Chrome Web Apps, Is Google Gearing Up For Chrome OS?

Today, Google launched and added a new feature, Web Apps to it’s Chrome web browser. So what are these Web apps all about? I shall get to that. But first, what the hell are these Web Apps and how do I get them? That’s a very good question. These Web Apps seem to essentially be sexy looking “links” located in your tab bar, to all your favorite Google services. Google will soon be introducing a “Web App store” (sounds kinda familiar, doesn’t it) where Web Apps can be purchased. After clicking on this Web App link, which appears to be a favicon type icon, you are directed to that particular service. If you want to try out these Web Apps for yourself, I have outlined some directions below.

  1. Update/Download/Install the newest version of Google Chrome (6.0.472.0) Here.
  2. Navigate to Extensions >> switch into developer mode >> and click “unpack extensions”.
  3. Navigate to: %APPDATA%/local/Google/Chrome/Application/6.0.472.0/Resources on Windows, Linux users see below.
  4. Load those extensions.
  5. Enjoy.

Of course I wouldn’t forget Linux, the extensions can be found in: ~/.config/google-chrome/Default

Macs do not matter, so I will not bother to post those instructions here.

After excitedly loading these extensions, I found myself wondering: Whats the difference between using these “Web Apps” or navigating to the service/page itself. Well, sexy favicons aside, there doesn’t appear to be one. However, I think these Web Apps might just be the beginning of something very important. If you search way back in the archives you will stumble upon this post. I always said that the Google Chrome OS, will extensively use an “App” system, in which everything is an App. These Web Apps, are the beginning of the Chrome OS “App system”, or at least that’s my bet anyway. I will agree that these Apps seem pretty useless right now, but they might come back later, to become an essential part of Google’s Chrome OS, but that’s just my opinion.

On a totally unrelated side note, I hate the new version of the Chrome Browser. While it still feels like you are not actually using a browser, the rest of the visuals have gone downhill. I think the new menu shading really cheapens the browser and brings down the whole user experience.