Tender Surrender

Today marks exactly 10 years since I joined Google as a Developer Advocate. I rarely write blog posts about non-technical topics, but since this is a meaningful milestone, I wanted to take this opportunity to leave a record.

Incidents caused by passwords, such as unauthorized money transfers and account takeovers, show no sign of stopping. While an ideal world would allow anyone—including the elderly and those with limited tech literacy—to manage their online accounts easily and securely, the history of the internet has arguably proven that creating a passwordless world is the foremost priority. And now, FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) is drawing attention as the technology to make passwordless login a reality. Bringing FIDO to the browser is WebAuthn (Web Authentication). Based on media reports and the like, some people might think these are simply about fingerprint authentication, but that is not quite the case.

There are already numerous articles on WebAuthn, so I will leave the technical how-tos to them and focus in this article on the bigger picture—the grand vision of how this technology will reshape the future of digital identity.

Yesterday, I came across this article on Twitter:

PWA が来るって言っているエンジニアは今すぐ辞めろ

"Some Goo*le evangelist or engineer was making noise, raving like 'Instagram's PWA is amazing~! You can't even tell it apart from the native app!!' so I tried it out, but it was a total bust."

Could they be talking about this?

Instagram PWA is sooooooo impressive. I probably won't be able to distinguish it with its native app.
InstagramのPWAが、デキが良すぎて感動してる。ネイティブアプリと見分けられる自信ない。 pic.twitter.com/DS8TfceBZ6

— Eiji Kitamura / えーじ (@agektmr) 2018年1月26日

Admittedly, my phrasing might have been a bit provocative. However, when it came to Instagram's PWA—the smooth scrolling, being able to apply filters when posting, and so on—saying "I probably won't be able to distinguish it from the native app" was my honest initial impression, and I still use it comfortably today.

That said, I hadn't tested every single feature when I posted that tweet, and there were differences I noticed later on. To be clear, I certainly have no intention of saying native apps are unnecessary because of this. Rather, since the topic has come up, let me take this opportunity to explain PWAs in a bit more detail.

This post is for day 12/8 of the Chromium Browser Advent Calendar 2017. It is a translation of the English version I recently posted on Medium, with some additions tailored for an audience in Japan.

Ever since the Payment Request API made its debut, it has garnered an immense amount of interest. At the same time, because of its complexity, misunderstandings and hype based on inaccurate information have also cropped up. In this article, I would like to clear up common misconceptions I've observed in people's reactions and provide accurate information.

If you don't know what the Payment Request API is in the first place, I recommend starting here.

As explained in the previous article, the Payment Request API has the potential to dramatically change the user experience of paying on the web. But will it really become mainstream? Will you need to support it on your own site in the future? Many people are probably wondering about this.

I predict with high confidence that most payments on the web will transition to going through Web Payments in the future. In this article, I will explain why.