Google's new Duo app is the latest manifestation of the Progressive Web App dream

Google yesterday quietly released its popular video calling app — Duo — to the web as we pointed out.

This isn’t a simple web-app, Google’s Duo is a built on the PWA standards and immediately present users with an Install App option upon opening the site (learn how to install PWAs here if this option doesn’t appear).

As a PWA, Duo can be run in its own window much like a standard regular app, and you needn’t launch Chrome to run it all the time.
It doesn’t work offline, but then again, it’s main raison d’etre is to facilitate VoIP calling, so that much makes sense.

Notifications will work if the app is open, even if minimised, and you’ll be able to take advantage of the knock knock feature that Google touts.

While Google has refused to bring its apps to the desktop, the firm has taken advantage of PWAs to launch apps like Google Photos, Google Duo and Android Messages on the desktop — an example yet to be followed by, major competitors Apple and Microsoft.

As Progressive Web Apps grow and mature, we’ll likely see more investment and buy-in from major app developers.