Google is choosing web apps over Android apps on Googlebook, and not everyone is happy

One of the biggest Googlebook attractions sounds wonderfully straightforward: take Android, stretch it into a proper desktop operating system, and bring the enormous Play Store library along for the ride. Google has leaned heavily on that app story, even adding labels that tell you which Android apps are best suited to a desktop. But early owners are discovering a curious exception to the Android-first pitch: several of Google’s biggest services aren’t actually running as native Android apps.

We’ve now confirmed this ourselves. Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and Sheets all run as web apps inside Chrome on Googlebooks. YouTube similarly uses a web-based experience rather than the regular Android app. Google Keep, on the other hand, runs as a native Android app on our machine.

That distinction has become a sore point among early adopters. Several Googlebook owners on Reddit say they bought into the platform expecting to use Android versions of apps such as Gmail, YouTube, and YouTube Music, only to encounter web experiences instead.

Google, however, says this is intentional.

Responding to some of those complaints, Google’s Mishaal Rahman explained that the company wants users to get the “best version” of an app on their Googlebook. For productivity tools such as Docs, Sheets, and Gmail, Google considers the full desktop web experience the gold standard, thanks to years of optimization for laptop browsers.

There’s a reasonable argument behind that. A desktop Gmail or Docs interface can make far better use of a large screen, keyboard, and mouse than an Android app originally designed around phones and tablets. But Googlebooks complicate that argument because these aren’t ordinary laptops.

Every Googlebook has a touchscreen, and one can even fold into a tablet. In our recent testing of that convertible, we found native Android apps considerably easier to control with touch than Progressive Web Apps and Trusted Web Activities. The operating system itself becomes more tablet-like when the screen flips around, yet some of Google’s own apps remain desktop-oriented web experiences.

That can make Googlebook OS feel oddly restrictive, especially given the platform it is replacing. ChromeOS has long supported Android apps from Google Play alongside web apps, although Google itself already favors web experiences for some services there too. Googlebooks support both technologies as well, but for several of its most prominent apps, Google is deliberately steering users toward the web version rather than the native Android experience.

YouTube shows that web-based doesn’t necessarily mean downgraded, though. Mishaal clarified that YouTube and YouTube Music run as Trusted Web Activities, essentially Chrome-powered experiences without the usual browser interface, and Premium subscribers can still download content for offline use.

We verified that too. After downloading a YouTube video, we disabled Wi-Fi and reopened the app. YouTube automatically loaded its downloads page, and the video played normally.

So this isn’t really about web apps being inherently worse. Google has good reasons for preferring them for some services on a laptop. The sticking point is that Googlebook can also be a tablet, and users aren’t always being allowed to decide which version fits the moment.

For an Android-based computer whose biggest strength should be flexibility, that lack of choice feels strangely restrictive.