Third class citizen on iOS? Safari does have the fast JIT javascript runtime, but native apps don't - so it's somehow not good for the open mobile web but good for native apps? I fail to see the logic in that. If you have a pure web-app - which you can pin on your homescreen, you do have the full speed Javascript engine, just look at the financial times app (app.ft.com) for a good example.

Also - 'the mobile web' did not exist before the iPhone popped up. Now you have a blazing-fast mobile webkit used in Android, iOS and on more recent Blackberries, and have a quite decent mobile IE on windows phone. Each generation of mobile OS, the mobile browser performance improves massively, adding more and more features with every generation. But somehow they are blocking 'the open mobile web'?

Also - a browser is not the only 'web application'. You already have mail, RSS readers, calendar apps, twitter clients, ... in whatever form, webapp, native desktop app or mobile apps - they all exist. They're all using 'the open web'. I think inter-operability is more important than "it has to be html5". The open web is in my opinion: open API's and data format. And that is exactly what we have, a large amount of mobile apps are just a native more intelligent client for some web API or content for which a website is also available. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit apps, Kickstarter, ... all have 'native' apps - does that mean it's less open than using a web-browser? No - it's just optimized for mobile use, something that is very hard to do with pure html5. REST/JSON api's have taken over the open web. Native or web-apps are just front-ends for these api's - that's the direction it's moving in.

I don't see the problem really, web-browsing still is one of the killer apps of a mobile device - tablet or phone, and that's something neither Google, Apple, Microsoft, or any other large corporation will ever limit. Yes some apps are rejected for whatever reason, but there is competition to choose from if one of iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Firefox OS or Mobile Ubuntu makes choices in their rejections that conflict with your personal beliefs.

I don't think that's a fair critique, at least not about Google. They are pushing JS with V8 as far as anyone besides maybe Mozilla. They also have made cross-platform Chrome/Android/iOS toolchains and in general promoted the use of apps based on web technologies. It's pretty clear that Google wants web apps to be awesome also, it's just hard.

Google showing results that go directly to an App is an important piece of this whole puzzle: https://developers.google.com/app-indexing/webmasters/

That's a good thing though right? Isn't that how a URI/link should work?

I guess, but they really are just directing traffic to a an app rather than a browser. A subtle difference to sum, but when you take into consideration that that app would have probably been downloaded through their store, it keeps people in the same loop.

I wish firefoxos and available hardware could have the word-of-mouth momentum for friends and family installation that the browser had. I would do this, but alas, its much more difficult to install on a family member's phone than the browser was on their pc.