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The Web is teeming with powerful apps and services that aim to make modern lives easier. That power, however, sometimes comes at cost of complexity, when simple goals like create a new calendar even can require at least two to three steps, presuming you already have your web browser open. Last year, Google introduced a .new domain for its G Suite users as handy shortcuts for creating new documents. Now it's opening the doors to other brands and services to let users quickly get things done, maybe with even just one click.

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Macromedia Flash, now owned and killed by Adobe, was once the Web's darling. It enabled rich and interactive content that gave way to fancy web pages, games, and, of course, videos. Those came at the cost of file sizes, bandwidth, and security and has now turned into a liability rather than an asset. Almost all major web browsers have bid Flash farewell and soon Google Search will also be ignoring Flash content in indexing web pages.

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Samsung is currently the king of Android phones and, by virtue of numbers, the biggest smartphone vendor in the world. It is no secret, however, that the company has always wanted to break free of its dependence on its long-time ally, especially now that Huawei has shown a fatal weakness in that arrangement. It has tried in the past with its own Tizen phone but that ended in a flop due to the lack of apps. Now it seems that Samsung may have stumbled on a solution thanks to the resurgence of web apps, particularly Progressive Web Apps or PWAs.

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Over the years, Google has been improving search results to give users less reason to navigate away from Google just to find simple answers to their questions. Those range from snippets presented in answer boxes to even video clip previews. On Android, it may even present more information or more controls that remove the need to switch an app. Now Google is doing the same for podcasts by letting users not only search for relevant podcasts but even start listening to them right then and there within the search results page.

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Google once adopted an Apple-like strategy that put Allo forward as its instant messaging app and Duo as its FaceTime rival. Allo, however, has been officially declared dead but Google Duo remains in the running. In fact, Google has very silently pushed a new feature that puts it above Apple FaceTime and many similar services. Now you can use Duo to make calls from your web browser, including video calls if your computer has the hardware for it.

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Browsers these days are so powerful you can almost do anything in them. Yes, sometimes even run older (ancient, really) operating systems in a browser tab. Want to play 3D games? Google's Project Stream is working on that. How about virtual and augmented reality experiences? That's in the works, too. And with the new WebXR Device API on its way to become a standard specification, there might be a time when all you need for VR and AR is a portable headset and a web browser.

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Google Chrome developers are currently testing a mode dubbed "NeverSlowMode" by its creator. This function is not yet live in Google Chrome in any public form, but might soon be - if all its cards are played JUST right. The deal is that this code will flip a switch on the internet, making your internet feel very, very quick! Unfortunately, there's a rather sizable drawback.

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This morning Microsoft confirmed that the rumors were, indeed, true, that they'd be working with the Chromium open source project for Microsoft Edge. "Today we’re announcing that we intend to adopt the Chromium open source project in the development of Microsoft Edge on the desktop to create better web compatibility for our customers and less fragmentation of the web for all web developers," said Microsoft Corporate VP Joe Belfiore.

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There's a new web app for Chrome called Squoosh this week, made by Google to prove the next generation of web apps are viable. That might seem pretty boring to everyone that's already got their traditional apps already downloaded - but the future is coming. With this app, Developer Advocate Jake Archibald and Drawsplainer Mariko Kosaka show how Javascript in a web browser can make the impossible task of up-scaling a photo quite possible indeed.

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Google's next step after Google Feed is "Google Discover" and it's all about News. Google's describing it a bit differently - they're offering this system up as a set of changes in the way they think about Search. "We're launching a major update to this experience," said Karen Corby, Google Search Group Product Manager, "including a new name, a fresh look, and a brand-new set of features."

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Before there were all these hip productivity to-do list apps, there was the list-lover's heaven known as Wunderlist. Microsoft gobbled it up and, just like the Sunrise calendar, made it no secret that it would be shutting the service down once its replacement was well on its way. That replacement is Microsoft To-Do, which doesn't seem to get as much attention as Microsoft's other apps. In fact, it's only now that Microsoft is reminding people that it actually has a Web version of the service, after giving it a facelift.

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Mobile apps may be more widespread because of the ubiquity of smartphones but web apps are the hot thing in the software market these days. They bring with them the promise of cross-platform availability on anything that can run a modern web browser. But they also bring the risks associated with any web page on the Internet. Short of having an app store for web apps, Google has announced the .app top-level domain (TLD) that can be used for easy to remember URLs and safer transactions between web browser and web server.

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