Apps Are Devouring the Open Web (businessinsider.com) 154
Rob Price, writing for Business Insider: Apps are eating the web. Over the past decade, there has been an inexorable movement from the open internet to the walled gardens of apps -- and this trend just hit a major milestone. According to new data from ComScore, more than half of all time Americans spend online is spent in apps -- up from around 41% two years ago. It's a stat that will be discomfiting to advocates of the open web, as well as companies whose core business is built around it -- notably Google. As content that was once freely available and indexable on websites becomes silo-ed away in closed-off apps, it makes it harder to search and link to content. This is, of course, the cornerstone of Google's original business.
Discomfiting (Score:4, Interesting)
Really. Discomfiting. That just ...
Sigh.
On topic, how much of this information is actually siloed away, and how many of these apps are just a browser wrapper a la the Facebook app?
Re: Discomfiting (Score:2, Insightful)
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At no point; it always was an app. They're really talking about running browsers vs running anything else.
Re: Incorrect (Score:1)
They're talking about the web of hyperlinked resources over http/https versus walled gardens. That an app uses the internet doesn't make it part the WWW.
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So, apps app apps?
Are you a luddite?
Re:Discomfiting (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Discomfiting (Score:4, Informative)
Okay, I admit it. I did not know that was an actual word.
Re:Discomfiting (Score:4, Funny)
Okay, I admit it. I did not know that was an actual word.
Oh I'm sorry sir, I'm anaspeptic, frasmotic, even conpunctuous to have cased you such pericombobulations.
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Facebook has a complex enough UI that making a more efficient app for it makes sense. There are a ton of apps that are barely more than a skinned browser that loads a mobile website. Those are the ones that I wish would die off.
Re:Discomfiting (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a ton of apps that are barely more than a skinned browser that loads a mobile website. Those are the ones that I wish would die off.
The problem is that, while people will pay for an app, almost no one will pay for web content. So I can make an app and feed my family, or I can put the same content on the "free web" and starve.
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But honestly, can you survive on making an app ? Because most hardly make any money.
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but wouldn't be great to end the "eternal september" with idiots "siloed" away in app walled gardens?
And who are they, really? (Score:3)
The number of people on the Internet has grown hugely. If half of them remain surfing actual websites, that's still a huge number of people. The web is fine. Apps have appeared. Some people use them. Meh. :)
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Yes, I understand. No, I don't think it's a problem. Quality websites will continue to enjoy significant traffic. Web sites that have little to offer will not. Serving costs and cost per transferred bit continue to drop. There are plenty of web sites that offer really crappy content and deserve to die, frankly. Sites that offer high quality content will do well. Mind you, there are plenty of sites that claim they offer "high quality content", some of which try quite hard to sell same, which are really offer
Mobile needs to improve browser (Score:2)
Apple, Goolge, Microsoft... Really need to improve their browser to run these rich websites fast and efficiently reserving apps to things that needs specialized hardware Or can work offline.
I know many slashdoters wants the web like it was in the 1990's. However it has became a major use for Application deployment.
However right now we get these apps just because they use less data or perform better.
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However it has became a major use for Application deployment.
Which is should never ever be. Web apps suck ass. They are only useful to allow developers to be lazy.
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I am not sure how it would be lazy. HTML is just like using VT100 or other markup to make apps the browser is just a terminal emulator.
Re:Mobile needs to improve browser (Score:5, Insightful)
Invert this. Html is designed for all platforms. There is no need for micromanaged detail in an app, especially when apps are stupid and do not allow pinch zoom.
A return to 1990s web would be an improvement. Do you know why, youngster? Because a whole new generation of programmers is recreating stupid applications with all the old foibles from the 1980s intact.
In short, they are making the same dumb mistakes.
Re:Mobile needs to improve browser (Score:5, Funny)
> A return to 1990s web would be an improvement.
like this motherf*cking website [motherfuckingwebsite.com]
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It's okay to say "fuck" on Slashdot.
But they are right, and contrary to what they say, they put it rather well. Anybody can still put up a web page. In that fashion the internet is still wide open.
And Slashdot should take the hint. I can't zoom in the page without the damn text spilling off the side, forcing the need to scroll horizontally. What's up with that? Why can't everybody use plain old HTML?
