Big Picture Advertising pointed to an entry on the Google Blog that I must have missed first time around.
If you use your mobile to search for something with Google and then click through to that site, they’ll very helpfully repurpose the site, so that it’s mobile-friendly. Here’s the before and after screen shots.
This seems a neat idea and you wonder why Google haven’t made more of it somehow.
But then, think what they’re doing. They are taking a website and deciding what you should see. And that includes taking out advertising too.
For a publisher, or a content owner, this is pretty hard. For the most part, online publishing is all about selling ads round the content. Any publisher who needs to make money from his site (ie they are a business) has to sell those ads, or the site will disappear - it’s that simple. So by stripping these ads out, Google is effectively depriving publishers of income. You can’t argue (like Google News) that you’re sending traffic to sites by offering a taster of the content. They are simply taking traffic away from exposure to the publisher’s advertising.
Once you’ve crossed the moral boundary of stripping ads out, it’s not such a stretch to consider putting your own ads in. Indeed, Jason Calacanis already got upset with a company called Skweezer, for doing precisely that about a year ago. But for a small start-up to be doing it is one thing - revenue loss would be negligible - but for Google to go down this route, is potentially a huge issue.
Google has clearly made a decision to influence every publisher’s site on the mobile internet. Who asked them to do this? Shouldn’t we have a discussion? How do other publishers feel about it?
Contrary to popular belief, the mobile internet is already pretty big and growing daily. This is clearly something that needs to be addressed as a matter of some urgency.
—–>Follow us on Twitter too: @russellbuckley and @caaarlo
[...] An article “Who Gave Google Permission to be the Judge and Jury of Mobile Content?” in Mobhappy caught my attention this morning. In another stroke of why didn’t I see that, Russell Buckley discusses how Google is now determining what mobile users can see with their mobile phones. . But then, think what they’re doing. They are taking a website and deciding what you should see. And that includes taking out advertising too. [...]
Heh. Russell, I can’t believe it, but I think we may have finally found a topic on which we disagree.
I’ve written about this a few times in the past, and I think publishers need to learn to accept services like this on the basis that many users, obviously, WILL find it to be a better way to read Mobhappy and other sites.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050118/0115200_F.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050225/1226205_F.shtml
The question of whether it’s taking money from the publisher isn’t the same black and white as you describe. If I’m on a mobile device with a small screen and a slow connection, I may simply avoid your site altogether if I can’t get the stripped down version. Google’s providing a service by making your content more accessible — and that’s what keeps loyal readers. At some later point they’ll come and visit in the full browsed version.
The real issue is what the user wants — and if the user wants to see the content that way, then why not let them?
The response, of course, is who lets Google decide — but that’s the wrong question. It’s the end-user’s decision how they view content these days, NOT the publisher — and that means that you should be happy that anyone, whether it’s Google, Skweezer, some adblocker or whoever else are making it more likely that your content is being read.
As publishers online, we all need to come to terms with the fact that sometimes our content will be used in ways we don’t want — but as long as it may improve the customer experience, in the long run, that’s better for everyone. How do you know that someone viewing the mobile version through Google doesn’t get impressed enough to pass on Mobhappy to others, or get a reporter at a major paper to link to it, or whatever. Don’t worry about the marginal ad impressions — worry about the bigger picture of keeping your readers happy. If Google’s mobile versions add value, then it’ll come back to benefit you in the long run.
Well, Mike, it had to happen some time. I hope we can still be friends
Actually, I much more concerned with the principle than anything here. If I thought my site was getting a lot of access via mobiles, I’d make sure that the site was optimised myself and get rid of any graphic-heavy ads - not that we have any anyway.
That assumes that Google or some other intermediary doesn’t strip out my text only ads.
But I think it’s a dangerous thing for one commercial organisation to have the right to change how my site is presented to my readers. It opens the door for censorship, fundamentally. Supposing Google didn’t care for this post and removed it? Supposing, it decided that it didn’t like Carlo’s writing at TechDirt and refused to display any?
Removing ads is the thin end of the wedge in my view, but if that becomes a rallying call for publishers to wake up to the potential of this, so be it. While it might seem hard to envisage the current Google indulging in censorship for commercial or ideological reasons (well, apart from China then), they are a business. And I hate to imagine a world where one of the most powerful companies and chief custodian of facts and information suddenly starts to dabble with censorship.
Maybe this is naive. The media has always been bias and news and opinion is censored according to the whim of the owner and editor. But at least we had a choice of what to read. If one organisation becomes the distorting lens through which all media is read, surely that’s a bad thing?
