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Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

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Re: Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

#281

Post by Someone1234 »

reitanqild wrote: post #241
saidajigumi wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a phpBB forum, meaning I won't find what I'm looking for anyway. I'll have to disagree on this point. There are a lot of phpBB forums out there, and their quality and content varies widely as the Internet itself. Many of them, esp. some of the long-established ones, are invaluable sources for all sorts of arcana. Wikipedia doesn't even begin to touch the kinds of obscure practical knowledge embedded in the "dark we…

+1 on the discourse: Is anyone using it, like at all, except discourse? I have been waiting since it came for it to become a place for everything that Stack Overflow bans (non trivial questions that need discussion, "how can this be done in an elegant way" etc). And: Can someone please please create a new stackoverflow that rewards solving problems instead of going full Daesh in destroying old artifacts, enforcing du…

I tried to use Discourse but the hardware and software requirements combined would have meant a $20+/month VM rather than a $10/month VM:

- Dual core CPU recommended

- 1 GB RAM minimum (with swap)

- 64 bit Linux compatible with Docker

- Postgres 9.3+ (2 GB RAM min?).

- Redis 2.6+

- Ruby 2.0+ (we recommend 2.0.0-p353 or higher)

Ultimately I wound up putting PHPBB with a different skin back on the server, since it just requires MySQL, PHP, and any web server.

Plus Discourse has a lot of strange features (e.g. auto-mod promotion) and it feels like it is still in beta based on the feedback they get on their own forums.

And don't get me started on the docker-based setup. If you want a local native install (no docker container) well, you cannot. Docker or nothing.

The whole product feels extremely convoluted and over-engineered.

Re: Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

#282

Post by drzaiusapelord »

neoCrimeLabs wrote: post #71

This is a little curmudgeonly, but this is how I feel... If your developers are not capable of making your website mobible friendly in 2015, any app they develop is likely worse. This is especially true when your app demands access to everything on my phone even though it doesn't need any of it to function.

Actually I see this as a monetization issue. As site visitor all I have is your IP address and typical user-agent stuff. That doesn't get me much money.

In the world of apps, I can fool you into giving up your location (or on android just sample it as needed without the end user knowing) and other privacy stealing tricks I can resell to advertisers and marketers. I can also embed ads right into my application and have IAP to make even more money.

Until the mobile platforms fix these issues, there will be a financial incentive to push apps over pages. That's the elephant in the room here.

Re: Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

#283

Post by michaelmrose »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #210
reilly3000 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never actually taken the bait. What is the app like?

I must be in the minority but the Tapatalk app seems okay to me. It takes the cruft and ads out of the forum you are on and just presents you the content in a relatively stripped down format. Maybe my use case is out of the ordinary compared to a lot of HN, I use it for a single forum that I am an active member of, and I can't recall the last time I googled something and was redirected to a result that was a forum en…

I think people aren't complaining about the quality of the app. Rather we dislike the fact that when clicking a link to a forum we are forced to decline to install their app before we can view what we are looking for.

Personally I close the page.

I really hope the creators of tapatalk go out of business.

Re: Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

#284

Post by ianstallings »

stcredzero wrote: post #165
roasm wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're suggesting that you can make something as usable on a mobile browser as you can with a native app. That's just not true; if it were, there wouldn't be any native apps. For many use cases (games, highly interactive experiences, camera or microphone using app, etc.), a native app may just be better, and guiding users there might be a better experience and a better conversion funnel. Yes, you can make a website m…

Often, the native app is just as bad or worse! At least the just-as-bad native app didn't soak up your time and bandwidth!

If that were the case no one would ever install native apps. But the reality is given the choice, most people will use the app. I know this is a fact because mobile is my bread and butter. But if you need some evidence just go look at any of the analytics data that's out there. The majority of time spent on mobile by a user is using an app, with a much smaller percentage of time using the browser.

Re: Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

#285

Post by copsarebastards »

jacquesm wrote: post #37

Does that mean they'll block youtube? Try playing a video on a phone that does not have the youtube app installed, it's just about impossible to get it right, it's a roulette that's rigged with more than half the links going to the youtube app page on google play. Highly annoying since there is no reason why the youtube page of some video should even have that app installation link at all.

