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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

First of all, this was announced more than 3 years ago, and it still won't happen for another 2.5 years.

Second of all, this should be treated as good news for the HN crowd: Google is transitioning from a proprietary, Chrome-only app model to the open-standard, PWA model. Who doesn't support that?

There are a bunch of "typical Google cancelling a product" comments here. But for real, I simply cannot imagine any Chrome app which people actually use, whose developer is not going to transition to PWA and gain a bigger market.

Seriously, this is like complaining that Microsoft Edge doesn't support ActiveX controls. (And I certainly don't recall any complaints about that here.)

This is good news, people. Less fragmentation and more open standards.

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I agree that this was a terrible idea from day one and am glad it has been killed and will soon be buried.

But this: "typical Google cancelling a product" is still an important message.

Google routinely floats out APIs, services, and platforms and encourages their use despite fatal flaws that mean they are doomed from day one. And some developers fall for it and later have to pay the price. Hopefully, the repeated warning will minimize this. Think of the devs right now that are mistaking Flutter for a platform that will last.

> But this: "typical Google cancelling a product" is still an important message.

But it's one that appears with such regularity in HN comments that it drowns out all other discussion.

I've frequently seen otherwise interesting posts related to Google derailed into yet another pile on - or even worse full of people that think they are being witty by posting "how soon before it's cancelled?"

You’re interpereting it as someone being witty, but consider that people have legitimate concerns and are supplying mountains of concrete evidence for their position.

I wasn't disputing the validity of their complaint. That's orthogonal to being unfunny through repetition.

Claiming that them saying it is them thinking they are being witty is disputing the validity of their complaint.

For example:

I could constantly remark on the current bad weather using an unfunny joke.

Somebody could complain about my terrible sense of humour without implying it was actually lovely outside.

You're still claiming that people are saying it just to be witty/funny. They aren't. It is a legitimate concern that people should be informed of, if they aren't aware.

> You're still claiming that people are saying it just to be witty/funny.

You see that word "just" in there? That's the bit I disagree with.

It is possible to both agree with someone and dislike how they express themselves.

Hacker News is not a person, and you will only drive yourself insane if you treat a conversation with a collective like it is a person.

> people that think they are being witty by posting "how soon before it's cancelled?"

I legitimately don't think most people are trying to be funny when they say things like this. I think they feel (as I feel) that it's not worthing becoming reliant on Google's new fancy products, because there is a high likelihood they stop working in a few short years.

> But it's one that appears with such regularity in HN comments that it drowns out all other discussion.

See, for example, the second ranked subthread in this very story, from a user who apparently thinks this change is going to brick all Chromebooks; and the flood of responses talking about things like refund policy drowning out the tiny handful of comments pointing out that this the premise was a complete misunderstanding of what is happening.

HN can't rationally talk about Google any more. It's kind of depressing.

> HN can't rationally talk about Google any more. It's kind of depressing.

Unfortunately, it's not the only company where threads turn into this. Every Apple product thread is about removing the headphone jack (still), every Amazon thread is about counterfeit products someone bought. There are others.

This is probably going to happen and soon... And then next they'll kill off extensions, and then Chrome will become the next "Internet Explorer"...

One of the things that people will take for granted is the effectiveness of extensions that work as Ad blockers which brought online tracking to a grinding halt. Google because of their advertising services has always wanted to suppress the ability of people in blocking ads. Most of the changes they make to Chrome, now that they have captured majority of the market share are geared towards generating profit, and preserving their status a dominating company.

What's probably going to happen and soon? The comment you're replying to does not suggest some event will happen.

I don't think anyone is saying that web based apps were a bad idea from day one... Wouldn't the success of PWAs and pushing the web forward to support this type of open computing a good thing? Essentially, Google took a bold move, the tech world liked the idea of a more app-centric look a the web and pushed for PWAs. By all accounts, this is a success for all the web. It's okay for a product to go away if better stuff comes of it.