Russell
Two thoughts:
(1) It’s a HUGE leap to go from cutting out ads to censorship. If Google were censoring, blame them for that. However, don’t blame them for the potential to censor if they haven’t done it.
(2) If they actually did censor, the backlash would be swift and fierce. The community power that we all embrace would be quite harmful to Google. So, I believe that the market is self-correcting for things like that. If Google actually did something nasty here, and it didn’t make the user experience better, they would get slammed for it.
They’re trying to make the user experience better — and if someone benefits from that, you should be happy.
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one, Mike.
I really don’t like the idea of some other company deciding what I can show on my website. I also don’t think that removing ads is such a big leap from censorship at all - it’s already a form of censorship, albeit with the best of intentions. Big changes start with little ones and we should resist at this stage - or at least debate if we want this kind of thing.
As an example, CCTV cameras are so prevalent in London that the average person gets filmed 70 times every day. Did anyone want this? Was there a debate? No, it started with one camera and no one protested, so more and more and more were installed.
Now it’s too late, we’ve got them. I’m not suggesting that they’re a bad thing. But it wasn’t a democratic process.
Google’s motives might be pristine and pure and they might always be ruled by cool and froody people. The debate over them changing other people’s websites might end up with everyone agreeing with you - and that’s fine. I can see your point and I 45% agree with it actually. People might also think that “real” censorship does not logically follow too and that’s also cool, but at least they will have had a chance to think about it before it’s imposed on them.
I just think we should all have a say in the process and Google shouldn’t just do it.
R
[...] Also, don’t miss this weeks’ interesting discussion going on at Mobhappy on Who Gave Google Permission to be the Judge and Jury of Mobile Content? [...]
Heh. Ok. I guess I just don’t see the censorship angle because no one is forcing anyone to use Google. If you feel that Google is causing too much trouble for you, then you can block them.
Also, not quite sure I get the CCTV argument. If no one wanted them, they wouldn’t be there. The issue is that many people (gov’t/businesses) did want them. The privacy issue for users is an important externality, but there’s no viable way to think of that they could have ever stopped it. So, the real issue is making people aware that the cameras are there, and to consider ways to deal with that fact.
Anyway. I understand your position — and I’m sure many, many people agree with you. I just think there are better battles to fight, and this is one where embracing someone else making your content better (for some) seems like a better solution to me. But, there are plenty of people who consider me crazy.
I agree with Mike M. 100%!!
OK Sarah, fair enough, that makes two of you
What does everyone else think?
All I actually want here is to debate it, rather than accept it as a done deal. Maybe Mike is right. Maybe they have the perfect right to change other’s content, without asking.
But a “please” would be nice, don’t you think?
Come on, everyone - you’ve got to have an opinion on this one. Even if it’s “Google is right”. Loose your comment virginity here
Russell
I imagine that this would certainly be an important issue for website owners. There is a bit of a precedent here though. Several browsers offer pop-up advertising blockers, which also block a website’s advertising. Google mobile is a similar case in point, where the browser blocks a certain type of advertising because it’s adventageous for the user. Web sites that do see a lot of mobile traffic will have to adapt, which means making the ads more “mobile friendly” whether that be using more text ads rather then graphic-heavy ads, or by figuring out a way to embed the ads so that the browser doesn’t recognize them as ads. Welcome to the next Internet advertising arms-race!
Dear Publishers Who Complain About This:
I don’t want to see your ads, whether I’m on my phone or at my desk. If you can’t run a business without advertising, I don’t think you should bother. You are trying to get the public to believe that your service will disappear if you don’t sell ads, but that’s a whitewash. There are so many things you could do to cut the costs of operating your website. For starters, how about reformatting your website to meet modern web standards? That would cut your bandwidth bill in half.
You should also stop trying to convince me that you are in business to give me content, and that the ads are somehow an inseparable part of our relationship. You are not in business to keep me informed about world events; you are in business to make money from advertising. Content is just a carrot to get people to your site and click on Flash banner ads.
So, in summary, I am very pleased that Google removes your tasteless ads. Maybe one day you will wake up and realize that advertising sucks. Until then, I will keep on clicking “printer-friendly” as soon as the page loads, and install every ad-blocking Firefox extension that I can find.
Ken - thanks for the comment.
I’m not sure it’s the same thing though.
Firstly, pop ups are manifestly evil
Seriously, they’re horribly intrusive and no real marketer in their right mind could ever defend this type of rubbish.
Secondly, in this scenario it’s the user’s choice. The user can always choose to view site without images of any kind and that’s fine - no debate needed.
What I object to is an unauthorised third party unilaterally deciding how other company’s websites should be displayed.
But yes, you are right. We must adapt our design to accommodate mobile. But as I’ve said in the debate already, what’s to stop Google or any other player changing the “mobile friendly” design again?
