Last evening I was confronted with pasting a graphic image into a Microsoft Word document for forwarding while retaining the existing formatted text content. But I don’t have a copy of Word, and my usual text editors couldn’t handle the file. What to do? I turned to Google Docs. With a bit of trial and error I was able to paste the needed graphic into the document, save it as a PDF file, and send it off to its destination.

A few short weeks ago, Google introduced the ability to use an iPad with the mobile version of Google Docs. Now they’ve done it again, supporting iPad on the desktop version as well. When you go to use Google Docs, you’ll have a choice between the two. They still recommend the mobile version for most edits, but give the option of the desktop version when you need more style options, or the ability to use formulae in spreadsheets.

Google has added the ability to edit documents on mobile devices to Google Docs, its suite of online productivity tools. Users with a device running iOS 3 (or later) or Android 2.2 can open a previously-created word processing document or spreadsheet. Once they have it open, they can click the new “edit” button in the upper right hand corner. Users can, of course, also create a doc or spreadsheet under the new system.

At MWC, Vic Gundotra, Google’s VP of engineering, demoed what many might think is heaven sent; offline Gmail (the web app) with, among other things, support for labels. Better yet, the technology doesn’t depend or even require you to jailbreak your iPhone. So, you won’t even have to get Apple’s panties all in a bundle to get it working.

Users of Google tools such as Docs, Reader, and Picasa can now ditch the Windows and enjoy their tools on a Mac. Until now, Gears was available for Firefox or IE on Windows only, but today Google announced the availability of Gears for Safari. A Mac running OS X 10.4.11 with Safari 3.1.1 (or higher, including Leopard) is required.

So what makes Gears so important? It exists mainly in the background and never really gets any direct interaction from the user—deceptively simple, in fact, but fundamentally important for enabling Web 2.0 applications.

By now, Google’s latest announcement is old news: there is a new browser in town. Joining Safari, Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer is a new guy, by the name of Chrome. Sporting a WebKit foundation (same as the platform Apple built Safari on), as well as a few other enhancements, Chrome promises to be a speed demon. Buried in all the hype, however, are a few interesting bits that point to something bigger than just another browser. Chrome may, in fact, be more revolutionary than it first appears…