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by kelnos 1155 days ago
PWAs failed in the marketplace and are essentially dead. Google pushed them because they were already on track for web dominance, and the shift toward native apps was a threat to that. These days Google still wants to control the web (and more or less does), but they also have a healthy app ecosystem, albeit only for Android.

I'm sure it still bugs them to no end that they have zero control over the app experience on iOS, which they possibly could have had more input on had webapps ended up being the dominant way of doing things on mobile.

2 comments

"PWAs are essentially dead"?!? They haven't replaced native apps for sure but I think it's a pretty major stretch to call them done and dusted
From a engineer mind share pov they are. Users don't use them. Engineers do not build them.

They are stillborn and i don't see a way out.

I think the expectation that tech wins & is everywhere in 5 years is murdering useful progress. It's not the climate we are in any more. Success is slow boiling, especially for web standards.

The lack of empathy for how long change takes keeps letting doom & gloomers send good things to the graveyard.

Engineers build them for big corps and ecommerce sites.

The respective users, specially the corporate ones, have no alternative other than using them.

On the contrary, for forms over data they are more than alive.

At work we only target mobile devices via the Web.