Wednesday, July 04, 2012

Why is Google encouraging people to move away from Web and towards apps?

I was rather disappointed that Google is discontinuing iGoogle, but outright shocked that they're suggesting using a selection of apps to replace it.

I use iGoogle to get an at-a-glance overview of what has updated since I last checked. I can see the subject lines of any new emails in my inbox, the titles of new articles in my Google Reader, the headlines of news articles on topics for which I have google alerts set up, the current weather and whether there's a thunderstorm alert, plus a few fun things like word of the day and joke of the day and daily puppy. Checking whether anything needs my attention takes about 5 seconds and can be done anywhere with internet access (at home, at work, at a friend's or relative's house, and on my ipod anywhere where there's open wifi).

To do this without iGoogle, I'd have to log into Gmail and Google Reader separately, scroll through Google Reader (and mark anything I wanted to read later as unread), get my news alerts delivered to my email and open each email separately - it would probably take at least 5 minutes to verify whether there's anything that needs my attention.

Using apps would not only be less effective, but it would also be detrimental to Google's primary mandate of indexing and making accessible the world's information because, as I've blogged about before, information contained in apps is ungoogleable. It seems to me that goggle would want information to be on the web and accessed through browsers, because then it can be indexed and searched. Information on a website accessible through a browser can easily be accessed by people with mobile devices, but information in an app is in a silo and can only be accessed by people with specific devices.

I can't imagine what Google is thinking with this decision. It seems like blind trend-following, and I can't see any benefit to them or to us.

4 comments:

laura k said...

It's very disturbing. The massive trend towards apps is terrible for information sharing, indexing, retrieval, findability, etc., as you say. I've also blogged about apps as information silos.

This is exactly the opposite direction we should be going. And because Google controls such vast amounts of information, it's that much more detrimental.

I guess controls is the operative word here.

impudent strumpet said...

I've never understood why people/organizations who provide all their content via the web even want to have an app at all. The vast majority of apps, I'm like "Why does this exist?" That thing that tells you what song is playing is useful, and I've used apps to read ebooks on my ipod and to play games, but if you're a news site or something with all your content on the web anyway, why even bother?

And I don't understand why Google seems to be turning its back on regular computers in favour of tablets etc. Apart from perhaps very casual users who are mostly receptive, the need for computers isn't going to go away. I'm not about to start translating and writing and doing serious gaming on a tablet! This move is like of the 411 people decided to completely disregard the existence of landlines.

laura k said...

I've never understood why people/organizations who provide all their content via the web even want to have an app at all. The vast majority of apps, I'm like "Why does this exist?"

I agree completely. I think companies like them because they can control your experience more. You're in a silo instead of a web. And maybe they think consumers are moving towards apps (mobile devices, tablets) so they think they have to do it keep up.

The movement towards tablets also seems ridiculous to me. They are toys - maybe great toys, but still toys. Who is going to do serious work involving language and writing without a keyboard?

impudent strumpet said...

Also, I just realized that most Google employees are programmers, so they'd need to be using real computers all day. You're not going to program on an iPad! Why would people sitting in a Googleplex full of people who need to spend hours at a regular computer want to completely write off users of regular computers?