Chrome Web Store listings will be gone in a year; they'll stop working another six months after that.
http://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.htm...
Oh, I remember Moxie claiming that they've built Signal as a Chrome app because Chrome has won the desktop: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10665679 - I can't decide whether this is funny or sad.
I like Signal, and I depend on it, and wan't it to be successful, but oh boy are people running it full of misplaced hubris. A lot critique is dismissed just like in the thread you link: “we wan't to stop mass surveillance”. “But Moxie, change X makes Signal less useful/less secure for a lot of people who really need it!”, “We're glad you're an irrelevant geek, but we wan't to end mass surveillance”... Implying they're making Signal approachable to “masses”. But they aren't, partly because proper security will never (for various values of “never”) be approachable to disinterested masses, and partly because they pull some ideas on usability out of their ass.
Feel free to keep using the wonderful pgp user interface.
Chrome OS is actually not losing access to these apps for ~a year during which time the Play Store will continue rolling out alongside it.
What will be really interesting is when they roll out the Play Store for the rest of Chrome...
I imagine they are thinking that developers will make quick and dirty Android ports to Chrome OS like they did with tablets.
Although there are, or at least were some definite holes in app support.. namely a stand-alone (as much as can be) mail client that supports pop/imap and smtp with tls support. There's a halfway decent SSH client, though getting your private key in can be cumbersome. Aside from that, I don't mind most of my apps being browser based. There are of course limitations, but the remote desktop and ssh apps cover most of that for me.
What is really puzzling though, if you believe their rationale for axing Chrome apps, is why they would need to carve out an exception for Chrome OS.
If Chrome apps have truly been superseded by browser and web standards then why are they still needed on Chrome OS? If they have extra functionality, then why remove them from the desktop? If they don't, then why keep them on Chrome OS?