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Google gears , Mozilla Prism are all a different genre. If you are planning to build an "occasionally connected app" that lives within the browser, Gears is a good choice. AIR is for building desktop apps.

If you are a web developer and knows Javascript (and/or Flash), you can build great apps that works nicely on desktop with Adobe AIR. AIR doesn't force developers to build custom chrome for apps. By default AIR renders the app in OS's native chrome. But if a developer chooses to, he can go for custom chrome .Thats it.

AIR is a runtime (more like Java ) for running AIR apps. You needn't "open an Adobe Air" at any point. Just install the apps you really want and use it.