No need to slippery-slope this one. Google have been very consistent about ranking exclusively based on UX quality. Once they actually decide to rank based on something else, then we can start raising a fuss about it.
Until then, the snark seems unwarranted, though I agree that there's good reason to be concerned: they definitely have a lot of power here, despite not having seemed to abuse it yet. That seems like an interesting conversation to have, especially in a more substantive format.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I have wondered this myself. Between punishing sites that are not mobile responsive and this move I wonder if their motivations are partly fueled by the fear that mobile users are spending more times within native apps and not enough time on the web.
As you can read here their response to the EU antitrust lawsuit http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/14/internal-google-memo-respon... google makes the argument that users spend a lot of time inside apps. I would expect they are worried about the ability for users to go directly to content and bypass search from which they make money.
I'm not sure which side of the fence I fall on. The web is arguably a more open technology than native apps but the experience in a native app is often better.
> Between punishing sites that are not mobile responsive and this move I wonder if their motivations are partly fueled by the fear that mobile users are spending more times within native apps and not enough time on the web.
I think its more driven by the fact that more of Google search traffic comes from mobile, so its more critical that the results provide a good experience on mobile.
True, again if users are getting good results through google search they they are less likely to jump directly into the app, bypassing google advertising. Content producers in turn want to take advantage of google search as a way of directing users to their content so they optimize their mobile sites and don't focus solely on apps. The result is a feedback loop that is good for both Google and the user.
I think you're right that Google are worried about users moving to a market where they're not relevant. That's why Google have made a point of becoming relevant: they have a mobile OS, a mobile app market, and a mobile app ad platform.
If people move away from web and toward Google's mobile properties, then they're probably pretty okay with that.
If they move toward Google's mobile properties I would expect they're okay with that. I think Google loses a degree of control over the user once they enter the app even if they are able to advertise. They can't require app makers to put ads into critical locations in the app but they can certainly do that in their search results. Google also doesn't have quite the monopoly over the app market that they do over search.
True. This is probably one of the big reasons that they're trying to make native apps more spiderable by search engines: they want Google Search to continue to be the Internet's entry point, regardless of what app you're using afterwards. That hadn't clicked with me yet - interesting!
