No Chrome in the Store? This is (Still) Microsoft’s Fault (Premium)

I’m fascinated to see that 2017 is ending on a controversy that I first pin-pointed much earlier in the year. Also, a controversy for which I have already found a solution.

As you must know, Google confounded everyone last week when it quietly issued only its second-ever Microsoft Store app, called Google Chrome Installer.

When Mehedi first pinged Brad and I about this app, I didn’t even realize that Google was its maker: The idea was ludicrous to me, and I didn’t understand why Windows-focused bloggers were even writing about this topic. But Google being the author did of course elevate this story to newsworthiness. But the question quickly changed to why.

Why would Google release such an obvious piece of shit?

In case this isn’t obvious, there are various technical barriers preventing Google from releasing its web browser, called Chrome, in the Microsoft Store. In fact, it wasn’t truly obvious that Google would even want to release Chrome in the Store. Before last week’s episode, we only had the musings of a single low-level Google engineer to go on. (He claimed the company was interested in doing so.)

Anyway, Google Chrome Installer is not Chrome. All it is, is a small and very basic Store app that triggers the install of Chrome from the web. It’s the type of nonsense that a beginner programmer might write, not something one would expect from Google, the leading personal technology platform maker.

But release it they did. And then, just hours later, the “app” was summarily pulled from the Microsoft Store.

For its part, Microsoft claimed that Google Chrome Installer violated its Store publishing policies: The Microsoft Store ecosystem is based around a mobile apps platform that is safe, reliable, and not detrimental to the performance of users’ PCs, at install time or over time. It is, in other words, the polar opposite of Windows’ Win32/desktop environment, which Microsoft is keen to deprecate and then block over time.

Google Chrome, of course, is a Win32/desktop application. So are all popular Windows apps. This is the Catch-22 of Microsoft’s strategy.

The violation, such as it is, is that Google Chrome Installer was using the Store (which is reliable) to install a desktop application (which is not). This is explicitly not allowed. So Microsoft pulled the app.

Why did Microsoft approve the app in the first place, you probably wonder? My guess is that a AAA publisher like Google gets slipstreamed through the app approval process, and that this app’s initial approval was automated. Later, when actual humans at Microsoft stepped through the day’s approvals and saw Google in their, they probably gave it more scrutiny. And discovered that it violated the Store’s policies. (Just an educated guess; it makes sense.)

There are great arguments to be made that all the major app store makers—Microsoft, Apple, andGoogle—do a lousy job at this kind of thing. In the same week, in a stunning coincidence, Apple actually allowed a fake version of Cuphead, which is a game aimed only at Microsoft’s platforms, into its iOS App Store. Doh.

In this case, I think we’re looking at something different. It is understandable that Microsoft might trust a major publisher like Google. But I also feel like the presence of Google, which, again, had only published one app to the Store in over five years, should have triggered an immediate meeting of the minds at Microsoft. That this thing should have been examined and debated before it was published specifically because it was from Google.

Whatever.

What happened, happened. Microsoft published the app. Microsoft pulled the app. It happened so fast that you could have missed it just by going to lunch.

Now we know why Microsoft pulled the app. So the original question remains: Why would Google release such an obvious piece of shit?

According to a Google engineer, it did so because Microsoft makes it impossible to release a first-class version of Chrome in the Microsoft Store.

“Microsoft denies Chrome the tools it needs to protect users when installed from the [Microsoft] Store,” Google’s Chris Blume tweeted. [By the way,] they grant those tools to Edge. So we made a mini-app to help users get the full, safe version of Chrome. It was pulled.”

While it’s not clear exactly what “tools” he is referring to, the issues here are well-understood.

Google, like any developer, can adopt one of two basic approaches when it comes to bringing a legacy desktop application to the Microsoft Store.

