Reader Evan Brown writes to point out that Google has set up a search
engine for sites that display correctly on cell-phone screens. But it's more than that. Google is not restricting
results to sites formatted by their owners; Google is doing the reformatting. My personal site, for example, appears in
the search results as a text document with HTML formatting stripped out, and I certainly never did that. I'm not
complaining, either, but I wonder about yet another example of Google disregard for the property of others; surely, at
some future point, some Webmaster or corporation is going to litigate against Google's appropriation and redesign of
its site. What if the site owner explicitly does not want to appear on cell phone screens?
Google Local works in mobile too; users type keywords and location words as if on a computer. Google reformats the
results.
Google Mobile Search
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. If a website's Terms of Use specifically stated that a 3rd party service may not strip HTML formatting, surely Google could be sued.
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by SEO articles
3. Google Mobile Search is already quite popular and the future is limitless. Web design and development teams need to accomodate mobile browser compatibility issues to ensure that their page design remains as close to traditional HTML web browsing as possible.
Design teams need to create mobile browser compliant pages that render effectively across all mobile environments and wireless applications.
Google is only altering pages to accomodate their system and serve results to users, pages being altered are not mobile browser compliant. Before anyone sues Google for altering the appearance of their web pages (and they probably will as Brad mentioned) in mobile applications, they first should take an internal look at page design elements and work on mobile-browser page compliance factors.
The future is mobile and pages that are not aligned with mobile page rendering aspects are only limiting a website's full reach.
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Jack Roberts
4. Two important disclaimers: I am not a lawyer, and I work for Google (though I have nothing to do with Mobile).
No one reads HTML code on a website's computer. They read the output of a program that renders HTML after it has been transported from the originating site over a network. If a webmaster can sue me because I wrote a program that removed HTML tags before displaying the page, can he sue me if I write a browser that does not display <b>-tagged text in bold? Can he sue me for owning an ISP that transports his HTML bytes from his server to a user's computer or cell phone?
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Floyd McWilliams
5. This is quite old. I've been doing this for a number of years...
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Alan (DWZ)
6. The only problem is that Web page is large and wireless mobile cell-phone screen is so small. Also the 1KB data costs $0.03 and downloading a 500K file costed me $15. Too bad.
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by roboo meshfire
7. I belive most site owners will not complain. Not some legal contents do not want to be modified. - by Roboo Meshfire, 2005.
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by roboo meshfire
8. the problem is how to convert Web pages to wireless mobile cell-phone screen? the pages are so different and there are so mant trash on each page: ad, flash, photos, frames, ... Roboo Meshfire, 2005.
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by roboo meshfire
9. What if the text is longer than SMS message (140 charaters)? How can people send questions and receive answers using SMS using a wireless mobile search engine?
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by roboo meshfire
10. It is a headache to decide what to search. General search is dominated by google yahoo, then there are so many vertical fields in our life, which field to focus as the vertical search? Wireless mobile cell-phone search is useful but users cannot rememer so many vertical search site names. - Roboo
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by roboo meshfire
11. There are two disadvantages with wireless mobile cell-phone search engine: screen is too small and keypad is too small (and 3 letters share a same key). If you look at Treo handset, it has bigger screen and each letter has its own key (like a PC's keyboard). So I believe Treo handset reflects the trend to overcome the shortcomings in commonly seend wireless mobile cell-phone search engine. - Roboo Meshfire 2005.
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by roboo meshfire
1. "What if the site owner explicitly does not want to appear on cell phone screens?"
What if the site owner explicitly does not want to appear on 17-inch flatscreens? Once content is placed on the web, it's up to viewers to decide how they want to render it.
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Floyd McWilliams