Russell
Some Guy
I think I’m just going to pretend that you’re right. Well done. Great argument.
Russell
“I don’t want to see your ads, whether I’m on my phone or at my desk. If you can’t run a business without advertising, I don’t think you should bother.”
Mentioned this to Google yet?
[...] I was in an earler post pointing out the fact that Google mobile search was really the web viewed by Google on your mobile phone thanks to their proxy solution, as any site viewed through their search engine would be transformed to fit your mobile phone. It’s cool technically but from the publisher/content owner side it might not feel the same. According to mobhappy Google could very to strip adds from a site and put their own. For a publisher, or a content owner, this is pretty hard. For the most part, online publishing is all about selling ads round the content. Any publisher who needs to make money from his site (ie they are a business) has to sell those ads, or the site will disappear - it’s that simple. So by stripping these ads out, Google is effectively depriving publishers of income. You can’t argue (like Google News) that you’re sending traffic to sites by offering a taster of the content. They are simply taking traffic away from exposure to the publisher’s advertising. [...]
the web is hackable! so, if you were to extend the same argument more … how good is greasemonkey?
The only solution I see is either the publisher come up with a eml page for mobile providers or doesn’t crib for such solutions as anyway - the page would be completely no browsable on the mobile!
Mike,
I’m pretty appalled at your take on this. Google is already clearly censoring, and they are arguably using monopoly power in one market to gain dominance in another.
Google is already censoring all well designed mobile sites. We haven’t heard a peep, never mind the “swift and fierce” backlash that you assure us would happen. When Google reprocesses a web site for mobile phones, they deceive the originating web server about the nature of the device making the web page request. The web site specifically misled by Google as to what sort of device is making the request.
If a publisher has built web facilities that differentiate Nokia phones from Samsungs from Blackberries, Google bypasses those facilities entirely. If the publisher has different information to communicate to offer owners of different mobile phones, or from different carriers, or based on whether it’s day or night at the location of the user, Google censors it out — every minute of every day. [For the nerdier ones here, it's user agent spoofing by proxy on a huge and evil scale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent#User_agent_spoofing ]
Secondly, this quote of yours is simply untrue: “If you feel that Google is causing too much trouble for you, then you can block them.” You can’t block Google from finding you on the mobile web without blocking them from finding you for desktop users too — which isn’t viable for hundreds of thousands of small e-commerce and informations business that depend on AdSense or organic search to survive.
What Google is doing on mobile becomes illegal the minute they are proved to be a monopoly, which will obviously take years. The extension of economic power from one sector to another is very dangerous for companies as dominant as Google to do this sort of thing. For a example, please take another look at the EU cracking down on Microsoft’s bundling media players into Windows.
Google is verging on monopoly power with their market share in paid search. With as important as the mobile industry is to the European economy (and with the current US administration’s unwillingness to limit industry in any way), I’d be suprised if the EU doesn’t take up this issue within a year or two.
I hope the Greenhouse is going well,
Scott
[...] The mobile web and its proponents were in place for years before Google “discovered” the mobile web and started to hijack it. Individuals, small development teams, and companies that respect and value the mobile audience provide mobile sites and services designed for that audience. With a bit of browser detection, WINKsite and others send these visitors to either mobile optimized versions of their sites or even mobile phone-specific services. Google mobile web search intercepts and overrides that detection, context, and delivery. I question your right to do that and without permission to create a derivative work. (At Mobhappy Google’s tactics are questioned for other reasons - Who Gave Google Permission to be the Judge and Jury of Mobile Content?.) [...]
[...] In general with Google Mobile Search, rather than “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” Google is making truth of a spoof in The Onion: “Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can’t Index.” Excerpting a comment that I made on MobHappy’s recent Who Gave Google Permission to be the Judge and Jury of Mobile Content? Google is already censoring all well designed mobile sites. When Google reprocesses a web site for mobile phones, they deceive the originating web server about the nature of the device making the web page request. If a publisher has built web facilities that differentiate Nokia phones from Samsungs from Blackberries, Google bypasses those facilities entirely. If the publisher has different information to offer owners of different mobile phones, or from different carriers, or based on whether it’s day or night at the location of the user, Google censors it out — every minute of every day. (For the nerdier ones here, it’s user agent spoofing by proxy on a huge and evil scale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent#User_agent_spoofing ) [...]
“If a publisher has built web facilities that differentiate Nokia phones from Samsungs from Blackberries, Google bypasses those facilities entirely”
If true, this is a disaster. These kind of facilities are very costly to build and are currently the ONLY way of ensuring a consistent and positive user experience for visitors to your mobile website, regardless of handset type. Most serious mobile websites are hosted by specialist service providers such as Volantis whose entire business is based on their ability to re-purpose the content on the fly according to the type of handset accessing the site.