> Google routinely floats out APIs, services, and platforms and encourages their use despite fatal flaws that mean they are doomed from day one.

For most use cases, there are better options now than Chrome apps. ServiceWorkers didn't exist when Chrome apps were introduced. Neither did wasm, and its precursors NaCl and PNaCl were scoped to just Chrome apps, not to the public web.

Chrome did a very good job at a) building a platform that developers could use right then and b) working with other browsers and standards committees to get enough features implemented to replace what they built. They said, no, we shouldn't have a proprietary thing called "Chrome apps," we should just build it into the web platform so that people who don't use Chrome can use them too.

And they set a very long (many years) timeframe for shutting down their initial version of the thing.

This is exactly what I want a platform provider to do. I don't want "Chrome apps" any more than I want Flash or ActiveX or "Best viewed in Internet Explorer." But also, I do want platform providers to build platforms - I don't want them to refuse to build platforms on the grounds that they don't know the right answer yet and they can't immediately standardize something right now. I'm glad Flash and ActiveX are dead, but I'm glad they existed because they proved that the platform is valuable, if only you could implement it in a reasonable way. I'm glad ActiveX's original version of XMLHttpRequest existed because it proved that there was demand to standardize the version we now have.

Is there any way to bypass CORS in a PWA? Because Chrome Apps were a really handy way of writing GUI utilities without having to go full Electron.

Unsure, but I think if you have an extension, you can make the request in an extension page, which isn't CORS-restricted.

(I don't totally understand the difference between a Chrome app and an extension that turns itself into a PWA, both are browser-specific and both are distributed through the Chrome web store, right?)

A chrome app has access to normal sockets, local filesystem, etc.

Not sure how they'll handle this... given the risk of losing a local db store's data in chrome, I'm hoping they normalize on something.

Ideally, a directory for access/storage enough to use SQLite as via WebAssembly should be available to plugins with a request/approval for read (and optionally write) access ... to me, that should be a goal of any file system interface presented via WebAssembly, is the option for something that at least supports that use case.

There's a standardized File API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File and a nonstandard FileSystem API being driven by Google https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FileSystem

But yeah it seems network sockets are going away. Honestly that seems good from a security perspective but I will miss the mosh app for CrOS.

No, you can't. PWAs are just "glorified" web pages. Nothing more or less. Electron is the only viable choice for desktop apps with web technologies.

If the endpoint you are requesting says it does not want to expose itself to unknown origins, that should be respected in the default config.

For testing, security research and so on you can always modify the browser config or use a proxy.

Flutter is an open-source framework that targets Android, iOS, Web & Desktop. That's rather different to something that just targets Chrome. The developer experience is amazing. Personally I'm using it and not too worried about Flutter lasting. Just like I use react on the web and I'm not worried about that either.

That something is an important message is not a sufficient reason for it to appear on the comment page. Being important and tangentially related to the topic is also not sufficient. Otherwise, all comment pages degenerate into discussion of the closest available hot-button issue.

A chrome app that people use? There’s a lot of hobby flight controllers which are/were programmed using a Chrome app. There was no alternative. And since most web apps can’t get access to the host USB (webUSB seems to exist, but still seems pretty nascent), that whole system is probably going to have to find a new app deployment method.

These should probably be native mobile apps, no?

On a Chromebook ? The Android on ChromeOS stuff isn't as complete and has a hard time seeing e.g. USB peripherals.

I've reached out to the people I work with at Google to see what this will mean for my Chrome Application [0], which is a Certificate Provider [1] that talks to a Google provided ChromeOS Application [2]. Technically I can turn it into a Chrome extension now that there's built-in PIN prompting support, but the built-in SSH Agent will suffer as a result, since it will have no way to prompt for a PIN.

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cackey/lpimdiknnpi... [1] https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/certificateProvider [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smart-card-connect...

Not on a Chromebook, as it appears it is no longer a usable dev or runtime environment for such applications.

