[leetnewb]

Yes and no. The web may exist, but there is a viable digital alternative to it today, which didn't exist before Chrome - the mobile and app ecosystem. Virtually everybody who uses the web also uses mobile apps, but there are people who only ever use Android or iOS on a handheld device. It is also possible that in losing Chrome, Google will neglect its web properties and focus exclusively on access to services through mobile apps.

[jdub]

(I don't think your analysis makes sense, but...) Hey, if Google loses its advertising cash cow and vacates the web for apps, that'll really open up the web search market too! Great news!

[Talinx]

In the broadest sense Android and IOS are similar to browsers: All are platforms that execute code given in a certain format and have APIs for interacting with the device.

(The browser is different in that it doesn't need a separate download to acquire the code and makes partial code downloads easy. And from search to opening an app is a single click and very quick.)

[leetnewb]

Just thinking through this now, but the ease of authoring content on the web started very early on, whereas publishing new mobile apps on the dominant platforms is highly technical and exclusionary many years in.

Web - available in 1993, content authoring/hosting become available through blogger, wordpress, etc, in about 7-10 years. Authoring tools Frontpage and ColdFusion were available in 1995, Netscape Composer in 1997. In other words, one could build a basic website with a bare minimum of technical knowledge with the help of widely available tools within 5 years of the web becoming available (it would take many more years for the web to become pervasive).

Mobile - It has been 17 years since the iphone was launched, 19 years since Google acquired Android. To my knowledge, there are no easy ways for a non-technical person to author a basic app, let alone one that runs on both platforms.

[pjmlp]

Likewise we used the Internet before someone CERN came up with HTML render application.