Back on August 17, 2010, Wired Magazine published an article proclaiming that “The Web Is Dead, Long Live the Internet“, pointing to data showing consumers having increasingly used mobile apps to view content instead of a mobile web browser.
That is, they used a YouTube app to search for videos instead of running a search inside a mobile web browser. The same for using an Amazon app to find a book, a Yelp app to find a good restaurant, a weather app to get the forecast.
The idea is that mobile web browsers will be a thing of the past, and that people will install 100+ apps on their phones to serve every aspect of their lives.
Imagine installing 100+ web browsers on your laptop? You could install a special web browser just for finding good books. Another one just for finding good restaurants. And another one that only does weather forecasts. Imagine having other web browsers for gardening tips, recipes, classified ads, etc.? Would you really want 100+ specialized web browsers on your laptop?
Of course not.
So why do Internet marketing experts think that you want 100+ specialized apps on your phone?
They don’t.
Rather, they WANT you think it’s better. Brands want you to install their app because they get more control over what you see. If you happen to buy a lot of stuff from Amazon.com, then it makes sense to install their app. You’ll use it a lot. And that’s what apps were meant for, to specialize your browsing for the things you care most about.
But no one wants a bunch of apps they rarely use. Yet, that’s what brands want. They love having their logo display on your phone, even if you never tap on it. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, are making money pre-installing apps that you never use and cannot uninstall. These apps have effectively become advertisements.
If you do a Google search for “mobile browsing is dead“, you’ll find hundreds of articles making the same announcement since Wired’s bold proclamation in 2010. These were written by Internet marketing experts because their clients are brands who have apps, and they don’t want to upset them. It’s an industry painting a reality that isn’t reality.
Yet, I continue to use my mobile browser more than any other app. Even when I use Facebook, I use the mobile web browser instead of their app. I do have Yelp’s app installed, because I happen to like using Yelp. Otherwise, I don’t have many apps installed. If I need something, I’ll use the mobile web browser.
That’s not to say that everyone else feels the way I do. However, have you met anyone who loves “app clutter”? Do you know someone who loves running out of storage and out of battery?
The other thing is that consumers have become even more concerned about privacy. They prefer to discover the world through one mobile browser because it’s convenient to have privacy settings in one place. Meanwhile, most third-party apps don’t offer privacy control, and no one wants to manage their privacy across multiple apps.
In light of Facebook’s app, which apparently is secretly recording audio from your phone to better determine which ads to show you, app security is a big deal.
And that’s a big reason why mobile web browsers will continue to thrive.