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I found that interesting, so I zoomed in. The text wrapped to fit the space just fine and I didn't have to horz scroll.
Re: Mobile needs to improve browser (Score:2)
I'll get my red hat. Make the Web Great Again!
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Exactly. Notice how the general public doesn't use terminals anymore?
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Re: Mobile needs to improve browser (Score:1)
It's tech that made that festering toxic swamp of gadgets. I don't see a need to have to learn Swift or to support a platform that's going to be dead in 2 years. Most software takes longer than 2 years to build. Now ARM is threatening a do-over by eradicating all x86 tools, software and practice.
Tech is the only industry that can't learn. It just keeps doing the same things in a slightly different way, and at immense effort. Every few years everything you've learnt becomes absolutely useless. It's worse th
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I can't draw a circle these days because it takes 8 pages of boilerplate copied from Stack Overflow, 3 frameworks, 5 template languages, a JSON definition, 2 serialization layers, a virtualization layer and p-code transforms for optimal runtime.
And a partridge in a pear tree
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They just didnt have the hardware to pull it off then.
They didn't have the algorithms either. Although Clarke got it right, like just about everybody else he underestimated the difficulty of the problem and did not realise it required the discovery of new math.
Choose a paid native app over a free web app? (Score:2)
It's lazy in that they are trying to make one crapy app that works on everything. Instead of making multiple good apps that are tailored to the platform they are running on.
If you use a Mac as your primary computer:
Would you rather have web apps, which run on all major platforms, or Windows apps, which run only on a PC with a Windows license?
Otherwise:
Would you rather have web apps, which run on all major platforms, or Mac apps, which run only on a Mac?
If your answer is "Then make five apps, one for each major platform":
If the web app was available without charge and the five native apps, one for each major platform (Windows, macOS, X11/Linux, Android, and iOS), were paid in o
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Well sure, I would rather have web apps, and play web games. But the performance hit, lack of native service bindings and access to hardware, all turn me back to native. Many of the apps and games I intend to run would be nearly useless in HTML.
But that's only a fraction of what I would use. Some apps actually don't need that level of performance or access, and HTML is just fine for them.
So the answer to all of your questions is "it depends on the app".
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The biggest problem, I think, that happened with web is they messed up the offline-cache function.
It would be great if the industry had a couple of years of experience and new software deployed which worked with a good standard. The hardware we have now can take it just fine.
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Perhaps they can find a language and object model that is far better suited to actual development.
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We get these apps because the web is actually terrible for application development.
This is but one example. I could tell you dozens of similar idiocies with web app development.
I've done GUI development in wxWidgets, GTK, Qt and even Tcl/Tk. All of them have a more or less sane way of doing layouts or at the very least, some form of "stack all of these widgets vertically or horizontally and resize them according to some criteria (usually, a weight) when the containing widget resizes". We've had this for DEC
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Mod parent up.
Web apps IMO are a near-complete failure from both a development and user perspective, and it's this failure that has caused the rise of apps:
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pass data back and forth statelessly over HTTP. The web is great for that. Or for rendering things that are actually documents.
It's almost as if the web were designed for that in the first place.
Re:Mobile needs to improve browser (Score:4, Informative)
I agree that the web is pretty much a huge mess, but I just want to address one thing:
- JavaScript. Single threaded and garbage collected.
I think Web Workers [mozilla.org] allow you to write multi-threaded JavaScript--with, of course, limitations (e.g., no shared memory).
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It's on the way: https://webassembly.github.io/ [github.io]
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Totally agree. I have done a couple of custom android apps to interface with some stuff around my house. I use androwish because they make it crazy easy to build a gui that looks decent with a few hundred lines of Tcl/Tk.
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No they don't, the web-based applications are shit and need to finish dying.
Why do you insist that something that sucks should to be made better, when the better solution already exists?
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Why do you insist that something that sucks should to be made better, when the better solution already exists?
And what might said "better solution" be? Native applications that are exclusive to a platform other than the one you use?
If the content was once freely available... (Score:5, Insightful)
... on the web then its probably still there. Any data & content specific to apps probably never made it to the web in the first place.
