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> Again, websites work perfectly well for this. Not always. The idea here is that an app would be able to use some of the phone's native features, making the u

> Again, websites work perfectly well for this. Not always. The idea here is that an app would be able to use some of the phone's native features, making the user experience more straightforward. Think about the camera purchase concept. If you open a website, once the user has selected a product, they have to either login or enter payment information (like a new credit card). But with a native micro-app, it can just start a payment intent that accepts whatever the user has already saved to their OS (through Google Pay). Basically two taps and you're done, as opposed to a bunch of taps and filling some forms. Much less friction, if done right. And that's just one example. I'm sure people will come up with others. I'm sure some publishers will want to abuse the system to force people to run apps that have no benefit over a simple web page. Same problem contrived "mobile" websites have. But at the same time there's a lot of micro-situations where mini-apps serve the user in a much better fashion. At least until HTML5+ has proper APIs for the features they need.

bobajeff 10y ago
It's funny your example is covered by a new web api called PaymentRequest which Google showed off at the very same conference where they announced this. http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2016/05/enhancing-android-pay-apis.html?m=1 http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2016/05/enhancing-and...
barkbro 10y ago
>But with a native micro-app, it can just start a payment intent that accepts whatever the user has already saved to their OS (through Google Pay). Basically two taps and you're done, as opposed to a bunch of taps and filling some forms. That sounds like it could become a new vector for fraud if not implemented correctly.
IanCal 10y ago
I'm not sure that is less friction. Chrome already can and does store my contact and payment details, and the alternative is downloading and running some part of a custom app that integrates with Google pay? Somewhere I have to choose what card I want and what address to send the item to, both of those are already handled pretty well in chrome. The problems come with poorly made forms on sites, but I dont think comparing bad sites to good apps is fair. I'm not trying to be contrary here, I've just not seen a decent reason for these yet. Really they're like websites but with a different API that's not cross platform. I guess a good integration has to be one that can't be done with a website, a user also doesn't need regularly and requires no special permissions.

bobajeff 10y ago

It's funny your example is covered by a new web api called PaymentRequest which Google showed off at the very same conference where they announced this. http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2016/05/enhancing-android-pay-apis.html?m=1 http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2016/05/enhancing-and...

barkbro 10y ago

>But with a native micro-app, it can just start a payment intent that accepts whatever the user has already saved to their OS (through Google Pay). Basically two taps and you're done, as opposed to a bunch of taps and filling some forms. That sounds like it could become a new vector for fraud if not implemented correctly.

IanCal 10y ago

I'm not sure that is less friction. Chrome already can and does store my contact and payment details, and the alternative is downloading and running some part of a custom app that integrates with Google pay? Somewhere I have to choose what card I want and what address to send the item to, both of those are already handled pretty well in chrome. The problems come with poorly made forms on sites, but I dont think comparing bad sites to good apps is fair. I'm not trying to be contrary here, I've just not seen a decent reason for these yet. Really they're like websites but with a different API that's not cross platform. I guess a good integration has to be one that can't be done with a website, a user also doesn't need regularly and requires no special permissions.