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The last time we were discussing this on HN (wrt Flipkart's announcement), someone posted that this was about walled gardens, which I find to be a compelling ar

The last time we were discussing this on HN (wrt Flipkart's announcement), someone posted that this was about walled gardens, which I find to be a compelling argument. It is far more harder to do price comparisons, and look for same items across websites on a mobile device (switching between apps, copy-paste, no extensions). If retailers can force their customers to mobile-shopping, they retain customers and reduce chances of being second-guessed at prices. There are a lot of Chrome Extensions that do price comparisons and people often cross-browse for the same products looking for discounts. Going mobile-only will discourage this behavior.

vidyesh 12y ago
IMO, this is not just to discourage/avoid the price comparison issue but to mainly circumvent the competition in more of the web/SEO way. Every e-commerce website right now is putting way too much money on PPC to make sure their site pops up for any product you search online. What flipkart/myntra wants to achieve is this; you think of a particular shoe you want to buy. Instead of firing up your browser and see other others offers from ebay or amazon or snapdeal, they expect you to go to myntra app, search for it and buy it. Pulling the desktop site means no such comparison nor any other offers would be shown to you instead you would get it from the app. I am totally against this not just because this sounds stupid to me but kills our freedom of choice. I and you are smart and patient enough to browse around but not many new smartpone users would be and might just buy it from Myntra no matter the price. Especially if Myntra starts coming pre-installed on devices ( which I think would be their next move )
- mkagenius 12y ago
  Ah, this makes total sense now. The SEO thing is what made them ditch the desktop version. Hope that this Searching becomes as easy on phones as it is on desktop and nullify their smartness :)
- sriku 12y ago
  This makes sense. Another thing I noticed is that once an app is installed on your phone, it acts like an always present advert. In other words, apps are now the equivalent of having an "icon on the desktop" in the old world. I really suspect that the reason they're doing this is not because discovery through the app is great, but because repeat purchases through the app is great. That would be a good reason to throw marketing money at "install our app and get this coupon" schemes.

vidyesh 12y ago

IMO, this is not just to discourage/avoid the price comparison issue but to mainly circumvent the competition in more of the web/SEO way. Every e-commerce website right now is putting way too much money on PPC to make sure their site pops up for any product you search online. What flipkart/myntra wants to achieve is this; you think of a particular shoe you want to buy. Instead of firing up your browser and see other others offers from ebay or amazon or snapdeal, they expect you to go to myntra app, search for it and buy it. Pulling the desktop site means no such comparison nor any other offers would be shown to you instead you would get it from the app. I am totally against this not just because this sounds stupid to me but kills our freedom of choice. I and you are smart and patient enough to browse around but not many new smartpone users would be and might just buy it from Myntra no matter the price. Especially if Myntra starts coming pre-installed on devices ( which I think would be their next move )

mkagenius 12y ago
Ah, this makes total sense now. The SEO thing is what made them ditch the desktop version. Hope that this Searching becomes as easy on phones as it is on desktop and nullify their smartness :)
sriku 12y ago
This makes sense. Another thing I noticed is that once an app is installed on your phone, it acts like an always present advert. In other words, apps are now the equivalent of having an "icon on the desktop" in the old world. I really suspect that the reason they're doing this is not because discovery through the app is great, but because repeat purchases through the app is great. That would be a good reason to throw marketing money at "install our app and get this coupon" schemes.