It's useful to distinguish between them, though. Apps are almost always first party software that only does what's officially supported. Browsers have a long history of customizability, extensibility, programmability, adversarial interoperability.
What if instead of browsers and ad blockers we had an extensive collection of web scrapers for every web site out there?
I do believe we have all of those things currently, but with the scrapers working against the human condition. Our only recourse is smart human scrapers but that job sucks really fast.
What if instead of browsers and ad blockers we had an extensive collection of web scrapers for every web site out there?