Dear Google,
I just used Google on various mobile devices (i.e. a Nokia 6600, Sony w800, and Motorola RAZR V3) to search for my service WINKsite.com. Rather than link to WINKsite directly the results instead link to a reformatted version that in Google’s words is “adapted for mobile phone”.
You’re assuming way too much power in hijacking WINKsite and replacing it with your own version. The 15-screen, bastardized version of the site that you deliver is not even close to what WE want to deliver or what our audience expects to receive. Let me explain.
From my perspective, the issue is not that Google unilaterally strips away eye candy only to deliver a hodgepodge of text on mobile devices. It is that you remove user access to mobile-specific services on which ours and many other businesses are based. By default, your actions censor those of us who provide a unique and/or useful mobile experience.
The mobile web and its proponents were in place for years before Google “discovered” the mobile web and started to hijack it. Individuals, small development teams, and companies that respect and value the mobile audience provide mobile sites and services designed for that audience. With a bit of browser detection, WINKsite and others send these visitors to either mobile optimized versions of their sites or even mobile phone-specific services. Google mobile web search intercepts and overrides that detection, context, and delivery. I question your right to do that and without permission to create a derivative work. (At Mobhappy Google’s tactics are questioned for other reasons – Who Gave Google Permission to be the Judge and Jury of Mobile Content?.)
Google’s actions cripple every truly mobile web site that its search uncovers, violating the copyright of each and reducing all of them to a lowest common denominator that sets the mobile web back ten years. “Do No Evil” requires that you stop now.
Dave Harper
Founder, Wireless Ink
P.S.
Scott continues the conversation with “Garbage 2.0 In, Garbage 2.0 Out“.
[...] An Open Letter to Google: “Page adapted for mobile phone?” Please stop now, you are crippling sites, not adapting pages.: “ [...]
[...] It started off last week with Russell Buckley and his Who Gave Google Permission to be the Judge and Jury of Mobile Content? article at Mobhappy, followed by additional insights of Dave Harper in An Open Letter to Google: “Page adapted for mobile phone?” Please stop now, you are crippling sites, not adapting pages on his Different Things blog which initiated Jason Coleman from Mobilicio.us to explain about his app – and its relation to Google Mobile, at the mobilicio.us blog and over at m-trends.org. [...]
[...] Different Things building life 2.0. one world. no borders. 2 billion connected citizens. « An Open Letter to Google: “Page adapted for mobile phone?” Please stop now, you are crippling sites, not adapting pages. [...]
[...] There is some talk recently (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) on some blogs about sites like the Google Wireless Transcoder, Skeweezer and other similar services that take as an input a URL and they output a more mobile-friendly version of that site so it can be rendered faster and easier by a mobile browser. There are a lot of site owners who are very pissed about this because they say that these services are messing up with their copyrights and their financials because the ads are removed in the process. [...]
[...] Mobile transcoders have not been too popular with webmasters and content providers but Mowser is attempting to change that by giving site owners unprecedented control over how their transcoded site looks in Mouser. By adding a few meta tags headers (see the Mowser blog for details) to your site you can: [...]