6 ms·

Google to change its policy on mobile apps. Native apps to come.

40 points by barredo 16y ago

rchowe 16y ago
Google already has some great native apps (the google app and google voice for iPhone). They seem to only use native apps in cases where some functionality isn't available in the browser, e.g. push notifications or accelerometer control and speech to text.
- zeedotme 16y ago
  agreed, but it seems that's going to change and native apps (even when the functionality is available in the browser) are on the way.
  - rchowe 16y ago
    Well, what this means is that they expect the bump they get from being listed in the app store over using web apps to be pretty significant (which I believe it will be too).
ericmsimons 16y ago
This is a good step forward. It was a mystery to me why they weren't deploying native apps across all platforms; mobile web just doesn't give you the same feel and functionality.
dotBen 16y ago
As much as I'm a proponent of HTML5, the bottom line is that much of the functionality Google might want to provide is not going to be available at the browser/javascript layer. Another reason Google has shunned Apple native apps in particular is because of Apple's clear reluctance to accept them given Google's dominant position (case-in-point: Google Voice). If Eric Schmidt is being lined up to become Apple's next CEO then it would be a smart move for Google to pre-empt a more favorable Apple era towards Google
- rodh257 16y ago
  Do you have any examples of the functionality that is not available to the browser? Specifically ones that would be required by their current web applications? Only one I can think of is offline caching.
  - dotBen 16y ago
    Access to dialer and address book (google voice type apps) Access to camera (Picassa, google goggles, etc) ...to name two. Caching, as it happens is available on html5... Gmail for iPad is cached locally.
    - rodh257 16y ago
      They already have native apps for goggles and voice though I don't they, I meant apps that would be affected by this announcement. Reader, etc
- loewenskind 16y ago
  >If Eric Schmidt is being lined up to become Apple's next CEO Why on earth do people keep expecting this? Apple's success comes from their fantastic design sense and their leading support. Schmidt gets a bad grade in both those areas. Apple has other people already in the company that could do a better job than Schmidt.
  - dotBen 16y ago
    I agree, which is why it would make more sense to leave the visionary stuff to folks like Jony Ive and have Eric Schmidt run the company. (Ive is hardly a CEO type) Schmidt's job at Google was to provide "adult supervision" to Larry and Sergey, and keep on top of the executive functions of a publicly listed company. There is no reason to assume he wouldn't do a good job at that with Apple, leaving folks like Jony to be visionaries.
Pewpewarrows 16y ago
Interesting to hear this right around the same time that Facebook announces devoting more resources to HTML5 because of the challenges involved in deploying updates to several different native mobile apps.
- wallflower 16y ago
  If Facebook really wanted to "relieve" itself of the burden of maintaining native apps on everything from Blackberry to WinMo, they would open source the apps. Of course, this would require giving the public dev community access to internal Facebook/hidden APIs. There could be some really interesting apps if they weren't sandboxed into the restrictions of Facebook's public APIs. Giving more access cedes control and gives arms to spammers and hackers. Since a vocal minority will cry foul and presumably rally support (create a Facebook fan page) if an existing native app like WinMo was dropped, it is a smart long-term strategy to converge to HTML5. Google's strategy is to get more people using their apps, period. There must be an order of magnitude (or more) difference in how many people play Angry Birds instead of Google Mobile version 0.7.3.5675
  - joe_the_user 16y ago
    Uh, can you give any references to "hidden" Facebook APIs? Being in the process of currently developing a Facebook app, it seems to me the entire graph is exposed. The only question is permissions and Facebook's willingness to change APIs on a very regular basis (that is a dicey question but rather different). But "hidden" APIs?? You can find an open source Facebook library here: http://gitorious.org/qfacebook http://gitorious.org/qfacebook as well as many other places for different languages.
    - wanderr 16y ago
      There are most certainly hidden APIs, there are things that YouTube and Yelp are allowed to do, that you just can't do through any of the publicly documented APIs.
      - 16y ago
jackowayed 16y ago
Finally. Sticking with HTML5 for most stuff was a good idea in theory. It uses less resources (and they already have tons of people that can do JS and HTML), promotes HTML5, means they don't have to deal with Apple's BS, etc. But the apps were awful (at least as of May, when I switched from iPhone to Android). They felt unnative, had annoying UX at times, and generally sucked. Plus there's a lot of APIs that webapps don't have access to. The one issue for Google is that those shitty apps might have convinced some people to switch to Android, where the Google apps are perfect. It definitely was a factor in my switch.
magicalist 16y ago
anyone else read the linked wsj article http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703554204576112723686094898.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870355420457611... and think this is just google hiring more native app developers? considering that google already has a bunch of native apps (wsj says 20), the whole "vs html5" thing seems a bit much. the only interesting part seems to be the "autonomous but with google's resources" development model.
- cpeterso 16y ago
  Google's Android NDK (Native Development Kit) had been mostly bare-bones libc (and utility libs) for writing optimized C code to be called from Java/JNI. But NDK Revision 5 (December 2010) includes new native APIs for application framework and system APIs that were previously only available to C code through JNI, such as window surfaces, event loops, and sensor data. http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html
wslh 16y ago
At least...
yarone 16y ago
optimize for the user
awakeasleep 16y ago
Anyone have any thoughts on the "Many small apps including games" bit of this article? Sounds like Mr. Page may have started taking steps to encourage more entrepreneurial spirit in Google. Can you imagine how fun some of those projects will be?
tezza 16y ago
I've had an integrated google search app for my Nokia E71 for more than 1 year. http://www.google.com/mobile/nokia-s60/ http://www.google.com/mobile/nokia-s60/
omaranto 16y ago
For apps that don't need special access to hardware and that can therefore be written as web apps, whether a web app or native one would be better depends solely on execution. On my iPod Touch there are 4 big examples of things I prefer as web apps just because the available native ones aren't as good: Gmail, Google Reader, Facebook and Hacker News. (Well, Gmail doesn't count maybe: I mostly use the built-in mail app, but find the web app much much better for searching and about equally good for normal use.) I guess Google itself might make a better Google Reader native client than the web app, but currently all of the 3rd party native clients have some annoying minor problem: some don't have zoom for images, some don't have a "Like" function, some don't display TeX formulas in wordpress math blogs properly, one bizarrely turns the entire text of arXiv feeds into a link; none of the native apps works perfectly on my feeds. As for Facebook, the native app is not bad but it's noticeably slower than the web app and only let's you like status updates not comments on them. I mainly use the web app but do have the native app to upload photos on occasion (on my previous, camera-less iPod I only used the web app). Hacker News native apps probably suffer from a lack of API, so maybe it's not fair to mention them, but if one worked properly I'd probably use it. I used to use Michael Grinich's app (I hope I'm remembering his name correctly), but recently it won't let me comment. That together with it being much slower than either actual HN or iHackerNews, made me go web.
lutorm 16y ago
The apps I use most on my N1 is gmail, maps, voice and talk. All native apps. I don't know what they are talking about Google "staying clear of native apps on mobile devices"?

