> Do consumers actually want it? This feels like developer projections.
Asking whether consumers want any developer API they clearly don't know exists is always tricky as is going to be a "want" by proxy. First and foremost, there's cost. Developers will pass on FCM service costs in app pricing which is clearly bad for consumers. Service choice encourages price competitiveness. But beyond that, in this case, I would also say that consumers installing a secure messaging client or non-Google email client likely don't want Google collecting metadata on all of their secure messages (& potentially actual data on their plaintext messages - regional legal compliance depending).
> For years we heard that mobile web apps were almost there but for the laggard Apple
Both Google and Apple each have their primary focus areas when it comes to marketing & propaganda - for Apple, its privacy (the justification for their walled gardens); for Google, they're pushing the web forward.
Neither are true. The reality Google have always been behind what's actually needed in implementing true PWAs (despite inventing the term) - calling out Apple was a distraction tactic. Google will only ever push PWAs to the point that they don't interfere with their adjacent revenue priorities. Which is often.
> The new IE?
Nothing new about it. Chrome has been the new IE almost since inception. Here's an entertaining sendup from 13 years ago, just 3 years after its inception - the parallel to Chrome was already obvious enough at the time to not even require mention: https://brucelawson.co.uk/2010/in-praise-of-ie6/
Asking whether consumers want any developer API they clearly don't know exists is always tricky as is going to be a "want" by proxy. First and foremost, there's cost. Developers will pass on FCM service costs in app pricing which is clearly bad for consumers. Service choice encourages price competitiveness. But beyond that, in this case, I would also say that consumers installing a secure messaging client or non-Google email client likely don't want Google collecting metadata on all of their secure messages (& potentially actual data on their plaintext messages - regional legal compliance depending).
> For years we heard that mobile web apps were almost there but for the laggard Apple
Both Google and Apple each have their primary focus areas when it comes to marketing & propaganda - for Apple, its privacy (the justification for their walled gardens); for Google, they're pushing the web forward.
Neither are true. The reality Google have always been behind what's actually needed in implementing true PWAs (despite inventing the term) - calling out Apple was a distraction tactic. Google will only ever push PWAs to the point that they don't interfere with their adjacent revenue priorities. Which is often.
> The new IE?
Nothing new about it. Chrome has been the new IE almost since inception. Here's an entertaining sendup from 13 years ago, just 3 years after its inception - the parallel to Chrome was already obvious enough at the time to not even require mention: https://brucelawson.co.uk/2010/in-praise-of-ie6/