I have to agree with your general take on the platform. It does seem very forced. I like the thought of the cloud as an adjunct or option, but not the be all and end all of my experience.
I just don't understand Google sometimes. They've been brilliant in some ways but entirely off the mark in others. You'd think they'd have enough money to throw around not just to developers, but to strategists. Giant companies can surely be victimized by their own corporate ego. It's happened to Microsoft...and even Apple at times. Ponderous...
On the one hand I guess it makes sense as a single point of discovery of the more advanced websites that people may not otherwise know of. In that way its a really good idea. But its still essentially just a listing of links re-skinned to look like an icon.
But for the paid apps what exactly are they "selling". Access to a link? And if you are downloading small bits of code that gives you a more customized experience why not just use standard applications that can take advantage of each platforms strengths and work around its weaknesses while still having deep hooks into cloud data.
The insistence that everything has to happen inside a web browser seems so forced and unnatural to me. I know why Google's doing it... the more they keep you in your browser, the more money they make off of tracking everything you do and selling ads. But just because its good for Google does not make it good for the consumer. Not to mention, there are so many things that browsers just don't do well that OS's handles more elegantly.
I tried out a few of the free apps and the frankly the experience of using them felt clunky and jury-rigged. The NYTimes app looked a lot like the the iPads but was jerky and had horrendous typeface rendering.

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