God I hope so. Along with penalizing YouTube for throwing JavaScript errors because they can't figure out how to connect to the Chromecast correctly.

Re: Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

#286

Post by abritinthebay »

alkonaut wrote: post #258
abritinthebay wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since they switched to Docker based installs it's incredibly easy For you. A developer. The average deployer of a PHPBB forum clicks a button on their cheap host and sets the options in the admin page. They don't even have the foggiest idea what Docker even is.

It's not very easy for an average developer either. I have worked 12 years as a developer, know my way reasonably around linux, and find docker about as easy to understand as chinese.

in what way? I totally understand being bewildered by it at first but once you start with it it's a lot easier to get to grips with than many things in the Nixverse.

I just had to create our Docker setup at my work, basically from scratch (and I'm a front end dev) and if I can, you can :)

How can I help you grok it?

Re: Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

#287

Post by alkonaut »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #275
alkonaut wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tapatalk splash is a sure sign of a phpBB forum, meaning I won't find what I'm looking for anyway. Close tab. I can't believe those forums don't just migrate to Discourse.

You're saying the underlying platform somehow has some bearing on the quality of the users and the content? Don't get me wrong, I agree phpBB is outdated but well-established, long-running forums are a goldmine of information.

No. That's not at all what I'm saying (as is obvious from my further replies). The content is useless unless you can find it.

Edit: actually, it CAN have a lot of influence on the quality of the content. Ever found a phpBB thread with dead images because the user hotlinked them? Discourse downloads them and replaces the urls with the locally cached ones, ensuring the images are there in five years. That's just one example.

Re: Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

#288

Post by x0x0 »

stcredzero wrote: post #161
kuschku wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And, even worse, when trying to play the video on youtube on mobile, I often get "this video is not available in embed mode, please click here to go to youtube, and it reloads the same page -.-

Are mobile devs not eating their own cooking anymore? I can't do anything on a smartphone anymore, outside of some very well worn ruts, that doesn't involve encountering some annoyance like this somewhere between twice an hour to every other minute.

Of course not. Have you tried using twitter via mobile web? Stuff is broken all the time. They clearly view the site as leadgen for their applications.

Re: Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

#289

Post by x0x0 »

gizmo686 wrote: post #106
jbigelow76 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what about an OS vendor that "curates" a particular default browser and destroys a competing browser provider in the process? I seem to remember that happening a few years back. It's not so much the curating that's the problem, nobody would care if Duck Duck Go did it, the problem is with the regulators that view Google to be the only curator out there.

Against whom is Google being anti-competitive with this move. How should we prevent this move from being illegal, without specifying what metrics Google is and is not allowed to use?

If google where to just use bounce rate as a ranking measure, that's fine -- if interstitials increase bounce rate, then site owners will have to determine for themselves whether it's worth the price. otoh, deciding to arbitrarily lower the rank because they don't like a particular type of advertising is exactly anti-competitive.

So ranking measures derived from user behavior: great. Ranking measures designed to prioritize features in your browser, or to push people away from apps (that, just by total happenstance, your dominant competitor does better than you, and which threaten to undercut your dominance in search/display ads): not fine. Which really is classical antitrust: you can't use your monopoly (search) to juice your other businesses (browser, app store).

Re: Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

#290

Post by bduerst »

kuschku wrote: post #279
bduerst wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome didn't catch on at first - they had to advertise the shit out of it on TV because nobody knew what a browser was. Seriously, look up "Dear Sophie" to see how many awards it won. Google doesn't do TV, so that's not a monopoly.

Their TV ads were mostly ignored, but most people ended up accidentally clicking one of the Chrome ads, and then actually tried it out. There were days where every single YouTube preroll ad was for Chrome, every side ad was for chrome, every ad in the bottom of the video was for Chrome, every single ad served by AdWords was for Chrome, on Google.com were ads for Chrome in the top right with an animated arrow, there w…

And you know this how?

When they launched chrome, the browser wars had long since been won. Everyone who knew what a browser was had installed firefox, and everyone else thought IE was the internet. Just because you ignored the ads doesn't mean the general public did. It sounds like you're being biased.

If you're going to attribute Chrome's growth to "accidental clicks on ad manipulation" instead of the massive awareness campaign, you're going to need to provide proof.

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