PWAs were not liked when they came out.

By some ppl. There were also ppl who did like them. As soon as the desktop support was axed, fans of the feature started complaining immediately.

at the time, people in general did not like PWAs as a concept. Independent of the browser

Again, I think this is a sampling issue, because my experience was the complete opposite.

And one of the key parts of PWA features was the “Progressive” part. The site works without those features and you don’t have to use them so removing the support never made much sense to me.