40 points by barredo 16y ago

Google already has some great native apps (the google app and google voice for iPhone). They seem to only use native apps in cases where some functionality isn't available in the browser, e.g. push notifications or accelerometer control and speech to text.

zeedotme 16y ago
agreed, but it seems that's going to change and native apps (even when the functionality is available in the browser) are on the way.
- rchowe 16y ago
  Well, what this means is that they expect the bump they get from being listed in the app store over using web apps to be pretty significant (which I believe it will be too).

ericmsimons 16y ago

This is a good step forward. It was a mystery to me why they weren't deploying native apps across all platforms; mobile web just doesn't give you the same feel and functionality.

dotBen 16y ago

As much as I'm a proponent of HTML5, the bottom line is that much of the functionality Google might want to provide is not going to be available at the browser/javascript layer. Another reason Google has shunned Apple native apps in particular is because of Apple's clear reluctance to accept them given Google's dominant position (case-in-point: Google Voice). If Eric Schmidt is being lined up to become Apple's next CEO then it would be a smart move for Google to pre-empt a more favorable Apple era towards Google

rodh257 16y ago
Do you have any examples of the functionality that is not available to the browser? Specifically ones that would be required by their current web applications? Only one I can think of is offline caching.
- dotBen 16y ago
  Access to dialer and address book (google voice type apps) Access to camera (Picassa, google goggles, etc) ...to name two. Caching, as it happens is available on html5... Gmail for iPad is cached locally.
  - rodh257 16y ago
    They already have native apps for goggles and voice though I don't they, I meant apps that would be affected by this announcement. Reader, etc
loewenskind 16y ago
>If Eric Schmidt is being lined up to become Apple's next CEO Why on earth do people keep expecting this? Apple's success comes from their fantastic design sense and their leading support. Schmidt gets a bad grade in both those areas. Apple has other people already in the company that could do a better job than Schmidt.
- dotBen 16y ago
  I agree, which is why it would make more sense to leave the visionary stuff to folks like Jony Ive and have Eric Schmidt run the company. (Ive is hardly a CEO type) Schmidt's job at Google was to provide "adult supervision" to Larry and Sergey, and keep on top of the executive functions of a publicly listed company. There is no reason to assume he wouldn't do a good job at that with Apple, leaving folks like Jony to be visionaries.

