It reminds me of Radiant[0], which does the same thing for Google Music.

Google has bet big on web apps. They are pushing hard to make the web app the way of the future. I don't have a problem with that, and to an extent I'm getting used to it (while simultaneously moving my clients in that direction like I've been doing for ten years), but in an age when it's still very transitional, it is nice to have these wrappers to make everything a little smoother.

If they published desktop apps, folks would never migrate. They would complain about the poor experience on the Chromebook, etc.

[0] https://github.com/radiant-player/radiant-player-mac

Why would Google make a webapp in a chromium wrapper, if they can just stick to their web interface in chrome?

I'd hazard that google doesn't see a need. I like this but I can understand that they may feel that you don't get extra features and isn't worth the work to create and support the app/program. The likelyhood is that if they did make a desktop client that it would be something similar, i.e. it just loads the webpage in a nice looking window. Which chrome does a pretty good job of already.

  google-chrome --app="https://inbox.google.com"

I think google already did their job.

> Looks great. But it makes me really wonder why somebody is doing Google's job.

The same could then be said of any mobile app used to browse HN or Reddit I guess.