Wouldn’t you like to have stuff you read on mobile devices seem to load instantly? Facebook and Apple sure think so. Now so does Google, which appears likely today to announce plans for what will be positioned as an open standard solution, probably with Twitter’s backing. And we’re live blogging it all.
Google is holding a press breakfast in New York City today. The invitation subject line was, “Introducing a new open initiative for the mobile web.” That seems to be all about the rumored speedy loading initiative.
If you’re here just for the live blog, scroll down. But if you’d like some background, then read the next sections.
The Push For Speed
Back in May, Facebook launched Instant Articles, a program with a handful of news publishers designed to make their articles seem to load instantly to people within Facebook. That expanded to more publishers last month.
Meanwhile, Apple’s latest iOS 9 mobile operating system that came out last month introduced Apple News, which is designed to load articles super fast for users of that app.
Google’s Worry Over Walled Gardens
What’s wrong with fast? Well, if you’re Google — which earns a lot of money off people reading content on the web — it’s worrisome that two chief competitors have programs offering that same web content at higher speed and without your ads. If you’re Twitter, it’s also worrisome that people may get frustrated trying to read content that seems slow to load in your app, even if it’s more an issue with the sites themselves.
Back to Google, a common strategy whenever the company feels behind in an area is to declare a new open source effort. Open Social! Open Handsets! And now, it seems Google’s going to be all about opening up a way for everyone to be faster loading on the web.
The Plan As We Know It So Far
Most of what we know so far has come from some excellent posts over at Recode. It may involve serving up cached web pages. Those pages will carry the same ads publishers already have. The New York Times and The Guardian are already signed on (of course they are; what news initiative don’t they do?). Most important, it’ll all be positioned as an open standard that everyone can use.
You can expect some pushback, of course. Facebook and Apple can claim (and do, like this from Facebook) that they both rely on some common standards already, such as RSS (though Apple’s promised Apple News Format will be unique). Both also let publishers run their own ads, if they want, and keep all the revenue from those. By the way, for more about the programs direct from the sources, see this from Facebook on Instant Articles and this from Apple on Apple News.
The Live Blog
That’s the background. Now it’s time to hear what Google, and probably Twitter and perhaps other organizations all have to say. Stay tuned — we get started at 8:30am ET, if all goes according to plan.
No comments:
Post a Comment