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Prediction:

The much-anticipated convergence of Android and Chrome is near. These new Chrome apps are the programming model for the upcoming native Android webapps

The next milestone I expect to see is V8 added alongside Dalvik as a first-class runtime for Android. Maybe in Android KitKat?

As an Android dev I can tell you this isn't happening in the next 5 years. They may add Chrome apps to Android, but it will be a niche option that won't be used by anybody.

My utopic wish is a new open platform that will combine strengths of the web and of operating systems (Windows, Android):

- Web: Great for documents, which it was originally designed for. Automatic updates. No installation. You can "fork" an app / document by middle clicking a link.

- Operating systems: Great for apps. Speed. More low level access to the hardware. Much richer platform than the web (window mnagment, human interface guidelines, ...).

I really hope so. Android's support for webapps has been dismal, which is very surprising given that Google pushes them so hard elsewhere.
Why? I'd rather see them push Android as a increasingly more mature OS alternative to Windows. And you'll be able to run Chrome on Android anyway.

What exactly are you expecting to get from the mythical "ChromeOS and Android merger", when you already have Chrome for Android?

The only major things I see ChromeOS has over Chrome for Android is the security model, which will be impossible in Android, since you need native apps, too, while ChromeOS will only ever work with "web apps". Changing that could mean its security model will suffer.

And the second one is the upgrade process, for all Chromebooks, coming straight from Google, every few weeks. That's ideal, but I doubt we'll see anything like that for Android even this decade.

> The next milestone I expect to see is V8 added alongside Dalvik as a first-class runtime for Android. Maybe in Android KitKat?

Something needs to change, since the Oracle lawsuit, Java/Dalvik features have been frozen without any new update being officially communicated.

according to theverge, that's exactly the plan: http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/5/4696618/google-chrome-apps-...

although in that article, they also claim chrome apps are going to come to iOS including availablity in the iOS app store, which sounds really really unlikely.

Prediction: Chrome (the browser) is slowly taking over your OS.

P.S. while trying to add this new type of app, I was tricked into signing into my chrome account, which I had managed to avoid all this time.

It will be interesting to see where the Dart VM fits into this.
I don't know if the convergence will happen, but they certainly need to fix WebView in Android to at least allow migration. It's still using the old Android Browser and is severely outdated (no WebSockets, etc).

My guess is that Chrome Packaged apps will be the replacement for WebViews on Android.

Anyone who wants a stop gap though, should check this out: https://github.com/pwnall/chromeview

This would be a strange step considering that Google spent so much time, energy and money to convince developers to use a very specific design language and application flow to give users a unified experience of Android across many apps.

If they would do this we'd have a new set of apps that behaved and felt very differently which would probably cause a lot of confusion among users.

What I could imagine is some kind of framework that makes it easier to share data and state between a Chrome app on the desktop and Android apps on mobile.

That actually makes a lot of sense given their Android KitKat tagline which is "It's our goal with Android KitKat to make an amazing Android experience available for everybody." Google has used Play Services to update Android in the background. Since they also own Chrome, the more apps that live within Chrome the more apps are up to date and out of reach of other companies who would use Android for them, notably Amazon, Samsung and Facebook
What about Dart? It might play a role here, it's not likely to go far outside the Google ecosystem and I'm not convinced Google ever thought otherwise.
Maybe Dalvik will compile down to run on top of ChromeOS.
One thing that I think is really cool about Chrome Apps is that you can write USB drivers in Javascript that will run on any platform that runs Chrome or Chromium. This means that if you want to make a hardware device that syncs with the cloud, all you have to do is write what is essentially a web app, and anyone with Windows, OS X, Linux, or Chrome OS can use your thing.

I'm personally working on a Chrome SDR app for the Funcube Dongle, so you can just install an app from the Web Store, plug the thing in, and start listening to any radio transmission from .5MHz to 2GHz. (The only snag is that the HTML5 audio API doesn't give you 192kHz sound samples, so I think I'm going to have to read them directly via USB. Fun.)

The documentation says chrome.usb only works on Chrome OS, are you sure it works in the actual browser?

Last time I looked into this stuff it's nontrivial to let arbitrary user-mode applications manipulate arbitrary USB devices on Windows, so I'd be impressed if they got it working in a secure fashion and deployed it to the open web.

yeah, same here, I'm writing a CNC controller, the UI is a google chrome packaged app talking on USB.

it's a pain to use, with all the restriction, the buggy API (it doesn't crash, it just hangs, you can't investigate) and the browser bugs (I have to use a canary for development, I'm really far from a release).

