that it’s are even getting ready to allow you to sync up Google Calendar with Microsoft Outlook — a key component of Microsoft Office as the ZDNet blog Googling Google recently uncovered.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is going the other way — taking its Office application online. A couple weeks ago, Microsoft announced the beta for Office Live Workspace, their web-based extension of Microsoft Office. This is part of a broad initiative for the company to create their own “cloud” and combat Google (our coverage).

As Google goes offline and Microsoft goes online the two are poised to collide at some point. The result might not be pretty for the two companies but it should at least give the consumer more options.

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