Whether walled gardens are good or bad is a big discussion, but from a technical point of the view the web is an utter dogs dinner with HTML, javascript, CSS and a host of other bits of glue keeping a website working along with bloated, buggy browsers and thats just the front end so I can understand from a *technical* point of view why some companies think "To hell with it, lets just write a client app in Obj-C, Java, C# and be done with it".
Really its just goint full circle back to the 80s and 90s when various bits of the internet were (and still are) accessed by seperate clients.
for spying mostly (Score:1)
Apps are just small limited capability programs that spy on you.
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So no different than the web for more than a decade?
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A lot of apps arn't done by huge corporations with a marketing dept, they're done by small start ups and I can fully understand whey they wouldn't put their resources - assuming they have the in house skills - into a web version if they're only targeting smartphones and tablets.
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As much as I hate web technology, let's not fool ourselves. It's all about them getting their code on our devices so they can more easily mine all the data they want.
When was the last time you put an ad blocker on an app? How many apps refuse to work unless you give them carte blanch permissions?
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I wouldn't say everything is going back to the 80s and 90s.
Just some positive news. Even if the front end is going back and forth, the back end communication is easier and more consistent than ever. JSON, REST, and other easy to access APIs are dominant. It's never been easier to communicate with another system; especially those from a third party.
Now granted, the idea of a nice indexable web under one HTML platform was ideal, in many cases, this is still the case. I can't think of a single content based ap
This is not the issue (Score:3)
Index-ability is not the issue. The issue is we have managed to take a decentralized Internet, where govt has been forced to adapt its ideas toward freedom due to the infeasibility of endorcing their usual anti-freedom views on their role in speech, commerce, etc, and say: no thank you, I would like to interact with the internet via apps from 5 govt-partnered large corporations.
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Apps are tied to a single platform, so in a way it locks you to that platform.
But I see apps as a supplement, not the complete solution. An app is the local logic that performs the user interface and data validation before transferring the data to the backend system where the data can be indexed.
Re: This is not the issue (Score:2)
That's what happens when you farm development out to 3rd world countries working off of specifications drawn up by psychotics who think that they can get it right all by themselves and throw it over the wall and everything will be fine.
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It depends on the application if an app is useful or not. I agree that having an app for banking is if not stupid at least restricting your ability to do banking from the device of your choice.
But if you have a solution involving data collection then you may want to wait with the upload of the collected data until you are at a reasonable state/point. It may be a sports app collecting health data or some other kind of aggregation of data where the summary of the aggregated data is of interest, not the raw da
Check deposit (Score:3)
I agree that having an app for banking is if not stupid at least restricting your ability to do banking from the device of your choice.
Other than through an app that can access a device's rear camera, how else is the banking interface supposed to scan the front and back of a paper check in order to deposit it to your account? I occasionally receive personal checks from family members not technically inclined enough to set up PayPal, and for years, I received payroll checks from an employer that was for some reason incapable of direct deposit. Or are you instead recommending biking to an ATM that takes deposits?
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Checks are rare. It was probably 30 years ago I got one for something and it was even then a hassle to cash it.
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Re: This is not the issue (Score:4, Insightful)
The "open web" only exists in your mind and a few sites that are user supported and don't take advertising - and it they have any sort of "social m" plugin, whether for likes, comments, sharing, or logging in, you're still being tracked, same as Slashdot enables Facebook. Google, etc to track you.
open, in the sense of transparency, is dead. You cannot even select whether you want these trackers served to you unless you use a 3rd party app that scrapes the site and doesn't download them in the first place. We need more apps like Simply Slashdot, that only grab the textual content you're interested in.
Email is also dieing (Score:2)
If you need to contact someone, just use facebook messaging. Or possibly imessage if you (and thus your friends) have i gadgets.
Instant messaging, blogging, voice and video chat have already been effectively siloed. Email for business will live for a while due to inertia, but not for personal use.
My kids only use various apps to contact their friends.
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So what? Email is useless for contacting my kids friends because they do not use it.
Why do you want to contact your kid's friends? You one of those creepy parents?
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Your post sounds great except for the flawed premise about the Internet. Governments have been walling-off; censoring and monitoring what people can on both the Internet and Web for more than a decade now.
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I don't understand your point. I did not suggest the Internet was a cure-all. I said that the decentralized and free nature frustrated many typical government control techniques. But the majority of users have voluntarily centralized.
