Google: Are app stores going the way of the dinosaur? Maybe

May 27, 2009 | Anthony Ha | Comments |

Google executives are pushing developers to create applications for the web, saying the Web has won, and suggesting that building applications for the desktop may no longer necessary. Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra,  speaking at Google’s  “I/O conference” in San Francisco declared, “The web has won.” Developing “native” applications that run on computer desktops or other devices will eventually be superseded by more lighter and dynamic apps that run in the web browser, he implied.

But what about Apple’s App Store, which recently crossed the 1 billion download threshold, a reporter asked this morning at the briefing? Isn’t that a sign that apps that run on your phone still have a future?

Well, maybe. Gundotra didn’t criticize the App Store’s model directly (after all, Android has an Android Market for native apps too), but he said legacy systems coexist with new models for a while before they’re replaced — for example, Microsoft’s Windows and DOS operating systems coexisted for a while before everyone switched to Windows. Still, Gundotra noted that the Gmail application which runs in the iPhone’s browser, rather than being downloaded as an application, has seen “crazy user adoption.” He also said the iPhone does a good job of balancing the best of both worlds, because if a user adds a bookmark for a website or web application in the iPhone homescreen, it looks exactly like an app downloaded form the App Store.

Later, answering a related question about whether web applications will ever completely replace desktop apps, Gundotra said, “I don’t know.”

[photo:flickr/Mykl Roventine]

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Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • I 100% agree with Vic here. I've always thought that one day separate apps, and apps stores for that matter, would concede victory to the web. If you look at the specs for HTML 5, alot of what makes third party apps special now will be supported. Palm is even pushing for accelerometer support!

    That said, that'll be many years into the future. And the mobile web won't really be a huge success until we all adapt our 'desktop' web material for smaller screens. I think the app store model will be a multi-billion dollar/year model for quite a few years to come, but in my opinion, the web will eventually win.
  • Agreed.
  • Ryan
    Well, this prediction is in-line with Google's own interests. After all, more native apps means less opportunity for google ads on mobile.
  • Oh come on. Native applications will never disappear.

    Compute heavy applications that push the envelope of hardware design will always be written natively. Better games will be pushed out natively on the next pocket device with a quantum leap in screen res and processing power. Just as more ambitious scientific applications are being written right now on the current desktop revolution in massively parallel architecture. Talking about a final universal platform implies there will be an end to this boundary pushing, an end to this computer-engineering progress. It sounds like a Victorian Englishman twirling his curly mustachios harping about the coming end of science.

    The web browser as a universal platform is just another platform battle. The best outcome is a period of standardization, and yes we might see one of those. Roll on web apps.
  • Peter Antypas
    Native apps will disappear when every peak, valley and waterway on Earth is covered with broadband wireless signal. In other words, never.
  • For mobile apps, writing a web app instead of native apps has huge advantages, no update nightmares, no need to code in (very) different platforms, no need to wait for months for your app to get approved, no need to change your app every time a platform updates. We chose to go with a web solution for our application and been very happy so far.

    The only advantage of native apps (i am excluding games here) is access to hardware such as the GPS etc. HTML5 comes very handy with geolocation support, but i wish there was more, like support for notifications.

    Mobile apps are , by nature, constrained. Moving them to the browser has huge advantages for the developer with little loss on user experience.