Discussion of PWA and powerful web applications work

[Vincent Scheib]

Regarding the concept of PWA that came up on the BackgroundFetch thread below.. (thanks Rick for pointing me to this thread and sharing some thoughts, which I expand on here), I'd like to address it but also BCC blink-dev and direct conversation to the pwa-dev and fugu-dev email groups as better venues.

On Thu, Nov 27, 2025 at 7:31 AM Jxck Jxck <block.rxc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Were they also hoping to remove other PWA features if they had few users? Wouldn’t that imply that the very concept of "PWA" itself has failed?

I manage Google teams continuing to invest in web applications (PWA, installable, any kind you like). Example: new Navigation management provides substantial user benefits for 'singleton' apps such as chat apps. We see a steady increase in users installing web apps over recent years. The recent Web Apps Working Group TPAC sessions were lively with participation from all major browsers. I'm excited that Microsoft is bringing the Install API to an origin trial. 

There was a surge of web application capabilities work 10 years ago, and that area has transitioned to a steady incremental investment area. The major capabilities with broad impact have largely been covered. [As Rick pointed out] Our new major platform investments such as on-device AI are part of the same theme of ensuring computing's most powerful and important capabilities are available on the web platform.

Those interested in PWA or powerful web application capabilities I encourage to discuss on 

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/pwa-dev

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/fugu-dev