Must-Read: Ben Thompson: Google and the Shift From Web to Apps, Indexing App-Only Content, Streaming Apps
Must-Read: The walled gardens of the pre-1995 .net strike back. I am left curious: why are browsers good enough on the desktop and the laptop to wipe the floor with walled gardens, but not so on smart phones?
: Google and the Shift From Web to Apps, Indexing App-Only Content, Streaming Apps: “The core reality that drove Google’s dominance…
…the public availability of linked information… [is] at least weakening…. The first phase was the shift in usage from the web to apps… [where] the actual infrastructure and logic for displaying content is downloaded and installed when you get the app from the App Store. Then… the app simply downloads… content… and drops the content into the pre-existing templates. It’s super fast. This was certainly an annoyance for Google… [which] has focused on deep linking… to a mobile web site….
Now we are into the second phase in the shift from the web to apps: apps that don’t exist on the web at all…. “Up until now, Google has only been able to show information from apps that have matching web content. Because we recognize that there’s a lot of great content that lives only in apps, starting today, we’ll be able to show some ‘app-first’ content in Search as well….”
This is a far graver threat to Google than someone simply starting their search in a vertical app like Yelp or Trip Advisor: Google can win that fight by delivering a superior experience, and they’ve made great strides in that regard over the past few years…. There’s one big problem with Google’s new capability, though: how do you actually show said content to users? The app installation problem remains a significant one: there is simply too much friction in expecting a search user to download an app to see a result. Enter app streaming…