On android they are more properly thought of as URI's than URL's. The point of a URI is to give a canonical representation of an object, and an URL represents

On android they are more properly thought of as URI's than URL's. The point of a URI is to give a canonical representation of an object, and an URL represents the location of that object (or representative). Web intents are great because I can say "I want this song, Android please let the best app respond (which may be a browser)" instead of "I want to access this song via Spotify, even if its not there and it is on X provider that I have access too."