Apps Are Devouring the Open Web (businessinsider.com)

Posted by msmash on Monday September 5, 2016 @02:41AM from the app-attack dept.

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.

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Discomfiting by Calydor · 2016-09-05 02:46 · Score: 3, Interesting

Really. Discomfiting. That just ...
Sigh.
On topic, how much of this information is actually siloed away, and how many of these apps are just a browser wrapper a la the Facebook app?

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1. Re:Discomfiting by ShanghaiBill · 2016-09-05 07:14 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  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.
  The problem is that, while people will pay for an app, almost no one will pay for web content. So I can make an app and feed my family, or I can put the same content on the "free web" and starve.