According to an article on CNet, one of the latest updates for the development build of the Google Chrome browser rendered it incompatible with Gmail offline. So far the only work-arounds are to disable offline options in Gears settings, or to use the Chrome Channel Changer to use a previous version of Chrome that doesn’t have the compatibility issue, or (if you use Mac or Linux,) switch to the beta version, which apparently doesn’t have the issue.

On a personal note, (not being a fan of the Google Chrome browser in the first place,) I find it absolutely hysterical that Google’s browser had an issue with Google’s e-mail service. (Long live Firefox! [Or maybe Opera.])