A little over two weeks after its initial beta release, Google has brought out an official release for Safari, sans the BETA tag! Yes, the rumours are true, there indeed exists a Google product that’s not in beta. I’m puzzled as to why a 0.4 release doesn’t count as BETA in Google’s dictionary. Maybe someone just forgot to put that word in there and it will be back in v0.4.1.

For those in the dark, Gears is an API through which web applications like Google Docs and Zoho Livewriter (to name only a couple), can keep a database on your hard drive which allows them to access your data even while offline. So, effectively, you can edit your documents offline in a web browser. Read up on our ‘Gears: Is it worth the risk’ post to know more about Gears and how it performs on Safari. Of course, the risk factor I mentioned in that one has now been eliminated with this official release.

For details on what exactly this release brings to the table, Google has posted details on the GoogleMac Blog. Of course for the rest of us we need to visit the Gears homepage to get right to installing Gears. Gears for Safari requires Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.3 , or Tiger 10.4.11. Gears is not available for Windows Safari, nor Mobile Safari.