Google will soon enable support for in-app purchases in Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) on Chrome OS.
Mountain View has long been an advocate of PWAs—unsurprising, really, considering Google is the world’s largest web services company.
What is therefore surprising is how long it’s taken for Google to provide support for in-app purchases in PWAs on Chrome OS. Better late than never and all that, though.
Although Android apps are now supported on many Chromebooks, PWAs feel like a more natural fit for the cloud-oriented platform.
There are still many reasons to develop native apps over PWAs, but Google is gradually making web apps more enticing by removing previous functionality and performance barriers. Google is even blurring the line between native and web apps from a user standpoint.
As of last year, developers can submit PWAs to be listed in the Play Store. Once a user has installed a PWA from the Play Store, it looks and behaves just like any other app.
Chrome OS 89, due to rollout widely next March, will officially support in-app purchases in PWAs using Google’s standard billing system currently implemented for Android apps.
The PWA in-app purchases feature can be enabled early through a flag in Chrome OS 88.
Considering that sales of Chromebooks have soared over the past year – as more workers and pupils work from home – there’s a bigger market than ever to reach with PWAs.
“In the first five weeks of launching our PWA-ified website, the number of people creating videos through the PWA grew 36 percent,” said Julia Enthoven, CEO of Kapwing.
“This growth in usage outpaced overall growth on the website, indicating higher retention among creators who installed the PWA.”
Google is finally giving developers a more standard and built-in way of generating revenue from PWAs on Chrome OS.