Hi Russell and all in this thread,
First, excellent posting Russell, on a valid issue about our industry, as is always the case with your excellent blogsite
Secondly, that we all feel a frustration with overwhelming intrusion of interruptive ads to our worlds, should not be confused with what Google is now doing.
You are totally correct, Russell, in that this is a dangerous step that Google is doing. They may be caught on this alone.
What will definitely be totally wrong, is if they offer any ads on a service where they remove the existing ads. It is like a cable TV broadcaster showing CNN, but during commercial breaks they cut out of the satellite network feed, and without permission simply insert their own cable TV ads. Totally wrong.
I hear you Russell, this is a dangerous step, and we need to be very vigilant about it.
As to comments in this thread that we can select to be without Google ha-ha, that is a bit unrealistic.
Tomi Ahonen
four time bestselling author and consultant on mobile
founding member Forum Oxford, the Engagement Alliance and Carnival of the Mobilists
blogsite http://www.communities-dominate.blogs.com
website http://www.tomiahonen.com
[...] The mobile web and its proponents were in place for years before Google ‘discovered’ the mobile web and started to hijack it. Individuals, small development teams, and companies that respect and value the mobile audience provide mobile sites and services designed for that audience. With a bit of browser detection, WINKsite and others send these visitors to either mobile optimized versions of their sites or even mobile phone-specific services. Google mobile web search intercepts and overrides that detection, context, and delivery. I question your right to do that and without permission to create a derivative work. (At Mobhappy Google’s tactics are questioned for other reasons - Who Gave Google Permission to be the Judge and Jury of Mobile Content?.) [...]
[...] In general with Google Mobile Search, rather than ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,’ Google is making truth of a spoof in The Onion: ‘Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can’t Index.’ Excerpting a comment that I made on MobHappy’s recent Who Gave Google Permission to be the Judge and Jury of Mobile Content? Google is already censoring all well designed mobile sites. When Google reprocesses a web site for mobile phones, they deceive the originating web server about the nature of the device making the web page request. If a publisher has built web facilities that differentiate Nokia phones from Samsungs from Blackberries, Google bypasses those facilities entirely. If the publisher has different information to offer owners of different mobile phones, or from different carriers, or based on whether it’s day or night at the location of the user, Google censors it out — every minute of every day. (For the nerdier ones here, it’s user agent spoofing by proxy on a huge and evil scale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent#User_agent_spoofing ) [...]
We looked at the problem from a couple of specific phones to be sure and google misbehaves in the way I said. Details at:
http://harper.wirelessink.com/?p=81 and
http://rafer.wirelessink.com/?p=44
Thanks everyone for the comments.
Scott - I knew that they had clearly made a decision to alter the content. After all, they’re not stripping out ads specifically, but slow-loading, heavy graphics and unless they’re very clever, this is also going to disable other features of the site.
In my original post though, I chose to focus on ad-stripping as I decided it was more emotive to more people than altering the design slightly. I want some action to happen on this and for Google to explain themselves or at least reconsider what they’re doing.
Unfortunately, this story seems to have petered out within the Blogosphere, even after being picked up by CNN. I think we should all try to reignite it and hold them to account.
A Wannabe David.
One of the problems that has been ignored is “how” would Google display the adverts ?
Most mobile phones have screen sizes smaller than the average banner advert.
Now add in the fact that most advertising is delivered via javascript - which again, most phones do not support.
So - just what was google supposed to do ?
We’re considering working with AdMob, who is already a functioning mobile CPC network. They just give us a WAP hyperlink to insert in our pages. What Google would have to do is get a lot more transparent. They are able to hide who advertises on your web pages with the whole Javascript scheme. AdMob can’t and isn’t trying to.
Google gets to avoid this openness if it’s transcoding and serving mobile pages from third parties who have opted into a network. I suspect they are aware of this.
I’m from a team that just released a beta application called mobilicio.us (http://moblicio.us/www) which can be used to view your del.icio.us bookmarks from a mobile phone and have the links automatically converted using Google Mobile.
We’ve received some negative response to our product based on our perpetuating Google’s attempt to dominate mobile content and have posted an item on our FAQ to address this (http://mobilicio.us/www/faq.php). Of note is the fact that Google offers a way to opt out of this service by contacting mobile-support@google.com.
I’m glad to see that some great discussion is happening here on this and related issues. If you ever happen to change your opinion (of feel we are misrepresenting you) on the matter, feel free to contact us and we’ll remove your name from the FAQ. Thanks.
