My guess is Google wants a closed web platform eventually. Highly optimized for Chrome websites adhering to Google made standards, hosted on Google servers for optimization and higher ranking in the 95% search engine. Site origins hidden from users so they won't know the difference if it is Bloomberg or Googlberg anymore. Chrome browser itself pushing boundaries of standards and ever changing to keep others in the dust and lagging months/years behind on Google invented things. Proprietary email extensions so that full feature set will work only in gmail to gmail exchanges. Proprietary google docs extensions which will work properly only in Chrome. And so on. This is system will work extremely well when used everywhere and by majority of users, so nobody will want to try alternatives. And all this will be with very nicely done, quiet and non-intrusive Ads, provided by Google of course.

I think the answer is simply that Google is massive and sometimes competes with itself. Android’s Instant Apps, announced a few years ago (seemingly to go nowhere?) seemed like a direct attack on the use case for web sites, but the company tolerated it.

As a whole I think Google wants to chase ubiquity. A PWA will work on laptops, phones, Windows, Mac, Android... an Android app won’t. So they’ll push PWAs.

I too thought of just blaming it on Google's idiosyncrasy, but PWA has stood the test of time with multiple parties (browsers) extending their support.

Perhaps, I'm thinking other way round; May be PWA was supposed to kill traditional web apps and was intended to bring web apps to Playstore/Appstore but it didn't happen(yet).

>Android’s Instant Apps, announced a few years ago (seemingly to go nowhere?) seemed like a direct attack on the use case for web sites, but the company tolerated it.

I think android instant apps are meant for Google Assistant ecosystem, Google Smart Display have it and Fuchsia would have GA; so instant apps might come handy.

PWAs can be bundled up for the Play store: https://medium.com/@firt/google-play-store-now-open-for-prog...

Correct, I meant to say PWA hasn't taken off as much as Google wanted.

They have made it unusually difficult to get it bundled up for the Play store. I mean, it should be as simple as proving ownership and supplying the manifest URL. I think solving the distribution problem would definitely be key to having developers think about it as an alternative to native apps.

Most of Googles revenue comes from Ads. Having their products everywhere takes precedence over a monopoly on Androids which they can't never totally have due to licenses and OEM deals. And there is always the google way of constantly throwing products at the wall, even if some conflict.

I think we're reaching the end of the era of app stores.

Apps often are single purpose information silos. You need an app to do every little things.

My guess is that eventually, we'll have an OS with a different user experience where you tell the system what to do (order pizza) and it will create a UI with all the nearest pizza places. You then choose where you want to order (let's say Dominos), and the system pulls all the informations from Dominos database. You make your selection, you pay, done.

In that way, Dominos doesn't have to spend money on making an app and users don't have to download one either. Win-win.

Google has to play it both ways. They have the Android platform and ChromeOS platform for the client. Android has a pretty toxic reputation in many ways and the OEMs control the experience.

PWAs play into the idea of ChromeOS as a bigger platform. I'd guess that Google politics have more to do with it not being more prominent than anything.

Interestingly Google's Flutter can target Android native but also can compile to a web app with PWA features.