Pewpewarrows 16y ago

Interesting to hear this right around the same time that Facebook announces devoting more resources to HTML5 because of the challenges involved in deploying updates to several different native mobile apps.

wallflower 16y ago
If Facebook really wanted to "relieve" itself of the burden of maintaining native apps on everything from Blackberry to WinMo, they would open source the apps. Of course, this would require giving the public dev community access to internal Facebook/hidden APIs. There could be some really interesting apps if they weren't sandboxed into the restrictions of Facebook's public APIs. Giving more access cedes control and gives arms to spammers and hackers. Since a vocal minority will cry foul and presumably rally support (create a Facebook fan page) if an existing native app like WinMo was dropped, it is a smart long-term strategy to converge to HTML5. Google's strategy is to get more people using their apps, period. There must be an order of magnitude (or more) difference in how many people play Angry Birds instead of Google Mobile version 0.7.3.5675
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  Uh, can you give any references to "hidden" Facebook APIs? Being in the process of currently developing a Facebook app, it seems to me the entire graph is exposed. The only question is permissions and Facebook's willingness to change APIs on a very regular basis (that is a dicey question but rather different). But "hidden" APIs?? You can find an open source Facebook library here: http://gitorious.org/qfacebook http://gitorious.org/qfacebook as well as many other places for different languages.
  - wanderr 16y ago
    There are most certainly hidden APIs, there are things that YouTube and Yelp are allowed to do, that you just can't do through any of the publicly documented APIs.
    - 16y ago

jackowayed 16y ago

Finally. Sticking with HTML5 for most stuff was a good idea in theory. It uses less resources (and they already have tons of people that can do JS and HTML), promotes HTML5, means they don't have to deal with Apple's BS, etc. But the apps were awful (at least as of May, when I switched from iPhone to Android). They felt unnative, had annoying UX at times, and generally sucked. Plus there's a lot of APIs that webapps don't have access to. The one issue for Google is that those shitty apps might have convinced some people to switch to Android, where the Google apps are perfect. It definitely was a factor in my switch.

magicalist 16y ago

anyone else read the linked wsj article http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703554204576112723686094898.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870355420457611... and think this is just google hiring more native app developers? considering that google already has a bunch of native apps (wsj says 20), the whole "vs html5" thing seems a bit much. the only interesting part seems to be the "autonomous but with google's resources" development model.

cpeterso 16y ago
Google's Android NDK (Native Development Kit) had been mostly bare-bones libc (and utility libs) for writing optimized C code to be called from Java/JNI. But NDK Revision 5 (December 2010) includes new native APIs for application framework and system APIs that were previously only available to C code through JNI, such as window surfaces, event loops, and sensor data. http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html

wslh 16y ago

At least...

yarone 16y ago

optimize for the user

awakeasleep 16y ago

Anyone have any thoughts on the "Many small apps including games" bit of this article? Sounds like Mr. Page may have started taking steps to encourage more entrepreneurial spirit in Google. Can you imagine how fun some of those projects will be?

tezza 16y ago

I've had an integrated google search app for my Nokia E71 for more than 1 year. http://www.google.com/mobile/nokia-s60/ http://www.google.com/mobile/nokia-s60/

omaranto 16y ago

For apps that don't need special access to hardware and that can therefore be written as web apps, whether a web app or native one would be better depends solely on execution. On my iPod Touch there are 4 big examples of things I prefer as web apps just because the available native ones aren't as good: Gmail, Google Reader, Facebook and Hacker News. (Well, Gmail doesn't count maybe: I mostly use the built-in mail app, but find the web app much much better for searching and about equally good for normal use.) I guess Google itself might make a better Google Reader native client than the web app, but currently all of the 3rd party native clients have some annoying minor problem: some don't have zoom for images, some don't have a "Like" function, some don't display TeX formulas in wordpress math blogs properly, one bizarrely turns the entire text of arXiv feeds into a link; none of the native apps works perfectly on my feeds. As for Facebook, the native app is not bad but it's noticeably slower than the web app and only let's you like status updates not comments on them. I mainly use the web app but do have the native app to upload photos on occasion (on my previous, camera-less iPod I only used the web app). Hacker News native apps probably suffer from a lack of API, so maybe it's not fair to mention them, but if one worked properly I'd probably use it. I used to use Michael Grinich's app (I hope I'm remembering his name correctly), but recently it won't let me comment. That together with it being much slower than either actual HN or iHackerNews, made me go web.

lutorm 16y ago

The apps I use most on my N1 is gmail, maps, voice and talk. All native apps. I don't know what they are talking about Google "staying clear of native apps on mobile devices"?