Flight controllers in question don't feature wireless connectivity - they are typically used in FPV racer drones, and only offer a USB connector for firmware flashing and configuration. There are Android apps that use USB OTG for the job, but the primary option is the desktop app built by the same authors/community as the flight firmware, which originated as a Chrome app and was eventually migrated to Electron.

Hasn't Betaflight (and iNav, and other relatives/clones) migrated to standalone Electron by now?

Web USB is going to more widely supported than Chrome's proprietary USB API. A Chrome app doesn't have to be written, its use of proprietray APIs just needs to be replace with the equivalent standard ones.

As a person who uses the Hangouts chrome app daily, I have been expecting a day when I go to launch it and it wont open for the last 3 years. Google doesn't want to support "Classic Hangouts" anymore (and supposedly they killed it in October for GSuite, but not for my domain, I guess). Hangouts is one of the only ways I privately communicate with old friends and past co-workers since EVERYONE has at least one gmail account.

And trying to get 20 people to switch to something else is a complete non-starter.

> And trying to get 20 people to switch to something else is a complete non-starter.

Eh. I participated in getting all my friends to start using WhatsApp and later to stop using it.

Way more than 20.

Does hangouts.google.com not work for you? It works for me. You don't need an installable app to use it. And it works inside Gmail too, of course.

(True, for companies Google's currently transitioning to the alternative "Hangouts Chat" which has enterprise features. But that's different from consumer Hangouts, and in any case obviously neither depends on Chrome Apps.)

hangouts.google.com will actually launch the chrome app since I have it installed. Also, I only use hangouts for the chatting and SMS features, so all that cruft for video conferencing and stuff really detracts from the simplicity of the hangouts app.

So uninstall the app and then just use hangouts.google.com? There are buttons for video/audio calls, but if you don't click them then it behaves like a chat app and when you have 2 conversations open they get hidden anyway.

Over a year ago the Hangouts app had a notice at the top saying support was going away and to switch to the extension. That is still working fine.

We've been moving people over to Chat in our domain but a large (probably majority) still use Hangouts.

In addition to the Chrome app, there is the Chrome extension. They basically do the same thing and the extension has no expiration message. The main reason I wasn't using the extension before is that it didn't provide a desktop icon in Linux. There is a way to fix that by creating a .desktop file[1]. I'm don't remember if there is a similar problem and/or fix on Windows/Mac.

For what it's worth, I've found Hangouts to be the better consumer communications tools. I use other software like Signal and Whatsapp but Hangouts works better between devices. It also makes moving to a voice/video call easy for my less-technically-inclined family members. This is especially true when you want to have a call with multiple users, want to switch for your phone to your computer or want to start a screen share. All of these things can be very useful, even with family members.

Of course, there are trade-offs. There isn't E2E encryption. The video takes a lot of battery on many devices. You never know what's going to happen to the service in the future. What you discuss is being recorded and probably used to target ads.

[1] https://askubuntu.com/questions/771408/separate-icons-for-ch...

I still have SMS tied to Hangouts. I moved my phone number to Google Voice when I left the US years ago and kept it on there when I moved back. It's been migrated to hangouts, which is pretty much total garbage now.

I want to migrate my phone number to another service, but I also want to get off Android entirely at some point and want to find a service with a public API so I can eventually write Plasma Apps or a Matrix bridge. Are there any good VoIP providers I can pay for monthly that fit that bill?

Duo is their future replacement and works fine on the desktop.

Duo is about video calling specifically, no? Hangouts is a generic IM client.

I'm on Google Fi, and one major feature of Fi is that it lets you receive texts and calls to your phone number on your desktop, and access voicemail there. But it's all done via Hangouts now, and Google has been very vague on what the replacement is going to be going forward.

They have reverted back to Google Voice for this and I'm pretty sure it'll be the replacement.

When I open voice.google.com, as soon as I login, it immediately redirects me to the Google Fi account page. Which does not have any of this functionality.

Works fine for me. Also if you look at the GV Android app it has gotten a lot of recent updates compared to Hangouts, including Dark Mode. Additionally they have added the option to text from it which has newer features than Hangouts.