First, it could use Microsoft’s Desktop Bridge (“Centennial”) technologies to wrap the application in a Universal Windows Platform (e.g. “Store”) container, as Spotify, Evernote, and a few others have done. This would still require Google to make some changes. For example, it would have to hand off app updates to Windows 10; Store apps, including Desktop Bridge apps, cannot run their own app installers. But this is still the easier of the two approaches.

Second, it could create a new UWP/Store app from scratch. This is an option that basically no major app maker has chosen because of the unnecessary complexity of maintaining two code-bases: A desktop application will run on every version of Windows right now (except for Windows 10 S). So why bother with a new UWP/Store app?

But Chrome, like other web browsers, adds a third dimension to this argument. A third complexity to consider.

And this one is an invention of Microsoft’s own making: It will not allow Store app web browsers to use their own rendering engines; this is true for both Desktop Bridge apps and for true UWP/Store apps. This means that, in order for Google to get Chrome into the Store, it would have to use the Microsoft Edge rendering engine. And that means that the Desktop Bridge route is out of the question. Google would need to make a new version of Chrome, just for Microsoft Store. Why bother?

Some will argue that Google is already doing this on iOS. And sure enough, it is: Like Microsoft, Apple requires that third-party web browsers on its mobile platform, called iOS, use its own Safari web renderer. So Google uses that on iOS. (So does Microsoft Edge, on iOS.)

Here’s the thing. On iOS, Google has no choice: If you want to be on this platform, and you do, then you must use Safari. But if Google wants to be on Windows PCs, which it does, all it needs to do is issue a since Win32/desktop app. Which it does. Google Chrome already runs on 100 percent of all supported versions of Windows right now.

Well, not quite 100 percent. Windows 10 S, as you may recall, is artificially limited so that it cannot run third party Win32/desktop apps. So it cannot run Google Chrome. This is Microsoft’s decision. Not Google’s. And I will remind you that I just complained about what I called the “parentalism and paternalism” of Apple with regards to iOS and its own users. This is Microsoft doing exactly the same thing: Making decisions for its own users, who are obviously too dumb, or at least too immature, to do what it thinks is the right thing.

But then, I have been complaining about this all year. I have explained, again and again, that Windows 10 S will never succeed if Microsoft makes it hard stop for the future. Instead, I’ve written, it needs to compromise. Windows 10 S should be a step on the road to this desktop-less future. It should not block users from using the apps they want to use. It is simply too early to arrive at this destination.

There is no way you have not heard me raise this issue, either here on the site or on three podcasts I record every week.

I even came up with a compromise. And in examining this past week’s nonsense, my compromise holds up. Think about it. Here, we have two parties with opposing views of what should happen. Google is arguing that Microsoft makes it unnecessarily hard for it to put Chrome in the Microsoft Store. And they’re right. Microsoft is literally making it too hard for Google put Chrome in the Microsoft Store. And Microsoft is doing this … for Windows 10 S? An OS with almost literally zero users?

Come on.

Clearly, the primary compromise needs to happen on the Microsoft side. This is especially true when you realize that this past week’s episode proves that Google does want to put Chrome in the Store. For crissakes Microsoft, let them do so: Chrome isn’t just the number one web browser. It is literally the single most popular Windows application on earth.

As I’ve argued so many times before, the limitations in Windows 10 S are artificial, aimed at giving users a version of Windows that is safe and reliable but is, today, completely incompatible with any popular Windows application. (And, too, with drivers and other important system utilities.) This system is a great goal, but it’s a terrible reality for users today.

So the compromise is simple: Yes, please, do berate users who try to install desktop applications in Windows 10. But let them install desktop applications after some prompts. Let your users decide what is more important—security, reliability, and performance, allegedly, or compatibility—as they go.

In other words, stop treating your users like children, Microsoft. And stop treating valuable third-party partners like Google like usurpers or interlopers, while you’re at it. You are better than this.

Microsoft, everyone wants Chrome in the Microsoft Store. Let’s make it happen in 2018. Please.