A few years ago Google added a notification center to its Chrome browser for desktop and laptop computers. Tap an icon and you can see the latest notifications all in one place.

Apparently people didn’t really click that button all that often though, because Google has decided to remove the notification center from the next version of Chrome for Windows, OS X, and Linux. It’ll still be part of Chrome OS.

chrome notifications

In a blog post, Google notes that “in practice, few users visit the notification center.” In other words, the company doesn’t want to waste resources maintaining a feature nobody uses… although that’s kind of the same argument that Google gives when it kills project that have a small but loyal user base (RIP Google Reader).

Theoretically, the notification center is not a bad idea: it provides a way to see notifications from web apps including Gmail, Google Calendar, Hangouts, Google Now, and third-party Chrome apps.

But I’ll admit, I keep forgetting that Chrome has a notification center though, what about you?

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11 replies on “Google kills Chrome notification center, figures you probably won’t care anyway”

  1. Never used it. Too much going on already with notifications. I hardly get down to work and things start going off. I turned it all off. Distractions.

  2. I, for one, will not miss it. I never used it.

    I sign into Chrome on different PCs very frequently at my work. I’ve grown tired of disabling the notification icon.

  3. The problem is it was a notification centre specific to just Google stuff. It’d work much better if they put the notifications into Windows 10’s notification centre.

    Microsoft support Android’s notification API rather than adding their own, after all…

  4. Aw, I used it, though very rarely I must admit. It was useful for checking the weather forecast and getting reminders you’d set on your phone (e.g. check the food in the oven). Tbh I hope mobile google now as in that pile of cards including new articles from websites ends up in desktop chrome.

  5. I personally use it every day. It’s (was) a great place to aggregate notifications from multiple sources including notifications from Google Now and Pushbullet. If I’m at my desktop or laptop, all I have to do is click dismiss on the notifications and they disappear from both my phone and my Pebble using Notification Center so I don’t even have to bother interacting with either. This is very disappointing.

    1. I agree. But we’re in an age of deprecation and deletion. Platform stability is a thing of the past. Microsoft has pulled some silly stunts with Win8 and before that WinMobile-to-WinPhone that have lost them customers forever. Even Win10 hasn’t mutated far enough yet to make it a viable alternative to Win7 and earlier. But Google probably Takes The Taco for abandoning and excising things that the teeming hordes aren’t currently using.

  6. I use it sometimes but most of the time I forget it’s there. They should keep it and just have it be in the Chrome browser instead of a system notification program. At least that way you might remember it’s there.

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