—
Q: Aren’t you supporting Google in their quest to be the “judge and jury” of mobile content?
A: We don’t agree with Russell Buckley who thinks that Google is out to censor mobile content. It’s obvious to us that applications like Google Mobile are an interim solution which can be useful until a site’s publisher manages to create a mobile-friendly version of their content. Often times, the alternative to viewing the mobilized version of a made-for-monitor website on your phone is to endure grueling download times and fees (if you’re able to view the site at all). If your advertisements are targeting mobile phone users, you should have a mobile-ready version of your site available.
There is a way to avoid Google Mobile’s conversion. Sites which wish to be excluded from Google Mobile’s re-rendering can send a “removal request” by email to mobile-support@google.com.
We also realize that there may be times when you wish to view the unconverted version of a site through Mobilicio.us. For this reason, we are looking for an elegant solution to opting out of using the Google Mobile filter when linking to a site.
—
Jason
Well, actually I do you’re rather misrepresenting me. The phrase “who thinks that Google is out to censor mobile content” implies that I think Google is part of some sinister conspiracy and that’s not what I’m suggesting at all.
I assumed that Google have acted with pure motives (to create a better user experience) without thinking through the issues. The censorship thus becomes the effect of their actions, not the cause.
Further, they acted like this without consulting the content owners, which I think is presumptuous, at best. I do however think that this could create a precedent for future censorship, by Google or by other people and that’s one of the reasons why we should have the debate.
The phrasing also implies that I disagree that this is just an interim solution. Of course, it is. Everything we look at in technology is an interim solution, unless the world ends tonight.
Finally, I think it’s commendable that users can opt out of Google’s version of the web. Though maybe it would be slightly more humble to ask them if they want to opt in in the first place. But why don’t they offer this option to publishers:
“Dear Publisher
We’ve found that many websites are not optimised for the mobile web, which means that they are simply unreadable on a mobile phone. We’ve taken the decision to offer the user an optimising service, but the technology for doing this a a little primitive right now. This means that we sometimes have to strip out important content from your site, which might include graphic heavy advertising or special features that you’ve built in.
The best solution for everyone is for publishers to optimise their own sites for mobile (see Google FAQs for what this involves). But in the meantime, if you’d prefer not to have your site treated like this by Google, please let us know and we’ll opt you out of this experiment.
Love
Google”
So, yes Jason - please either remove my name or get the site to portray my views accurately.
Thanks
Russell
[...] Russell Buckley has written an article over at MobHappy taking issue with how Google is re-purposing pages and asking for the search giant to cooperate more with content providers. Scott Rafer is also speaking out against Google Mobile and (by associate) Mobilicio.us in this article on his blog. [...]
Russell,
We’ve taken the one item in question off of our FAQ and moved it to our blog, which is a better place for the discussion. I’ve updated the wording a bit to hopefully better explain your position on the issue. Feel free to reply in comment on our blog (http://mobilicio.us/www/blog/?p=6) and keep up the good discussion.
Russell — I’m more concerned with them ignoring mobile-specific sites than I am with them providing a subset of sites that are not mobile specific.
Jason — We did as Google requested and asked via email to be omitted from the transcoding. They sent us a note saying that the process was complete about 24 hours later. However, they still transcode and nothing has changed. You are also propogating their misleading FAQ, unfortunately. I’m sure you guys are great, but Google isn’t in this area. Please layer in Yahoo’s mobile search instead.
[...] But surely, a new company, a new media company, would never fall into the same trap, would they? Well, you’d have thought not, but Google is ignoring this story I wrote last week and has been pretty widely quoted all over the Blogosphere. [...]
What a load of moaners.
Have any of you actually tried it? Or are you just repeating what you’ve heard about it?
When I go to Google from my mobile if offers me the usual web search or a “Mobile Web (Beta)” - I nearly always just use the regular web search but I do have a reasonably up to date mobile phone that will browse any web site, not just WAP sites.
There are a few web sites that are so overloaded with ads and JavaScript that they take an age to read, even on a GPRS mobile connection. I tend not to use those.
Steve
Steve
OK, how about if I popped round to your house this afternoon, re-arranged your furniture according to best feng shui principles and chucked out a couple of things in your wardrobe that I don’t think you need any more.
All without asking your permission.
I could argue that you were much better off and that people paid me good money to do this, so what was your problem? Except Google doesn’t even have the apparent courtesy to make any kind of argument in response to protestations.
You would probably argue that this was all very well, but you hadn’t asked me to. And actually you were rather fond of that model aircraft I’d thrown away, as it had taken you 20 hours to build when you were 10 years old.
