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No, it's a much larger existential threat. It because they're fighting to keep the web competitive with native apps. The more that the world shifts from the web

No, it's a much larger existential threat. It because they're fighting to keep the web competitive with native apps. The more that the world shifts from the web to native apps, the less people use their web search engine.

dfabulich 9y ago
I agree. Elsewhere in this thread, @kinlan on the Google Developer Relations team says that their goal is "to make the web experiences better, instant and accessible and available to everyone," and that's true, but Google makes money by making the web better. The more people use the web, the more people use Google search, and the more valuable Google's ads are. If the web is slow or unusable (especially on mobile in India, for example), then Google search is useless on mobile in India, so nobody will want to buy mobile search ads in India.
colordrops 9y ago
And yet Google refuses to allow web apps / PWAs on their Play store.
- kinlan 9y ago
  We don't refuse or disallow. We just don't take an arbitrary URL and list it in the store automatically. We announced Trusted Web activities https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/10/using-twa https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/10/using-twa which give you a fullscreen surface for web content in an Android App in the store and allow you to offer more integration with the Android operating system (protocol and scheme handling, quick links etc)... I do think this is interesting, I worked on the Chrome Web Store when it launched and the number one complaint was that the experiences "were just bookmarks" and I think Trusted Web activities give us a chance to experiment with deeper web integrations on the host platform before we are able to standardize it.
  - colordrops 9y ago
    Trusted web activity is not the same as a PWA. They are not cross platform. Why can't PWAs go through a similar getting process to apps to get onto Play?
    - kinlan 9y ago
      The process of getting apps onto Play, is to create an Android app... so I'm not clear on what you mean. Someone will create the tooling that will automatically create this. Trusted Web activity is just a general way to launch you PWA fullscreen from an Android actitivy.
      - colordrops 9y ago
        How does that jive with the fact that Play also has books and movies? Those are not Android apps. There is absolutely no technical reason that Play couldn't also serve as a discovery and installation (i.e. icon on the desktop) mechanism for PWA-compliant applications. Users would never know the difference.

dfabulich 9y ago

I agree. Elsewhere in this thread, @kinlan on the Google Developer Relations team says that their goal is "to make the web experiences better, instant and accessible and available to everyone," and that's true, but Google makes money by making the web better. The more people use the web, the more people use Google search, and the more valuable Google's ads are. If the web is slow or unusable (especially on mobile in India, for example), then Google search is useless on mobile in India, so nobody will want to buy mobile search ads in India.

colordrops 9y ago

And yet Google refuses to allow web apps / PWAs on their Play store.

kinlan 9y ago
We don't refuse or disallow. We just don't take an arbitrary URL and list it in the store automatically. We announced Trusted Web activities https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/10/using-twa https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/10/using-twa which give you a fullscreen surface for web content in an Android App in the store and allow you to offer more integration with the Android operating system (protocol and scheme handling, quick links etc)... I do think this is interesting, I worked on the Chrome Web Store when it launched and the number one complaint was that the experiences "were just bookmarks" and I think Trusted Web activities give us a chance to experiment with deeper web integrations on the host platform before we are able to standardize it.
- colordrops 9y ago
  Trusted web activity is not the same as a PWA. They are not cross platform. Why can't PWAs go through a similar getting process to apps to get onto Play?
  - kinlan 9y ago
    The process of getting apps onto Play, is to create an Android app... so I'm not clear on what you mean. Someone will create the tooling that will automatically create this. Trusted Web activity is just a general way to launch you PWA fullscreen from an Android actitivy.
    - colordrops 9y ago
      How does that jive with the fact that Play also has books and movies? Those are not Android apps. There is absolutely no technical reason that Play couldn't also serve as a discovery and installation (i.e. icon on the desktop) mechanism for PWA-compliant applications. Users would never know the difference.