Offline Surfing Is Here

We are approaching the time when 'cyberspace' can also mean 'cyberstorage' ...

John Cook of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports on a new company whose intent is to make that concept a reality:

"On a cold night two years ago, Brad Husick and Rakesh Mathur sat in a rental car near Fairbanks, Alaska, waiting to photograph the aurora borealis. Dressed in parkas and with temperatures dipping below zero, the buddies dreamed up a radical technological idea: What if you could browse thousands of Web pages without being connected to the Internet?

"'It was sort of a strange, audacious, crazy question to ask,' recalled Husick.

"But the two entrepreneurs -- who made names for themselves at NetGravity and Junglee -- returned to Seattle to make the idea a reality.

"Today, Husick and Mathur are introducing Webaroo -- a Bellevue company whose free software allows users of laptops and hand-held computers to take portions of the Web with them wherever they wander.

"The technology, which stores Web pages on a laptop's hard drive or a mobile phone's storage card, could have wide-ranging implications. A sales professional staying in a London hotel could access reviews for nearby restaurants without the hassle of paying for an Internet connection. Airplane travelers could use Webaroo to read portions of The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle or News.com without needing an airborne Internet service such as Connexion by Boeing. And visitors to remote regions -- whether Australia or Alaska -- could have superfast access to archived versions of their favorite Web sites.

"'It is one of the more interesting ideas that has come up of late,' said Rob Enderle, principal technology analyst at The Enderle Group. 'And one that I think has the potential to really transform the way we play with the Web.'

"Webaroo does have some limitations -- including the most obvious. Because users are not connected to the Internet, there is no way to receive real-time information. That rules out a host of popular Internet activities: buying goods on Amazon.com, checking stock quotes on Yahoo! or watching the latest videos on YouTube.

"But Husick, who moved to the Seattle area from Silicon Valley six years ago, thinks there are enough static Web pages to provide users with a worthwhile experience.

"'The vast majority of content on the Web changes on an infrequent basis,' said Husick, president of the company. 'Once an article is published, that article doesn't really change.'

"The problem is, there are billions of Web pages. Storing every single one of them on a laptop or hand-held computer is a Herculean task, one that Husick estimates would take a million gigabytes -- known as a petabyte -- of storage.

"'It was pretty clear that we are not going to have petabyte drives on our notebooks anytime soon,' said Husick. So the company's more than 50 software developers and mathematicians in India started looking at ways to store only the most relevant pages -- crawling the Web to compile the top search results and create specialized packages of content around certain topics.

"With the launch today, the company will offer pre-selected 'web packs' related to FIFA's World Cup, 15 international cities and world news. The world news package, for example, scours up to 100,000 news sites -- a feature that Husick said is 'like carrying the daily newspapers of the world with you.'

"A Wikipedia pack, with more than 1 million encyclopedia entries, will be unveiled later this month. In addition to those topics, users can insert their favorite Web sites into Webaroo and take the content with them wherever they travel.

"But Webaroo has bigger ambitions. Later this year, it plans to roll out a new version of the software -- currently dubbed 'Web to Go' -- that will allow people to search for any topic they desire offline. Because of the storage needs, that product will only be available for laptops and other high-powered computing devices.

"Users of Webaroo can't dump their Internet connections or bypass Wi-Fi hotspots altogether. After all, they must occasionally get online in order to refresh Web sites.

"Husick said the updating process takes only a couple of minutes, meaning a person could log on to the Internet at a Wi-Fi hotspot at the airport and then get on a plane to Tokyo and browse fairly fresh content from dozens of Web sites.

"Since the software is free to download, Webaroo plans to make money by placing relevant advertisements next to search results. That model is similar to other search engines such as Google and Yahoo!

"Webaroo is not the only company trying to cache Web content for those who don't have immediate access to the Internet. At the Microsoft Research annual TechFest event last month, researchers from the company's Bangalore, India, facility demonstrated a technology to store podcasts, videos and pictures on mobile phones and then access them offline. Microsoft described it as 'a digital-recording service for the Web.'

"Ben Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies, said that Webaroo reminded him of AvantGo. Now owned by Sybase, AvantGo boasts 7 million subscribers who use the mobile service to view more than 1,000 Web sites either offline or while connected to a wireless network. Just last week, it introduced a mobile city guide for 200 locations -- including maps, weather forecasts and a currency conversion tool.

"Initially, Bajarin said, Webaroo's core audience will be business travelers who want to access information on the go. But as the service evolves, he said it could become an interesting way for people to pre-load music, movies and television shows on their hard drives.

"'It could let you say: These are the types of things I am interested in, so download it for me, so when I am offline I can have this great browse experience,' said Bajarin.

"Enderle agreed, saying that video could be the most compelling application for Webaroo. But he quickly added that it also presents unique storage issues. Webaroo also could eventually help people avoid traffic bottlenecks on the Internet, allowing them to access stored images or other large files from their hard drives.

"'Everything is local, so you immediately get the sense of speed,' Enderle said.

"In order to attract users, Webaroo is linking up with laptop and mobile phone makers. The company has announced that the software will be bundled on Acer's mobile computers beginning later this year. All told, Husick said the company has agreements with computer manufacturers for 10 million units this year. He declined to name other partners or the details of the partnership with Acer, the world's fourth-largest personal computer maker.

"Building awareness and making sure that the technology can download "large chunks of the Internet" will be a challenge, said Bajarin. The spread of Wi-Fi hotspots, WiMax and next-generation cellular networks also could put a dent in the need for an offline Web service.

"Webaroo, which employs fewer than 10 people in Bellevue and Santa Clara, Calif., is privately funded. It plans to have more than 100 people in Mumbai and New Delhi, India, by the end of the year.

"Husick declined to disclose investors, saying only that some are recognizable names that 'are institutions unto themselves.'"