The End of the World As We Know It?

Posted On: 2015-06-24

I love seeing people come out and make bold statements about what the future holds for the Internet.

Sometimes those bold statements include supporting facts and it's not hard to see that maybe what the person making the statement has to say may occur in the future. Sometimes those bold statements are based on nothing more than a delusional hunch or a gut feeling or the fact that a company did something that is "obviously" going to change the world as we know it.

The latest bold statement appeared on Search Engine Watch overnight. The author of that bold statement declared that web sites were dead and we're just wasting our time if we continue working on web sites because the day of the app had arrived. So what facts did he base that amazing assumption on?

Nothing more than the fact that Google and Bing have begun looking at ways of indexing the content in apps and Google has "quietly" acquired a startup that has produced a way for basic information contained in an app to be loaded before the whole app loads.

But, according to the author of that bold statement, that's all we need to know that the signs are there that web sites are dead. And because websites are dead we should all immediately stop wasting our time working on websites and start building apps and learning how to optimise them for the search engines.

Even though his statement is based on a very limited amount of information he suggests that we're nothing but Luddites if we don't immediately rush to follow his lead.

Of course the future of the Web is in apps; that's why the average person has around 20 apps on their phone but only uses six on a regular basis. So if the future of the Web is in apps then how the hell are all the billion plus websites that are currently online going to compete for one of those 20 spots?

So if the future of the web is in apps and web sites are dead then what are people going to do for all the other information that they search for every day on the web? Are they going to have to download an app every time they want to find some information that is outside those 20 or so apps they have on their mobile device?

If I want to go on holidays to some exotic place in Patagonia would I really want to download an app to get tourist information or would it be more convenient, more user friendly and more likely for me simply to go online and look at several websites that could tell me everything I wanted to know on a big screen that was easy to look at?

As someone tried to point out to our prophet of doom, small mobile devices tend to be used by people who want instant and simple information. For more involved information people go to their tablets and desktop computers because it's easier to search for information using those bigger screens and you don't need apps because mobile friendly websites are already there and we don't have to download anything.

Of course every time someone looks at a web page they download it but people don't see it that way. It's not the same as downloading an app because you download the whole thing with an app whereas you can choose which pages on a website you look at.

And then there is the issue of load time; a web page should, and usually does, pop up quickly while an app can take minutes to download and people do not like to be kept waiting.

Then there are the things that people want to enjoy but want to be a little discreet about. Who wants to have a porn app on their mobile phone when every member of the family thinks it's ok to grab a phone and start flicking through the screens to see what the owner has on it? So you want an app on your phone for a porn site or something like Tinder? I think not.

To be fair to the guy who made that bold statement perhaps we shouldn't totally dismiss what he had to say. I'm sure that there is a chance that one day apps will be far more important than they are now but, if they were ever going to be the website killer that he says they will be, they are going to have to overcome the 20/6 issue I mentioned and I can't see that happening any time soon.

Sure Google and Bing might index them and Google may be able to develop a way of showing just basic information that it has sucked out of an app but who wants to stuff their phones full of apps that they will only use once or twice?

This is not the end of the world as we know it and it's not the end of websites either but if some people want to rush off and build stuff that people don't want then that's fine by me. We should just pat them on the head and let them wander off into their own little fantasy land while we get back to work on what really does make us money.