Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

Chrome app -> youtube.com (no prompt to install/switch to YouTube app, simply redirects me to m.youtube.com) -> search video -> play (which plays out of chrome and does not switch). The whole process is exactly how I'd hope/expect it to be.

I've exclusively used Youtube through the chrome app instead of the Youtube app because a few years ago I found that the search results were significantly worse/more heavily filtered through the Youtube app for some reason and never used it again.

double scary since it seems google is in a position now to steer (or probably 'make it better for users', in their view) the whole www just by tweaking page ranks

The EU investigation committee is going to love this.

I'll have to disagree on this point. There are a lot of phpBB forums out there, and their quality and content varies widely as the Internet itself. Many of them, esp. some of the long-established ones, are invaluable sources for all sorts of arcana. Wikipedia doesn't even begin to touch the kinds of obscure practical knowledge embedded in the "dark web" of phpBB forums. There are a lot of Google searches for which a single post by some domain expert is the top result, many of which in old, old forum software of some sort, usually phpBB.

FWIW, I've never once run into a Discourse forum in the wild, i.e. via a web search, site link, etc.

Maybe my use case is out of the ordinary compared to a lot of HN, I use it for a single forum that I am an active member of, and I can't recall the last time I googled something and was redirected to a result that was a forum entry that redirected to a Tapatalk ad (99% of my google searches end up at stackoverflow or blog entries).

Google is claiming to do this to improve user experience, however:

- they do these exact ads on every site they have

- they arent stopping other interstitials so sites can be just as annoying on the first page

- a site with great content should not be penalized for the site's own choices on ads

- they're forcing a change that affects everyone else except them

The PR signal doesnt match the execution. It's a monopolistic move and raises questions about their involvement in so many layers of the ads/web stack.

Not always, apps give them the ability to have push notifications plus the fact that having the app icon in your app tray is a constant reminder of their service.

They're basically a new kind of pop-up window, an annoyance that you have to click away.

I don't remember browsers only blocking certain kinds of pop-ups based on content, they just see if it wasn't initiated by a user-action, it'll get blocked.

I suppose for Google there may be some reasons why they want to block the app-interstitials (I guess because they want to encourage keeping the content they index on the web, not in an app?), but even then, that's still no reason not to punish the other types of interstitial just as much. Trying to make the distinction is just making it harder on themselves, they will occasionally get it wrong, or people will complain that their interstitial shouldn't be punished because it is (somehow) not quite about the app--making the criteria a bit broader seems like it's easier for Google and better for the users?

It's not so much the curating that's the problem, nobody would care if Duck Duck Go did it, the problem is with the regulators that view Google to be the only curator out there.

It could be hard to argue that an interstitial pushing an app (especially an app specifically for the site the user is visiting that gives them enhanced features compared to the mobile web version of the site) is more annoying, distracting, or otherwise harmful to a user than any other kind of blocking interstitial.

Thus, one might try to conclude that Google's actual interest here is trying to keep users from using apps to access content instead of using the web site where Google is more likely to be the ad provider.

I have no idea if this could rise to the level of an antitrust violation, but it's the first place I'd look for one.

In the context of forums though, its entirely true and accurate.

If we were talking about apps, as in things that require more than an internet connection to work, I would agree with you.

Just because you can make it an app, doesn't mean you should.

http://mobile.weather.gov/ would disagree with you.

When it comes to websites that try to force their app upon you when visiting their mobile website, my experience has almost always bee n the application is as bad as, if not worse than, the website's functionality. This gets to my point that if your developers are not capable of building a decent mobile friendly website then they are probably not any better at building an app.

Also I hinted at the fact that in many cases these apps appear to be designed to track users and invade users privacy. Why else do so many need access to contact lists and more when their functionality doesn't remotely require it.

Also they only want to stop full page ads pushing to download the app, not any other full page ad.

I certainly can't argue that it does yield positive business results under certain scenarios, but for the average user it seems to injure common web experiences.

The Hotwire Android app was the first one I noticed doing this, raising notifications unrelated to actual use of the app (e.g. for bookings). If they have a general promotion, like "fall sale" or something, they push a notification to a targeted subset of users. In their case there isn't even an option in the app settings to opt out of the notification spam. Yelp was the second app I found doing this, but they at least have an opt-out in their settings menu. For apps that don't, you can entirely revoke their notification privileges in the central Android settings, but I doubt the average user knows how to do that.

My dislike for playing whack-a-mole with this kind of nonsense is why I don't install apps anymore (outside a few trusted exceptions, like Wikipedia's app), and just use mobile websites.

Don't give a fuck. If I wanted your shitty app, I would have gone to the Play store and installed it. If I want to go to your website, then I want to fucking go to your website. Don't be a bag of rancid dicks and redirect me.

> 2) It's a solid retention strategy.

[Citation Needed]

We could choose to drop the interstitial as a matter of principal or on the assumption that the difficult-to-quantify long-term benefit will pay off later, but we'd have to make that decision not in the absence of data, but actually in opposition to the data.

Or let Google make the decision for us...

Can you provide an example of an app that is infinitely better than its mobile website?

If you can just provide one example, and not any of the tech giants. One example where there's a "mobile web experience" as you put it, and a native app.

"So we're making them, and we're penalizing any dealerships that are still selling black cars."

If people move away from web and toward Google's mobile properties, then they're probably pretty okay with that.

I think its more driven by the fact that more of Google search traffic comes from mobile, so its more critical that the results provide a good experience on mobile.

> If a browser feature is annoying you, the correct approach would be to disable that feature in the browser.

Yet when some of us shut off Javascript - a feature that is often annoying, enables many kinds of tracking, and occasionally creates serious security problems - half of HN freaks out. Given that Javascript is necessary for many types of surveillance-as-a-business-model, hostility to the idea of disabling javascript is expected.

Push notifications are still a newer feature, but once that feature becomes entrenched enough that some people's profit depends on the feature, disabling push notifications in the client will be regarded with similar hostility.

That means it will most likely end up in some antitrust trial.