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Apps Are Devouring the Open Web (businessinsider.com)
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.
You don't like that word? I don't see any problem with it, seems like it was used correctly.
Okay, I admit it. I did not know that was an actual word.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
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.
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 allow you to write multi-threaded JavaScript--with, of course, limitations (e.g., no shared memory).