Google wants to power up the Web with push notifications and home icons

If you're a developer building a new project, do you make a website or an app? There are pros and cons to both. The Web is great for its ease of access. Apps require searching in the app store, checking permissions, downloading, installing, and possibly uninstalling, while the Web is much more frictionless—just type in a URL, and if you don't like it, leave the page. Few users would hesitate to visit a new website the way they would think about installing a new app.

Apps are a lot "stickier" though. While a user may never come back to a website, an app gets to be on the home screen and can pull the user back into the app with notifications. With Chrome 42 for Android, Google wants to bring this same power to the mobile Web and bridge the gap between app and website.

Chrome 42 brings push notifications and "add to home screen" prompts to Web pages to try to bring some of the best features of apps to the Web. We covered some of the basics when Chrome 42 was in beta, but now the feature has hit the stable channel and is rolling out to everyone. We were also able to sit down with Alex Komoroske and Owen Campbell-Moore from the Chrome team to get some insight on how the team views the mobile Web and the rationale for these new features.

Before the launch, the team talked to prominent Web developers, and the reaction to both of these features was more positive than they expected. "Normally with Web platform features, we talk about it and [Web developers] are like 'oh, cool, ok, talk to me in two years once it ships in every browser'" Komoroske told Ars, "but we've seen a lot of interest from early adopters." And sure enough, Google's Chromium Blog rattles off the lineup of early adopters, and there are some big companies in there: "Beyond the Rack, eBay, Facebook, FanSided, Pinterest, Product Hunt, and VICE News."

Facebook is a particularly big one. A lot of users want notifications and home screen access to Facebook, but don't want to deal with the app's lengthy list of permissions. This has led to things like "Tinfoil for Facebook," which is a self-described "wrapper for the Facebook mobile site." Chrome 42's new features pretty much eliminate the need for this app. Soon Facebook will roll out push notifications and home screen prompts, and those who want Facebook without the Facebook app can get it. It's easy to come up with other use cases, too. An airline site could send you push notifications about flight changes, or eBay could send you updates about item bids.

While none of the companies listed have rolled out push notifications, we can at least see how Chrome works thanks to some test sites. Chrome seems to have made all the right moves to obtain notification consent, inform the user of where a notification comes from when it arrives, and allow the user to quickly shut off the notification if they decide they don't want it anymore.

Notice that the prompt for notification permission isn't "Yes" or "No," it's "Yes" and "hell no, go away forever." Sites that get hit with the "Block" option aren't able to ask again unless the user resets their settings. Also, if you hate the idea of notification prompts entirely, you can go into the Chrome settings (Settings -> Site Settings -> Notifications) and turn them off.

When a notification does pop up, Chrome lists the site that sent the notification on the bottom, allowing users to easily identify where it's coming from. There's also a big button attached to the notification that links to the site settings, so it's easy to quickly block the site from notifications if you don't like it. Push notifications require the site to be served in HTTPS, and by tapping on the lock icon, the page info comes up, which has another place where users can easily change the notification permission. A list of every site you've enabled notifications for shows up in the new Notifications setting page in Chrome, where, again, you can manage the permissions and remove a site. Clear site data has an option to blow them all away, too.

The Chrome team seems to know that some sites will try to abuse the feature, so it wants to give users as much control as possible, and the company is open to feedback. "With all this, it's just a first step," Komoroske explained. "Our goal is to make it so users can engage with experiences that they love, and we're going to be watching very carefully for feedback from users and developers for how to evolve these features over time."

So does Google believe Web apps are the future? Which should developers use? "There's native apps, and there's Web, and we want to empower developers to build awesome experiences no matter what platform or choice they make," Komoroske said.

Google doesn't want this to be a Chrome-only party either. The Chrome Team said it worked "very closely" with Mozilla on the push notifications, and it hopes the feature will eventually be standardized with the W3C. Google says they're working to standardize all aspects of the push notification system, although for right now Google Cloud Messaging (GCM)—Google's push server—is mandatory. Google says it's working with Mozilla and the IETF to standardize the server communication so that someday it will work with non-Google solutions. "With all of this, our goal has been to collaborate with other browser vendors and develop something that we can all be happy with," Komoroske said.

With Facebook, eBay, Pinterest, and a bunch of other sites signing up, it looks like push notifications are already a win for the Web. Google seems to have enough controls in place to allow users to easily block a site or turn off notifications altogether if they don't want them, and it's getting the W3C on board to make this a standard.

There's one other thing to consider. Facebook notifications, eBay bids, flight updates—right now, if you don't want the app, these sites all fall back on what is basically the Web's "default" push notification system: e-mail. Before Chrome's push notifications, if you wanted an "unattached" update from a site, you had to give them your e-mail, which they would keep.

Forever.

If sites really adopt this, the end result of this could actually be that we all get less e-mail. Wouldn't that be nice?