Google shuts down the app section of Chrome Web Store and emails developers saying Chrome Apps are deprecated, although they remain on Chrome OS
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica :
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the execution of a plan Google laid out more than a year earlier, when it said it would end support for Chrome apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux in early 2018 and stop surfacing them in the store in the second half of 2017 (that August 2016 announcement). The app launcher on desktop had already been removed that summer (the launcher's July removal), so the storefront was the last visible piece left.
The email to developers formalizes what was already scheduled: Chrome Apps are deprecated everywhere except Chrome OS, where Google still treats them as first-class. The related coverage shows where this ends — in January 2020 Google set a final timeline to phase out Chrome Apps across all operating systems (the 2020 phase-out timeline), meaning even the Chrome OS exemption is temporary.
First-order effects
- Developers with Chrome Apps in the store lose their discovery and distribution channel on Windows, Mac, and Linux immediately, and must decide whether to port to web-based alternatives or let desktop installs lapse.
- Chrome OS users are unaffected for now — their apps keep working — but the developer email signals that Google no longer considers the format worth building for anywhere else.
Second-order effects
- Developers who built on Chrome Apps face a forced migration toward standard web apps or native platforms, since Google is offering no successor packaged-app format on desktop.
- The Chrome Web Store narrows its role to extensions, which Google has kept out of every deprecation announcement — concentrating the store's remaining value there.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds through the 2020-announced phase-out, Chrome Apps die entirely — including on Chrome OS — closing out Google's experiment with proprietary packaged web apps in favor of open web standards.
- The episode becomes a caution for developers weighing investment in any single-vendor app format: Google deprecated the category in stages over years, but each stage left less time to rebuild on portable technology.
The trend: Google is executing a multi-year retreat from its own packaged-app formats toward the open web, with each deadline — launcher, storefront, then full deprecation — narrowing what Chrome Apps can reach.