No one has asked them to change the sites. They didn’t ask first. They won’t talk about it now. And they’re changing sites that are specifically optimised for mobile.
Does this make sense?
Russell
[...] It started off last week with Russell Buckley and his Who Gave Google Permission to be the Judge and Jury of Mobile Content? article at Mobhappy, followed by additional insights of Dave Harper in An Open Letter to Google: “Page adapted for mobile phone?” Please stop now, you are crippling sites, not adapting pages on his Different Things blog which initiated Jason Coleman from Mobilicio.us to explain about his app - and its relation to Google Mobile, at the mobilicio.us blog and over at m-trends.org. [...]
Steve, Russell, and Jason,
Normal users, none of whom would ever come to mobhappy, use the default options on every page they go to. We’re not normal, however, a lot of us have built mobile services for normal human beings which Google is running roughshod over. Russell has even understated the issue in his comment. Google’s re-arranged the furniture in some of the rooms, but they’ve bricked over the doors of the rooms built explicitly for mobile users. It’s as if those years of designing and building just never existed.
Re: my back and forth with Jason, I asked him to give me a call, as I’m getting frustrated by how long it’s taking to express my point this way. His very reasonable email response was “Hi, Scott. If you don’t mind, I’d rather keep this discussion public (on the blogs). I think others can benefit. If you do have something personal to talk about instead, let me know. Jason” I’ll do as he asks, but if any serious podcaster would like to record and publish a conversation between Jason and me — I’d love it.
Jason, briefly looking at your site, you appear to do no browser detection and have built the entire site in XHTML. That’s clearly your choice, and Google Mobile Search will treat you very well. However, your market reach is tiny — very few people on the planet will be able to reliably use XHTML for another year or two. Granted, a huge fraction of delicious users probably have the elite phones and data plans to make XHTML easy for them. Your markup language strategy is very reasonable for your intended audience.
On the other hand, WINKsite and other broadly used mobile sites have users for whom XHTML is completely unreachable. We serve users through 170 carriers each month, all without any carrier deals or marketing. Mobile communities in the Sudan, Benin, Nicaragua, and similar places have been built in our system during the past few weeks. These are people that have very few choices for publishing, free speech, and of course — dating. In a meeting with a VC last week, he translated the Urdu messages in an Islamabad chat room for me. It was an expatriate Pakistani journalist trying to find out what was really happening on a particular issue in his/her home country.
We’ve worked very hard to provide the right online environment to make all this possible. Our engineering criteria is that every new feature has to work well on a half billion phones. That excludes XHTML, J2ME, etc., etc. It leaves WAP and SMS. For Google, which has #1 digital brand on the planet, to make what we do impossible to find for the people that desperately need it falls outside the bounds of “Do No Evil.” I understand perfectly how Google’s brand promise and slick APIs made it easy to overlook this sort of issue at first. After the thousands of words above, can you still do so?
Steve and Jason and Google,
For tens of million worldwide their mobile phone is their one and only pipeline onto the Internet, to the knowledge it contains, and to each other. Their entire “connected” world is what they can publish and consume directly on their phone. By cavalierly denying access to the tools and communities they need is an injustice. By default, the flawed implementation of this transcoding service leaves people out, behind, and without a voice.
Scott,
In what way do they make it impossible for people to use your site or brick over the doors?
Surely it depends on whether people use the new “Mobile Web (Beta)” option or not. If they use the default “Web” search then they should be offered a link to your site exactly the same as if they’d Googled with a web browser.
Steve
Google Should Rethink Their Content Transformation Approach…
On his website, MobHappy, Russell Buckely wrote here and here about Google changing the way content is displayed on people’s phones, without permission. Below is a modified, expanded version of the comment that I left at MobHappy, in response to….
Carnival of the Mobilists No. 19…
Wow, this week we got lots of entries - that’s great. By the end of the year we will need to hire someone to handle the volume!
Let’s begin with Daniel Taylor (The Mobile Enterprise Weblog). In his entry, Blurring the lines between “work” a…
[...] First, on gotomobile, he takes Russell’s recent posts about Google as well as what I wrote about mobile design and some other posts to jump off into a discussion of mobile web browsers, including a series of interesting side-by-side images of how pages are rendered by different mobile browsers. [...]
Steve,
The Mobile Web (beta) option searches content Google thinks is meant for mobile devices. If you use the default search from your phone, it runs all the pages through their transcoder, which causes the issue mentioned here.
So Russell, how long have you been working for Yahoo? http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?section=cm&id=3102 - Methinks Guy’s got it wrong again.
