Google To End Support For Chrome Apps On Windows, Mac, Linux

froggyboy604

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Google has recently announced that they will be ending support for Chrome apps that aren’t run on their Chrome OS platform. This means that soon Windows, Mac, and Linux users won’t be able to use Chrome apps anymore. This won’t happen immediately but Google will be phasing them out slowly.

By the second half of 2017, the Chrome Web Store will no longer display Chrome apps for those operating systems, and by early 2018, users won’t be able to load Chrome apps anymore.

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This is too bad since I like how Chrome Web apps use less screen space because the tabs, address bar, navigation, and other buttons are hidden, so Chrome apps are good for smaller monitor sizes, and devices like netbooks.

I never used Chrome Apps in Windows, Mac, or Linux because I find it more convenient just to use regular programs like LibreOffice, GOM Player, Foobar music player, etc which are already installed on my computer.

I think one more reason that Chrome Apps is being discontinued for PC is that Google does not earn enough money from Chrome Apps compared to online advertising on websites and Android apps.

Most of the Chrome apps and games don't have advertisement compared to a free Google Android app, or a web app on a website where a lot of website earns money from Google Adsense Ads, Embedded YouTube video with Google Adsense ads where content creators share a percentage of their earnings with Google.

Google also probably wants people to use Web apps on the Full version of Chrome, so people get more used to the Chrome's user interface, so they are more likely to switch to Chrome as their main browser instead of using a web app in a Window with just an address bar without an address bar, tabs, extensions, and browser navigation button where they are not having the full Chrome web browser experience.
 
What exactly is Chrome Apps?
 
Shame they are cutting support to some popular systems then.

I agree it is a shame that support will be cut for popular systems. I read on Reddit that some users are upset that the Offline Chrome App for Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Docs app won't work in the near future because of Google decision to discontinue Chrome Apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It does stink to not have offline access to your Gmail, Google Drive files and Docs if you need to access your mail, and files, and don't want to use an E-mail Client like Thunderbird or other file backup services like Dropbox to sync and transfer files, so they are available online and offline when there is no internet connection.

I think some of the Chrome Apps like Evernote have the App hosted on their official website, but you have to use a full web browser to use the website app, and there is usually no offline mode like some Chrome apps.

Google Chromebooks will still be able to run Chrome Apps. Maybe Google is discontinuing Chrome Apps for Windows, Mac, and Linux, so more people will buy a Chromebook to use their Chrome Apps, and won't lose the ability to run them offline instead of using a regular web app which needs an internet connection to visit the website to load the web app which is hosted on the website.
 
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