Google Play Store Now Open for Progressive Web Apps
One of the wonderful things about a PWA is that it is so freeing (no app store gods to appease for approval etc etc). I'm a little afraid that putting PWAs in an app store may actually reduce the flexibility they offer by restricting what PWAs can and can't do. Then again, an app store may be a necessary to allow PWAs to diffuse into mainstream usage.<p>Personally, I am looking forward to the day PWAs are considered on par with native apps by the general populace. I think we're getting there in terms of functionality and flexibility - I run <a href="https://usebx.com/app" rel="nofollow">https://usebx.com/app</a> which is a PWA, and my users are pretty happy with the functionality it delivers on all platforms. It also helped me launch with a smaller budget, since it's a single code base that runs on desktop, mobile or tablet.<p>The one thing I will add is that building a high-quality, performant PWA is significantly harder than building a native app - why? because you <i>really</i> need to understand the workings of modern browsers to squeeze native like performance, and unfortunately, in my experience, very few web developers have that depth of understanding. I have been building web apps for 20 years (I started young), but when I decided to build Bx as a PWA, I had to learn a lot to achieve the quality I desired.