
The Future of the Web According to Google - cpeterso
https://divshot.com/blog/opinion/the-future-of-the-web-according-to-google/
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mattgreenrocks
I'm not very excited.

It seems like industry is perpetually locked in a death-spiral of creating the
most "native-like" meta-platform that tries to mimic whatever proprietary
platform is currently big. Eventually, another proprietary platform emerges
and captures mindshare, and the nerds get angry at the proprietary-ness and
start a new meta-platform emerges with the same promises of "eventually it
will great." Due to idealism and politics, the meta-platform attracts a huge
amount of smart devs who ultimately are trying to replicate something that
people already have.

I'm sorry to sound grumpy, it just seems like everything runs in circles and
nobody seems to care or notice. Maybe tech is much better when it's applied to
tough domains.

~~~
mbleigh
It is circular, but that's actually a _good_ thing. It just means that large
open platforms (like the web) eventually catch up to proprietary systems.

It's a democratizing force. Something that two years ago took an experienced
team of professional developers may today take a single novice developer
reading a simple tutorial.

Both in the web and in native there will be people pushing the limits of
what's possible, but what's exciting is when fringe technologies hit the
mainstream and become available for everyone. IMHO, at least (author of the
post here).

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pcwalton
> We all know that animating transform and opacity goes smoothly, and
> everything else goes terribly. Google thinks that's a bummer and wants to
> fix it. However, they warn that the rendering changes required are so
> fundamental that it may be difficult for other vendors to match. Expect that
> to play out over a few years.

I'd be interested to know what those changes are. From what I can tell, you
want off-main-thread layout because a lot of these properties require layout.
But Google rejected off-main-thread layout as "not helpful". Perhaps they're
referring to display lists ("Blueprints"), which can indeed be helpful, but
Gecko already has them… (Granted, display list building in Gecko is not
incremental yet, but that does not require "fundamental" rearchitecting.)

~~~
mbleigh
The answer will be in the videos somewhere. If I recall it was primarily
discussed during the Day 2 performance panel, maybe give that a watch.

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bobajeff
Web app distribution and discoverability are things not addressed in the
current web app manifest standard. Mozilla has a API that allows sites to
trigger an install with using a navigator.Apps.install() function but I
believe browser vendors are concerned about users being bugged by sites that
would missuse it. Many websites would ask to be installed even content only
sites.

I believe Google wants to move from the curated app store model with reviews
and ratings to a search results model algorithmically ranked apps. So making a
web apps store or adding web apps to the play store doesn't work with their
future plans.

~~~
hayksaakian
Coincidently websites already bother you to install their apps if you use a
mobile device to browse the web.

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ilaksh
I think for a mobile app, most or at least many users want to install it. Here
is a question I asked four years ago which I believe is quite
relevant:[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119833/does-h...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119833/does-
html5-have-a-feature-that-enables-a-user-to-add-an-icon-to-the-apps-screen)

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Houshalter
I'm still upset they removed third party extensions.

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messydoge
I don't see what the big deal is here. The web is the end all be all of the
future. The more people that wake up and realize that, the better.

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acheron
If you want Google's vision of the future, imagine ads stamping on a human
face -- forever.

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sparkzilla
While they are worried about performance their core business is increasingly
exposed: [http://newslines.org/blog/googles-black-
hole/](http://newslines.org/blog/googles-black-hole/)

~~~
hahainternet
This article is just terrible. Their argument is that Google is not a perfect
judge of correct information and does not instantly return all relevant facts.

No shit. In fact despite the negative tone of the article, when I googled "who
is ariana grande?", their explicit question, Google returns a Knowledge Graph
box from IMDB. A relatively authoritative source, telling me precisely the
information I would have expected.

