Microsoft outlines roadmap for Progressive Web Apps, will experiment with crawling and indexing PWAs from the web so they can be listed in the Microsoft Store
Microsoft will be ready to support PWAs in the Microsoft Store as of Windows 10 Redstone 4. Here's its game plan.
Context & Ripple Effects
This roadmap lands a year after Chrome 57 started surfacing installed PWAs in Android's app drawer and settings, which established the pattern of web apps earning native-style placement without a package download. Microsoft is now applying that pattern to its own storefront: rather than waiting for developers to submit, it will experiment with crawling and indexing PWAs directly off the web.
The move matters because the Microsoft Store has been thin on modern app inventory, and crawling turns the entire indexed web into potential catalog entries once Windows 10 Redstone 4 ships. The approach Microsoft sketches here is the same one it would later formalize with Google for the Play Store, per the 2020 collaboration on getting PWAs into Android's store.
First-order effects
- Windows 10 developers gain a zero-packaging path to distribution: a standards-compliant PWA becomes eligible for Microsoft Store listing via Microsoft's crawler, with Redstone 4 as the readiness milestone.
- Microsoft's search-and-crawl infrastructure takes on a new job — deciding which web apps qualify for storefront placement — making Bing-class indexing a supply chain for the Store.
Second-order effects
- Storefront rivals face the same playbook: once Microsoft demonstrates that crawling can stock a store, Google's own PWA pipeline — already visible in Chrome's Android integration and later the Outlook.com PWA installable from Chromium browsers — becomes the competitive baseline rather than an experiment.
- Discovery economics shift toward whoever controls the index: developers who optimize their manifests and service workers for crawlers effectively compete for shelf space they never applied for.
Third-order effects
- If crawling-based listing holds, the boundary between 'web app' and 'store app' dissolves structurally — app stores become curated views over the open web, and store gatekeeping moves from submission review to ranking algorithms.
- That reframing puts storefront operators in the position search engines have long occupied: controlling visibility at scale, which historically invites publisher pushback and regulatory attention over placement rules.
The trend: App stores are progressively absorbing the open web as inventory, with each platform — Chrome on Android first, then Microsoft — turning crawler-driven discovery into storefront supply.