I’m no fan of the Google transcoding as it’s explicitly prevented me from getting to content that works on my phone. Case in point, BBC radio streams, there’s a great site that lists all of the radio streams - http://dave.org.uk/streams/ - I couldn’t remember the url, so I googled for it, I followed the link and ended up at the transcoded version and then tried playing a stream. No go, Google’s server couldn’t cope with the content type, so it refused to send it to my phone, not very useful at all.
Russell and David, I understand your pain and respect your point of view. It hurts me too when I see what Google Mobile does to my site. But to me, this issue is broader than just Google. It’s about transcoding in general which I think is important and useful. I’d hate to see the argument against Google turned into an attack on transcoding in general.
There are a dozens of transcoding proxies, which is essentially what Google Mobile Search is, on the web. There are accessibility proxies which make the web more usable for people with disabilities by converting text to speech or enlarging text. There are language translation proxies like Babelfish. Google’s Language translation and Babelfish produce some abominable English in translated pages but I gladly accept that because without machine translation, I won’t be able to understand a word of a Japanese page, for example. In the same way, a transcoding proxy is the only way I can access some web content on my mobile.
I don’t use services like Google’s mobile transcoder very often because well designed mobile sites provide a much better user experience. But if I want to read the New York Times or Washington Post, both of which have terrible, useless mobile sites, I’ll read them through the Google transcoder. The same goes for Jim Jubak’s Journal on MSN Money, Microsoft doesn’t carry Jubak on their mobile site, and there’s no RSS feed either so if I want to read him on my mobile I have no choice but to use the Google transcoder or Skweezer. There are something like 100 times as many non-mobile sites as mobile ones worldwide so users really do have a need these types of services.
Google’s not alone in this. There are at least eight other services that transcode web pages for mobile use. Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft all have mobile transcoders tied to search. Then there’s Skweezer, Mobileleap, Phonifier, IYHY and loband. Unlike Google, none of these other services even provide an option to search the mobile web at all.
Mobile Transcoding is not new either, Google has been doing it a long time, transcoding to wml, i-mode and PDA-friendly HTML since 2001 and to xhtml-mp since 2003. They have gotten better at it lately, for a long time they srtripped images and didn’t support web forms.
As for Google stripping adds, I think what they are actually doing is stripping Javascript. Static text and static image adds seem to come through fine. Emulating Javasrcipt in a web proxy is pretty difficult. At least they don’t insert their own adds like Skweezer.
I not really defending Google here, they do plenty of evil. I’d like their mobile search to search the mobile web by default with the option of searching the full web rather than the other way around as it does now. I think they should put a link to the un-transcoded page at the top of the transcoded page so users have a choice of reading it either way. I’d like Google to not transcode pages that have a mobile doctype like xhtml-basic or xhtml-mp. That way I could put a link at the top of my pages directing users who come to my site via the Google proxy to my mobile site. Actually, if you put a link to a wml page on your site, Google will redirect users through to the wml page without transcoding. So you could have a link to a wml page that does browser detection and redirects wap2 browsers to your xhtml-mp mobile site.
I think it’s good that we are having this discussion. This is an issue that needed to be surfaced. I’m hoping that out of this sort of dialog comes some consensus for what constitutes ethical and responsible mobile transcoding.
[...] Well nothing changed and the debate continued without any feedback from Google, follow it here, here, here,, here and, here. [...]
A couple of quick ones:
Steve — The crowd here is overly educated enough on these issues to use the “Mobile Web (beta) option” at the bottom of the search form (below the fold on many, many phones), but spreading the mobile web to mere users is the goal we’re seeking to reach.
Dennis — You are technologically correct, but I still disagree. There _are_ certainly lots of transcoders, but none of the others serve more than half the web searches on the planet or have the biggest digital brand on the planet. That makes this situation very, very different.
Google did finally stop transcoding our site [see http://harper.wirelessink.com/?p=82 ], but Russell, DaveH, and me are still going to start a “Take Back the Mobile Web” effort. At Google’s level of market power, transcoding can’t be an opt-out that sorta kinda works.
Jim
Thanks for pointing out Guy’s post. Lots of inaccuracies in there actually, as well as the interesting accusation that I’m Russell Beattie
At least that’s what I assume he’s talking about. But, we never have been seen in the same room, so it might be true.
In the interests of full disclosure, I do have a Yahoo email! account, which I don’t really use, and the sharp eyed will see that Yahoo! ads are served on this site. Not sure why this would effect my opinion and it’s hardly secret as every one can see them. Oh and I have a gmail account and we have used AdWords here. Is that enough disclosure.
Cheers
Russell
Scott, you’ve said “spreading the mobile web to mere users is the goal we’re seeking to reach” but also in the same breath “The crowd here is overly educated enough on these issues”. Well, what about everyone else? At what stage do you *not* want Google to transcode pages?
