
Google is building Chrome apps support for Android and iOS - hackhackhack
http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/12/03/google-building-chrome-apps-support-android-ios-beta-release-coming-soon-january-2014/
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jfoster
Difficult to be certain, but I suspect TNW may have based this off a HN
submission I made yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6838530](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6838530)

This isn't a complaint. I just find it interesting to consider that news
outlets might be watching HN's /newest page closely.

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hamxiaoz
Down the road, do you think will chrome packaged apps support 3rd party dlls?

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gimlids
Just use Flash.

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chroem
Thank god. I'll take anything over the current Android application framework.

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_random_
"hybrid native apps" \- oh, I thought it was something worthy like PNaCl.

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rounak
I don't think Apple would allow this in the App Store. It disallows apps that
have their own apps/widgets.

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abrowne
They're using Apache Cordova (PhoneGap), so they will run under iOS webkit
(Safari w/o JIT) on iOS.

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eonil
R.I.P. Android developers. Google finally decided where to go.

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pjmlp
What was to be expected since they placed Android under ChromeOS steering?

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eonil
Though I am not sure that I understood your intention…

I think Google will eventually kill Android from Android+Chrome stack. Just
like MS did on DOS for Windows. Chrome on Android is just a temporal form, and
there's no reason not to run Chrome directly on the hardware. (why do they
stick to PNaCL which never be adopted by competitors?) Actually Chrome was
born to do that from first. And since they decided to go Chrome, Android is
just an obstacle to interact to hardware from Chrome as an OS.

In my imagination, even on the best scenario, the future of Android is the MS-
DOS on Windows. An emulation layer on top of Chrome OS.

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msoad
Google knows that future of mobile apps are web. Web technologies can get
better and better to some point that it doesn't make sense to build native
apps because it costs too much for most data driven apps.

With Google, Microsoft and Mozilla betting on web, who has a doubt that web
will win?

...oh... do you remember Steve Jobs was suggesting all apps for iPhone should
be web apps? He was way ahead of his time.

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fidotron
No, Google needs the future of mobile apps to be the web, which is very
different.

Unfortunately, while they're doing this they're simultaneously changing the
web into something which removes the very things which allow them to monetise
it successfully today.

A web of WebGL based client apps which just ping servers for JSON objects of a
custom nature will be even more impenetrable to massive data mining than the
current JS infested mess out there, which was one of the many justifiable
criticisms rightly thrown at Java applets back in the late 90s. The
opportunity to rewrite the browser in itself and thus remove the HTML/CSS
entirely will prove far too tempting.

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bad_user
You're exaggerating.

I think WebGL is awesome. In combination with HTML5 audio and video, we can
finally get rid of Flash and Silverlight and Java Applets or whatever crappy
plugin that people have been using to distribute games and audio/video on the
web. This is a good thing. The only reason for why we are seeing less and less
usage of these plugins is because WebGL and the other parts of HTML5 are
finally taking off, in combination with native mobile apps built on non-
standard, often proprietary platforms. These proprietary platforms (e.g. iOS,
Google's Play Services, etc...) are far more dangerous for the open web, than
whatever ends up being standardized in W3C.

Those Chrome apps can and will be built mostly with HTML, CSS and Javascript.
They will for the same reason that many people keep building HTML, CSS and
Javascript today - for all the bitching and moaning about it, it's actually
quite convenient and easy to build something functional and cross-platform and
worry free, plus there's a huge knowledge base built around these
technologies.

On rewriting the browser to have a small core and a UI built on top of web
technologies, I think that will be awesome and from what I've been reading,
Mozilla is already working on a next-gen Firefox that does it.

I'm far more worried about Dart VM or PNaCL, because in order to improve the
web, Google is trying to replace Javascript with their own non-standard
technologies, relying on their big market share to do that (sound familiar?).
Which is why I'm happy that Mozilla exists to bring some balance with Asm.js
and Firefox OS and the like. As proof, Mozilla forced Google's hand to include
Asm.js in their optimization targets and that popular Unreal Engine demo works
quite well right now in Chrome. So we still have healthy competition in the
browser space and good things will come out of it.

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nakedrobot2
I have not for the life of me been able to imagine the purpose of building a
Chrome app. Now I can.... but wait... isn't it just a "lipstick on the pig"
html5 web app?

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niggasbalting
Since 2002 half of everyone who's reached the age of 12 has learned enough
HTML, CSS, Javascript, and can recognize PHP well enough to throw a basic,
buggy website together. Suddenly, a trip to "chrome://extensions/" means these
semi-non-developers can write an app for their Chromebook(or even PC) without
having to install or compile anything, let alone commit themselves to
mastering a programming language.

It shouldn't mean much for large projects, but it does mean companies can hire
less-skilled "programmers" to churn out minimally viable products whether that
be for bootstrapped start-ups or to satisfy the demand from businesses that
want to say "look I have a presence on mobile."

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pkulak
How delightfully elitist and condescending of you.

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niggasbalting
Yeah, I need to work on my tone, because that came across exactly the opposite
of how I intended.

