Google is in a position to provide a large portion of my eco-system because their services are world class and I’m happy to use them.

But oh boy… does Google have an issue with the desktop.

There is a balancing act that is to be achieved through experimenting and innovating with strange new concepts that make you a market leader versus throwing away the baby with the bathwater and making your day-to-day life worse for your user-base (see Samsung introducing the first Phablet with the Note vs Apple removing their first headphone jack).

Google’s bet in this space is the dominance of Android, followed by the death of non-mobile computing. There is a debate to be had here about the future of traditional computers but one thing is currently true — this future does not yet exist.

As much as a company like Apple would love to have the iPad Pro be your only device for productivity, this is just not a practical solution for the vast majority of working individuals today. The same is true for the Chromebook.

And it’s in this space that Google has it’s biggest issue, if it needs to exist on desktop, let’s do it through our biggest and most popular desktop app, Chrome.

Google has refused, time and time again, to embrace native apps on both MacOS and Windows because it believes it already has it’s own space on your native operating system for their services, with PWAs, Chrome apps and Chrome extensions that play better into their own ecosystem and builds strength in their own portfolio.

However, this does not reflect the real world needs of their users and that’s the problem: Native apps are better. Not Electron based frames, not hacky shortcuts to a web frame and not janky chrome support for some native features “kinda”, Native applications. Why?

Performance

Performance is the first and obvious one. Google itself is responsible for a handful of projects to improve how responsive and smooth, presentable and polished it’s own OS Android performs yet rarely is the experience the same on desktop with web apps.

Battery Life Optimisation

This also extend to battery life, something that is hindered without the tools for developers to create good optimisation — which in a world where laptops are one of the most common PC experiences are found is not a fantastic place to be.

Notification Support

Notifications are another modern feature that most people can’t live without. Hell, there is an entire hardware market of wearables dedicated to streamline notifications for the user — they are that important. Chrome notifications are not the same thing and don’t hold a candle to proper support, not just because of the confusing and strange UX you present yourself to the user handling two sets of notifications on the same device but how you limit the functionality these notifications have: from recognising when your device is set to Do Not Disturb mode to having these notifications support quick replies, appropriate thumbnails and even displaying in other parts of the OS like the lock screen.

Keyboard Shortcut Support

Keyboard Shortcuts are supported in the PWA environment but is limited and typically requires focus to be on the tab itself. Try hitting that pause media key while enjoy Google Play Music when a co worker approaches you while you are head first in a document.

So what then?

Progressive Web Apps hold a lot of the potential to solve these problems but will not necessarily solve them in such a way that provide a great consistent user experience.

What this ultimately leads to is a situation where I can’t use Allo because my personal messages might show up during my do not disturb meetings during a screen cast, I can’t skip to my next track without interrupting my work flow with Google Music, I can never expect to find my Google Photos library from within Lightroom and I can’t automatically throw an email into “Done” from a notification on my notifications bar.

A lot of these aren’t game breaking situations in unto themselves, but together it leads to enough friction in these services that my day to day isn’t as smooth as it could be which has a pretty dramatic impact on the products I pick to use. Spotify has replaced Google Play Music because the native application was non-existent and a tab wasn’t good enough because of the importance of media keys and I can not yet remove Hangouts from my library because there are too many people that can’t rely on Allo.

Another result of this is that there are a plethora of developers out there who face the same frustrations so make third party open-sourced solutions for the kind of problems I’ve described, which is fantastic. But from Google’s perspective, these are hacks and do not reflect the potential these products have — but will inevitably be the way a lot of users (and very likely the tech savvy and influencers users too) use these products day to day and influence their affections toward them.

Don’t get me started about some products like Duo, that don’t even have a web app, so that isn’t even an option to call my folks back home.

Google, between you and I: I get it, I know what it’s like to build software shaped by the constraints of third party software and environments that impact the quality of your work and I know the kind of flexibility and power that comes with working inside of your own space. But the vast majority of your users still exist on a desktop, even if they spend a lot of it in your browser, and your experiences should be built around their needs. Until you do, you run the risk of losing a lot of your great products to competitors that understand this.