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I think the real takeaway is that most people don't care about liberty as much as we like to tell ourselves they do. We all make a lot of trade offs, and the inconveniences required to take the liberty side of many of these trade offs just isn't worth it to most people. My threshold for inconvenience is higher than most, but I still lean toward convenience in most cases, if I'm honest with myself.
I know one solution! (Score:4, Funny)
I know! Let's have the FCC create a new rule banning such apps. In the name of "net neutrality" or some kind of "equality".
And we'll denounce those opposing such a rule as being a corporate whore and a crazy Libertarian.
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Freedom. Is there an app for that? (Score:1)
I'm very much for freedom, but I understand that implies permitting others to throw their own freedom away if they so choose. Let them handle the consequences. Just as long as freedom remains an option, meta-freedom is a reality - and that's fine for me.
I value others' privacy enough not to demand access to their walled gardens. I value the network effect enough not to want
Mobile Slashdot Eats My Browser (Score:1)
It's probably more of a Chrome issue than a Slashdot issue, but when I navigate to Slashdot with the Chrome browser on Android, it appifys Slashdot. The Chrome browser screen morphs into an 'app' format where the URL and the surrounding widgets of the browser disappear and I am in a sort of a Slashdot Ap. This happens on a number of other sites, presumably the ones that are 'well integrated' and 'mobile.'
It's kind of frustrating when you want to, for instance, save a link by simply cutting and pasting the
Waiting on the opinion ... (Score:2)
Waiting on the opinion of the Ludite Apps guy - he's /.'s expert on this matter so we should abstain to further comment until he gives us the insight :)
Most apps are obvious end runs around ad blockers (Score:5, Insightful)
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... The run of the mill bank app wants access to your camera, contacts, and anything else it can reasonably get away with ...
That's just icing on the cake. They can generate extra revenue from gathering and selling user data like every other app does. The whole mobile ecosystem is completely fucked.
Bank app needs camera for check deposit (Score:2)
Without camera access, a bank's app can't scan the front and back of paper checks you receive to deposit them to your account. I don't know about contacts, but that might be related to a "Send Money to Friend through ACH" feature. Or should features that need specific permissions be delegated to specific other apps that the bank's main app launches, such as an app that only makes check deposits or an app that only sends an ACH?
Ahhh propinquity (Score:2)
Actually does this benefit Google? (Score:2)
According to new data from ComScore, more than half of all time Americans spend online is spent in apps -- up from around 41% two years ago. It's a stat that will be discomfiting to advocates of the open web, as well as companies whose core business is built around it -- notably Google.
This is why Google offers Android free to hardware manufacturers. Does Google benefit from this trend? They are no longer competing on an open playing field, they now provide the playing field. Their core business of targeted advertising would seem to benefit.
Search is not Google's cornerstone anymore (Score:1)
Facebook, ebay, YouTube, and Netflix (Score:2)
Article stopped short of being truly informative (Score:4)
Which is to say (Score:2)
Lock Screens are Devouring the Open Web (Score:3)
Where is AppApp Luddite Guy? (Score:2, Insightful)
You had one job, appy app troll guy. You have failed! The one time your damn posts would have actually been close to topic. No, it's too late now.
HTML is not dead yet (Score:1)
Hypercard lives!
How well does Slashdot work on mobile? (Score:2)
Honestly I am not a fan of web apps as a whole. For web pages it is just fine but I like native code running on my cpu and the data can be in cloud when needed. Why should I need to have a network connection to look at my appointments?
Sure sync then to a sever but keep them local as well.
What I hate more ... (Score:5, Insightful)
What I hate more than Apps that access content that is also accessible via web sites are Web Sites that look and feel like Apps.
Or web sites that force me to load the mobile version (even after I several times manually fixed the URL), luckily there is a trick on Chrome at least to force them to deliver the desktop version.
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Blame Google - they forced sites to go 'mobile friendly' or drop in the search rankings, thus screwing all the desktop users.
One man's walled garden... (Score:2)
Alternatively, calling apps a "walled garden" is stupid.
That's Just The Cycle (Score:2)
So now a near-universally deployed platform that you can target for real development. Should it be a surprise that we do so?
This again? The people have spoken. (Score:2)
My, how we forget history.
