Chrome OS has become a low-key success story for Google in the last few years. Because they’re relatively cheap and easy to track and manage, Chromebooks has made inroads in businesses and educational institutions. But Chrome OS still has a big shortcoming compared to Windows and macOS: an app gap.
To help close that gap and augment Web apps, Google introduced the Chrome apps platform to let developers make Web apps that looked and functioned more like traditional standalone apps. Part of Google’s sales pitch was that Chrome apps were universal—without any additional effort from developers, these apps would run not just on Chrome OS, but also any Windows, Mac, or Linux PC with Chrome installed.
