WSJ: "The Web Is Dying; Apps Are Killing It"

[engine]

How may times have we had this kind of article.

There's no question that Apps are changing the way we do things. Just remember that i found the article through the web!

The other issue is that walled gardens, as they put it, are fine, but, what if you want to get to a wider audience!

The Web—that thin veneer of human-readable design on top of the machine babble that constitutes the Internet—is dying.Tech's Open Range Is Losing Out to Walled Gardens [online.wsj.com]

[Evanburt]

No I don't think so... apps are not changing the trends..

[martinibuster]

The underlying issue is that FREE is not a business model.

[lucy24]

"I never go to Site X any more. I just use the app."
"How did you find out about App X?"
"Uh..."

[martinibuster]

I meant to say... free is not a business model but Internet users have come to expect information and services for free. Walled gardens aren't so successful because of that expectation of free. The web is in somewhat of a crisis but it's not because of apps. It's because free is not a business model.

[lammert]

Apps are what they are, just "applications". I have had applications for my DOS, Windows and *nix boxes for many years and no-one has ever thought to compare them with the Internet. Applications are programs to perform a specific task in a specific environment, that's all. Those principles have nothing to do with the Internet. Apps for some OSes like IOs and Android may be distributed mostly on the internet through stores, but that doesn't make them the equivalent of the Internet, nor the replacement.

The only valid point from that article I see is that time spent with apps is not spent on the Internet. But time spent watching television is also not spent on the Internet, so what is the point?

[lucy24]

Those principles have nothing to do with the Internet.

A lot of websites have an app which essentially does the job of the website. So you can either fire up Mobile Safari and go to example.com, or you can open the "example" app and do all the same things while eliminating the middleman.

[lammert]

Yep, just as I can either start my local word processor, or use the cloud version. In the past I only used locally installed word processors, spreadsheets etc but now about 50% of my documents are processed online. Does this mean that I have released myself from the walled gardens of locally installed software and am now free on the net? Hardly. Only the interface changes somewhat, but it doesn't have anything to do with the Internet itself.

Can you say that the web is dying due to apps? Using the same reasoning I can say that the web is more alive than ever due to the desktop applications moving to the cloud, making proprietary software which once could only be used on a desktop with a specific OS, now available to all systems through a browser.