Why should there be less friction to go to a web page rather than install a game?
Perhaps there shouldn't be as much friction to install a game as going to a web page, but you can't deny that installing a game is currently not nearly as streamlined and easy as clicking a link. Even though it could be, or even should be. The main issue is that you have to wait to install the full game. A WebGL game would instead just download the minimum required to play the first level, and get you started playing the game ASAP.
The other thing though about a game being tied to a link is that it becomes a part of the web. Others will link directly to the actual game, rather than a page that lets you download/install the game natively. This ease of sharing is what makes it really powerful to have an in-browser game. The web is simply the ultimate form of distribution. It also seems less invasive compared to installing - you are not making any changes to your computer. Just close the web page, and it's gone (ignoring cookies/cached files). Whereas a native game will create all sorts of shortcuts and basically embed itself into your system. This is more of a perception problem with "installing" in the eyes of the average consumer.
I agree. But currently WebGL doesn't exist (in practice) either.
And nothing you said has anything to do with WebGL. See android market where you can install apps from a web page. See Origin, launch games from the browser. Installing, running an native game doesn't have to be more than answering "yes" to the question "do you want to play this game?". And I have a hard time seeing how it should be harder to uninstall than a game utilizing WebGL and local storage...
Keeping the game sandboxed and basically treating everything that is downloaded as a cache - no problem.
And streaming content to a native-game isn't exactly rocket science either, there just haven't been a need for it when you still have this cumbersome install process that you have today.
Do this and you would get an awesome separation of performance critical low level code and the web resulting in a vastly reduced attack vector (basically going from push to pull). As a bonus you would get much better performance.
Perhaps there shouldn't be as much friction to install a game as going to a web page, but you can't deny that installing a game is currently not nearly as streamlined and easy as clicking a link. Even though it could be, or even should be. The main issue is that you have to wait to install the full game. A WebGL game would instead just download the minimum required to play the first level, and get you started playing the game ASAP.
The other thing though about a game being tied to a link is that it becomes a part of the web. Others will link directly to the actual game, rather than a page that lets you download/install the game natively. This ease of sharing is what makes it really powerful to have an in-browser game. The web is simply the ultimate form of distribution. It also seems less invasive compared to installing - you are not making any changes to your computer. Just close the web page, and it's gone (ignoring cookies/cached files). Whereas a native game will create all sorts of shortcuts and basically embed itself into your system. This is more of a perception problem with "installing" in the eyes of the average consumer.