They do work in the browser, but also do have some issues in Windows (especially XP). I provided bug information and offered any assistance possible, but got nowhere. We ended up rolling with a Qt WebView wrapper and I rewrote the USB calls. Haven't had any issues since.
Firefox OS is working on the same feature (google 'WebUSB')
> if you want to make a hardware device that syncs with the cloud

...you can equip that device with one of the many standard, open protocols already in ubiquitous use.

Browser-based hardware drivers in JavaScript? Seriously?

"Chrome-specific code that means they won’t be able to run on other web browsers" This sounds vaguely familiar...
Familiar to what?

If Google waits for other browsers to offer the APIs it needs, Chrome apps won't happen for a long, long time.

Firefox has made stubs for web apps that can be launched directly from the desktop since Firefox 16 (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Apps/WebRT). I guess the difference here is more (Chrome-specific) APIs and better support for running offline?
So, really, there's only two new features here:

- Launch chrome apps directly from the desktop - Run chrome apps with out any of the browser toolbars

Everything else is already possible in a regular chrome app.. Right?

It would be nice if the apps they recommended (wunderlist) actually worked. I have attempted 5 times to "sign up" for the wunderlist app, every time I hit the button the app freezes on the load screen. Not once has it made it past. I also have not received one email verifying my attempt to sign up. My first experience with app launcher and one of the apps would be horrible. Better get on the ball if you really wanna change the web in such a dramatic way.
This is, effectively, bringing a ChromeOS-like app interface to Windows (and soon other platforms). The new app launcher looks just like it does on ChromeOS, putting Chrome Web Store apps on an equal footing with native apps started from a Start menu or equivalent.
Chrome/Android.. What about Chrome/Windows. Notice that every new advancement in Chrome squeezes out the need for Windows.

They need to improve the APIs for developers though, a Visual Studio 6 for Chrome platform development, probably the high point in softees history. Really tie together web with more traditional native api development. No-one has cracked that yet.

If I could use the Hangouts extension as an app, I would be so happy. I don't like the implementation of the extension on my Mac.
Our game RAD Soldiers is featured up on the games page: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rad-soldiers/dkiah...

You can cross play with the iOS version, feel free to leave feedback :-)

Brilliant that on win8 it sits in the taskbar, right where every Windows user expects a menu of applications.
I've been hacking on a Chrome App for the past few weeks and have been wondering how to open a tab instead of a new window. That announcement leaves me confused: what's new exactly? Is it even possible that the new stuff has been in the docs for months?
Chrome is a resource hog. I don't want that on my phone, which barely lasts 4 hours idling in my pocket. Thanks but no thanks. On my Mac, Chrome with 20 open tabs is always using most of my memory and CPU.
Sounds like Google has decided to try to compete directly with Pokki (https://www.pokki.com).
I was hoping this was away to wrap a webpage in chrome and distribute that, but it seems to require me to distribute it through there webstore. Given that they don't have a default monopoly on selling things over the web (unlike, say Android, where they have most of the users), why would I want to do that?

The technology is certainly interesting, if a bit limiting.

this will be a UX nightmare. windows 8 already has desktop, metro interface, and now CHROME APPS?!?
Its really awesome to see Google taking the web seriously by giving it more access to hardware, but it would be nice with some indication of where these APIs are headed.

Are they "forking off the web" or just experimenting before standardising?

How do I get my app to be in "for your desktop" category? It's not on the developer page of my app. It's a media player app that matches most of the requirements of the new apps.
Google says that "packaged apps are written in HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS" but the first one they show, Pixlr Touch Up, is actually written in Flash. New breed, eh?
At first i was excited that finally I can cmd-tab into a chrome app. Turns out it doesn't. I don't really get how this is so useful.
Are these apps supposed to be written in pure JS or are they PNaCl (Portable Native Client -- basically LLVM bytecode)?
The new breed of chrome apps has a lot of flaws after I tried to convert my app over:

-Previous installed chrome app matches the HTML5 api, the new chrome apps has a lot of restriction where you have to totally rewrite you code in terms of storage. i.e. Chrome.storage instead of localStorage; All chrome storage is async.

-The new window format for apps are a huge UI flaw. You can not open an Chrome app in a tab anymore. Basically, you now have an extra window whenever you open a chrome app. This is very annoying since when you click on the existing window the app is hidden in the back, you have to flip through your windows on the mac to find the app you just opened again.

-Javascript execution permissions are very strict, and no longer follows that of a normal webpage.

The result is, you can no longer build an HTML5 app and prepare it for the chrome store, you have to specifically change the code to package it. This makes it less ubiquitous and creates extra work for developers.

Chrome is now a serious security risk for me. it's just waiting to happen.

for now on, it will be used as the remote debugger for android browsers (until we have something native). just like i have a spare mac for running xcode for the same reason.

firefox serves me well. and will not make me worry much.