It's not, but by making it an App, it forces a user to remember to install it (good mindshare), it takes up space on the homepage (good, free advertising), it gets to track your device id and track you (or, partially track you on iOS), it gets to spam your notification bar with more free advertisements, it gets to hook into your Google Pay / Apple Pay cards automatically, and it forever gets to poll your exact GPS position, while also having easier access to various bluetooth stack stuff (tracking beacons, onboarding devices, etc)
Yes, ~80% of that can be done on the web too, but the app gives you effectively permanent-cookies and permanent-permissions, and people have more practice doing it there.
I don't like it at all, but I get why lots of companies write a webapp, and then shove it into a native app wrapper (whether via React Native, Cordova, Turbo Native, or equivilant). The benefits of the app wrapper and app store, outweigh the drawbacks, for many businesses.
Yes it can, because you install it once and it's right there on your home screen, very easy to get to. The friction of typing the website name or dealing with the inherent clunkiness of a mobile site vs the app cannot be understated and it is part of why brands create apps.
Plus, don't forget the notifications they can send, for deals and promotions. That is also why I have several apps for brands installed, because I know I already want to use their products, so the free discount works in my favor. I have the willpower to resist impulsive purchases, personally speaking, but many don't. When a notification pops up announcing "50% off on this sandwich," it's tempting for people who hadn't planned to spend at all that day. They might think they're saving money by spending less than full price, not realizing that spending anything at all is more than they intended. Brands understand this psychology and optimize their strategies accordingly, targeting those who are likely to be swayed into spending when they receive a compelling offer. It is no different than offering flash sales and deals, which work extremely well in the world of marketing.
Other
Advertising ID Permission run foreground service control vibration run at startup have full network access use biometric hardware view network connections change network connectivity prevent phone from sleeping Play Install Referrer API view Wi-Fi connections use fingerprint hardware show notifications receive data from Internet
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Vibration_A...
Isn’t using the biometric API still controlled by a secure place on the device where all it gives you back is - did you pass the biometric check?
Advertising tracking is still easier on the web.
The rest of the permissions says a lot about Android and even so.
If PWAs were good enough on Android and it was just mean old Apple holding them back they should be pervasive for the 80% of the population that uses Android
They even block you from using their app if you didn't get it from the play store. I don't know any other app that even checks for that.
Clearly it's just a vehicle for data collection and nothing else
Yes, their UX is beyond good. Webapps, CLI, order from some vehicle dashboards, Uber-like delivery meet point GPS capture,
but it's pretty important to note that they filed paperwork and patented a pizza tracking progress bar, keeping other pizzerias and apps from utilizing what's essentially the "Slide to Unlock" of any Internet-based food ordering.
It made perfect business sense, even if just to keep someone else from locking them out of the feature...but..had to mention how broken things are, that other pizza chains or stores couldn't/can't/won't offer proper modern order life cycle tracking due to this.
To me mobile icons all look the same and it is highly stressful to scroll through pages of them. Even Apple is terrible if you just stop and think. Photos are just a meaningless pinwheel, the Settings are hidden behind a movie poster for The Golden Compass, if I had a Hacker News app it would get confused with all the other apps that have an H or N or Y for their icon or that are colored orange. As it is I can type “n” on my iPad and… it is auto suggested. I type “1” and it suggests my web based RSS reader - why are brands shooting themselves in the foot by getting lost in a maze of twisty icons that all look alike?
What I don’t understand is that I can frequently ‘grok’ icons on my desktop although I hardly ever use them (so much easier to hit the windows button and type 2 or 3 letters and hit enter). Steam will install icons for games I download an instantly I know that’s Atelier Sophie. I use Microsoft’s RDP client for iPad all the time and think it is great but the icon is completely meaningless, it is just some burnt umber wedges that look like the logo of a multimodal shipping company from the 1970s.
Authenticator apps are a great example, I don't use them often enough to pin to home and all are identically named and have generic icons.
Another pain point is the overuse of material design with similar color schemes (it's not just google apps that use this). Half the app list become lost in a sea of red, blue, green and yellow fragments.
(And for what it is worth, the (email) inbox on my iphone shows 129,523 message unread)
How will they sniff which smart devices are on their customers' networks, so they can make the next round of unnecessarily frictionless apps, for the next round of devices?