Without a doubt Google are currently making the mobile browsing experience 200% better for 99.9% of people using mobile devices on the web. For you and people like you they are not because you actually understand these issues, and how to provide better, mobile-specific versions of your sites.
I also disagree your disagreement with Dennis
- if you are against one transcoder, you are against them all. If you are not, your position is ambivalent and you need to make your point more clearly. Do you dispute Google’s transcoder because they are so popular or because of what they do? Would you be happy with transcoding if all online search engines had an equal market share?
Like Dennis also says, I’m no Google fan either, in fact, they scare me in a lot of ways, but your reaction appears to be emotional in some part and not entirely logical.
Russell, your response to Steve is such a misrepresentation of what he said! He said that Google search gives you two options, one of which is rearranged furniture, one of which is as you left it. You *do* get the option. If I don’t want you to rearrange my furniture (whether I realise it’s being rearranged or not), I don’t have to let you. Gosh, I think that’s that metaphor tortured quite enough.
I’ve only read this all very quickly so I sincerely hope I haven’t made any blundering errors in that little diatribe
Phil — if you use Google’s search from a phone’s browser, Google doesn’t give you the option, as I said before. That’s the problem.
The default “Web” option transcodes the pages you click through to (see http://mobile.google.com/web_search.html).
The “Mobile Web (beta)” option searches mobile-specific content (see http://mobile.google.com/mobile_search.html). This search, however, is by no means comprehensive, it’s far from it.
There seem to be two steps Google could take immediately to improve the situation: if a site serves up pages designed for mobile devices via stylesheets, use those pages instead of transcoding full Web pages. Second, make a link that takes users to the original page.
Carlo’s comment is close to right from my perspective. What I’m upset about is censorship and the creation of derivative works in the face of copyright notices that specify otherwise. I’m not a fan of the DMCA whatsoever (please support chillingeffect.org), but Google deciding that they have the right to create a derivative of every single site in their index is arrogant to an astonishing degree.
In practice, what I am demanding is: (1)Google finds a way to respect the user agent handling performed by sites even if they are ignorant of Google’s specifics. Even occasional (see end of this paragraph) spoofing the user agent of the phones in question would be better than the current situation. There is an extra compute expense the first time there is a Google Mobile clickthrough to a web site (or on indexing at their option), after which they can auto-opt-out the mobile-savvy sites and re-check the others every 90 days or so. (2) Where noted in a standard XML format on the indexed sites, observe copyright notices for “no derivative works.” There are many such well-formed notices at this point. If Feedster and Technorati can afford to index them, so can Google.
I have no issues with transcoding when a site owner provides no decent mobile alternative, and they haven’t made their copyright preferences clear.
[...] It is also why we can’t take Google’s mobile site censorship casually. [...]
[...] If you enter the URL into a mobile phone it automatically mobilizes the content so that it is easier to read (which is a plus here, but a disaster on many other websites that have already been optimized by the site’s original authors- and a topic about which I will post on shortly). [...]
[...] I last wrote about this back in March when Google went down this route of removing ads from sites and it proved to be one of the most commented posts I ever wrote: For a publisher, or a content owner, this is pretty hard. For the most part, online publishing is all about selling ads round the content. Any publisher who needs to make money from his site (ie they are a business) has to sell those ads, or the site will disappear - it’s that simple. So by stripping these ads out, Google is effectively depriving publishers of income. You can’t argue (like Google News) that you’re sending traffic to sites by offering a taster of the content. They are simply taking traffic away from exposure to the publisher’s advertising. [...]
[...] Opportunities for entrepreneurs and VCs will come (or have come) at the infrastructure level, like Volantis and tools to take apps like Betfair mobile. Beyond that we need to look for things that are truly different on mobile - not different just because of screen size etc. Location based services/local search is a good example. Advertising might be another - different messages will be appropriate to people on the move and the screen size point is significant here because the advertising is secondary to the main page people are looking at and there simply won’t be enough space for it (see Google strips out ads when it optimises for mobile). [...]
[...] A recent post by Dorrian Porter highlighted an interesting topic raised by Russell Buckley just over one year ago. The title was, ‘Who Gave Google Permission to be the Judge and Jury of Mobile Content?‘ Despite some very informed comments the topic remained unresolved. In order to render certain web pages suitable for mobile devices, Google had cut out some advertising and in some cases added their own. [...]
[...] On a related note, according to The Guardian, Vodafone’s transcoder “tends to strip out adverts”, though an exec insists this is just part of the attempt to “present content from the internet as quickly as possible”. Haven’t we been through this before? [...]