I believe Google wants to release Hangouts Chat to general consumers and replace Classic Hangouts.

Complaining about Google is a sport these days.

Seriously... let it go people. Google is a business.

>> This is good news, people. Less fragmentation and more open standards. reply

Actually is bad news. PWAs are pretty useless and when I say useless I mean no better than a website. All the web restrictions(i.e cors) apply to PWAs. It's just a "webpage shortcut". The alternative to Chrome apps are really Electron apps not PWAs.

I was using those on an old Chromebook that never received support for Google Play / Android.

VLC was available as a Chrome app, so that filled a need I had.

Off the top of my head, these were the Chrome apps I used:

* VideoStream (allowed casting to Chromecast from filesystem) * PostMan * Internal tools at previous job that used MDNS

None of these applications work as a PWA. All of these moved to Electron instead. Which is heavier and just as non-standard and dependent on Chromium as Chrome Apps.

Postman has become so bloated in the past two years to a degree where I don’t enjoy using it anymore. Anyone know of an alternative that keeps it simple?

I use this thing: https://insomnia.rest/

I've been using Insomnia instead, but it's also Electron I believe.

Wait what? Edge doesn't support ActiveX controls? Why didn't I notice until now?

I smell another round of consulting fees!

Anyone know the status of being able to install PWAs on the desktop?

The reason I use chrome apps is to have "Gmail" as an application on my desktop so I can alt-tab to it, put it on my dock, etc and treat it as a normal app instead of a tab.

The new MS Edge supports this.

"add to desktop" option has been available for a couple of years now I think.

In Chrome, open the page you want, then on the Chrome menu select More Tools / Create Shortcut...

Give it a name and check "Open as window". Now you have a shortcut you can use like any other application shortcut.

(I've only tried this on Windows and Linux, but it should work on macOS too.)

If you are a Windows or Mac user, third-party apps like Kiwi for Gmail support this functionality (plus support multiple accounts.)

Just make a simple bash script that goes:

open -n /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app --args --app="https://gmail.com"

Add shortcuts to that.

The problem is the Google Brand approach of replacing a used consumer product with a backwards incompatible replacement and forcing the expense/risk of a port onto the end-user as if they have the same resources as Google does.

There will be a lot of cases where this approach is reasonable. But because Google has built a strong reputation of constantly doing it, each event will be a new outrage causing more and more churn. You reap what you sow and all that.

The end of support for Chrome Apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux is June of this year, unless you have paid Enterprise/Education support.

Postman used to be available as a Chrome app but when this was announced they released it as an Electron app instead.

This is very good news unless you bought a Chrome app (say, a game), and you won't be able to use it anymore.

people supporting enterprise. enterprise software is bad to begin with and often has long shelf lives. ActiveX, old java, flash et al are all still flourishing at a large corp near you

So sadly true. Why does my company's spam filter require Flash in order to view a list of messages that were flagged? That's insane.

training sites(internal/external) will be using flash/java for a long long time

besides Chrome Remote Desktop i cannot think about any other useful Chrome app.

There were SSH and RDP (windows RDP protocol) apps when I used a chromebook that were pretty decent (getting the private key in the SSH client on the chromebook was, well, interesting).

Not sure of others.

As often, the top HN comment is an answer to comments that very few people made. Almost nobody complains here, and even the article states that Chrome Apps weren't widely used.

The top comment when the GP comment was posted was the thread starting with "Typical Google move ... now I suppose my Chromebook will be soon a useless brick."

(Disclosure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)

Any comment can be the top comment because the time decay factor dominates until there is a comment that amassed a certain amount of upvotes.

It's 5 hours old now, so the time decay factor is insignificant, and it's still the second highest comment.

So it's not accurate to say that no one is complaining about this, or that the response was not to opinions that are actually held.

This is not accurate in this case and feels like a response that is dismissive of but does not actually address the points made by the person you're responding to.

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