> I feel like chrome apps were actually ahead of their time and very much better than embedding a full browser per app with electron.

> Of course, they were not perfect but IHMO made much more sense than what we have today, at least on a technical standpoint and could have evolved into something truly great.

Killing Chrome Apps isn't about abandoning what they enabled, it's about moving it from Chrome App-specific capabilities to web platform capabilities.

https://developers.chrome.com/apps/migration

https://developers.google.com/web/updates/capabilities

Eventually we will get libchromium{.so,.dll} installed by default in all operating systems so that Electron apps can share the same runtime as your browser.

I.i.r.c. Chrome Apps are compiled binaries specific for Chrome (NaCL), they're more like Flash, Java or Webassembly applications.

Chrome Apps are more like sandoxed Electron apps which do not require the user to install the same runtime every time for each app installed, unlike Electron. No need for NaCL, they can be written in Javascript.

Not NACL. JavaScript/HTML/CSS. But with access to local filesystems, sockets, etc.

Because of that, Google's suggested replacement of Android Apps (won't work everywhere Chrome does) or PWAs/Extensions (both heavily sandboxed) doesn't work.

no not at all.

There are javascript+html+css apps that could use the Chrome API ( https://developer.chrome.com/apps/api_index ) which allow them to do more than regular javascript+html+css web pages.

There is no compilation.

> I.i.r.c. Chrome Apps are compiled binaries specific for Chrome (NaCL),

NaCl was supported in Chrome Apps, but most Chrome Apps are just web apps using the chrome.* APIs, not NaCl.