i do believe that if google didn't have an appstore that it forces android licensees to use, then we would have a similar variety of appstores world wide.
Which they certainly have done in the past (albeit,usually for really good reason. Google is a bit in a damned if you do damned if you dont position)
Supported on all major Android browsers:
- Progressive Web Apps can be added to your home screen - Web Push lets web apps receive push notifications (Brave's implementation is broken, but they try to support the feature)
Experimental APIs supported by Chrome for Android:
- Web Share Target API, which lets homescreen'd web apps receive shares from other apps (the share pane makes no distinction between sharing to a web app or a native app) - Contacts APIs to read the user's contacts list
I think PWA's competitiveness will get a lot better once other browsers adopt the Web Share Target (or something like it), but I'm skeptical that they'll really take off as long as Apple continues hold off on implementing features that would make PWAs competitive with native apps.