When Apple first launched the iPhone, they did not include the App Store, or any other sanctioned way to run apps besides the defaults. They originally tried to sell people on the idea of HTML5 browser-based web apps as the future. And everyone, including Slashdot and the rest of the tech press, threw a collective hissy fit over it. This, of course, is what launched the jailbreaking community and the Cydia store. The people having spoken, Apple launched a revised iOS plus the A
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No, I didn't demand this, but you're right, far too many did. Apple caved way too easily, and the last great hope of web apps as first-class citizens died with HP's knifing of PalmOS, where *all* apps were web apps, meaning it was even possible to replace the dialler, address book, etc...
Damn, I miss Palm - there's no question that the basic capabilities of Contact Management, Scheduling, and integration with my PC (through Palm Desktop, which was actually quite good) was far better on my Palm Pilot in the
sounds like a good way for (Score:2)
Because Javascript is fail (Score:2)
Trying to solve everything with Javascript was a recipe of failure. The work to make a unified byte code (WebAssembly) is great but should have happened a few years ago. People wanted more robust, fast, and dynamic content which these "gated" apps filled the void of.
Wait what? (Score:1)
Does anyone know of an app that has useful information that isn't on the web?
Most people are locked into their apps playing games, youtubing, or facebooking. They aren't out creating content. There is nothing useful being lost. If anything the quality of stuff available on the web is improving.
Some people still want to be famous, some still want to help others, some want to show off their talents/skills, stores still want to reach the most people. So the "open" ability to find information will exist .. beca
Apps are the new websites - like it or not (Score:1)
Apps solved the monetization problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
For years, companies wanted, but struggled, to generate revenue on the web. They couldn't. There was just too much friction for the average user in pulling out a credit card, typing in details, then remembering logins and logging in over and over again, not to mention tracking all of their subscriptions to various services.
Apps and in-app purchases are the "micropayments" that were talked about for so long. User provides billing information once, then is able to conveniently pay for content (whether the app or in-app purchases) with a tap or two. All payments and subscription information are centralized and run through a trusted (to the user) provider.
This is why companies have gone there. Because it's where they were finally able to generate sufficient user acquisitions to sustain an online purchase/subscription model, for the most part. Companies go where the money is, and it wasn't on the web.
Wow. Just. Wow. (Score:2)
Starting in ~2013 I worked 18 months developing several apps for android and kept thinking, "Holy hell this app model is so fucked." I kept pushing for responsive frameworks in the browser instead of iOS/Android app ports that consume double (triple!) the amount of resources, but nope, all three companies were unanimous in having an app.
This data just blows my mind. I've been away from it for over a year and thought it would decrease.
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Just like the 1980's where people needed hardware particular ports of the software for every platform. Which then caused Microsoft to be become dominate a decade later.
The web did more to equalize OS than anything else. As your browser will run the hosted application no matter what deskto OS and Server was being used
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"and the much smaller one still gets a lot of software development."
And they can't compete because they don't get the apps.
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Re: Fragmentation (Score:2)
Except the fact that JavaScript absolutely SUCKS ASS on mobile platforms. Go ahead, just TRY going to walmart.com using Chrome under Android to see whether a store near you has something in stock. It'll choke, stall, and metaphorically flop around on the ground like a soon-to-be-deceased fish.
Anybody who makes a web site that's entirely generated via JavaScript and ajax & consists of pages with nothing besides a single placeholder html tag deserves to get beaten to a pulp.
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But muh Single Page Apps... How am I supposed to remain fashionable if I don't use SPA frameworks?! All the other apps are doing it, they're all going to laugh at me!
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The web will evolve or devolve further with Web Assembly, HTML 5.1 and even HTML 5.2 (what the hell is that for?)
I hope someone will have the idea to, you know, call it done?
Even then, getting rid of all the old phones locked to Android 4.1 or 4.4 or iphone 4 etc. will take a decade!
Then we'll merely have to work with stuff that assumes 2x or 15x the performance that your hardware and software can achieve. e.g. someone makes a 3D earth program in Web and laughs at you because you don't have a Shizzbang M9X
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You're right, they just include intrusive spyware in the app itself and call it a day. At least that way they get the juicy data inside instead of hackers.