On his website, MobHappy, Russell Buckely wrote here and here about Google changing the way content is displayed on people’s phones, without permission. Below is a modified, expanded version of the comment that I left at MobHappy, in response to Russell's blog entry:
I think Google didn’t mean evil here — they just tried to bring existing content to mobile handsets, per their mission. But guess what, they have encountered the basic issue with content transformation, problem that is not new and that many of us have dealt with/researched in the past. For example, at AGEA we had transcoding technology that allowed companies to bring their content to mobile handsets. The website owners had control of their content, and how it got transformed.
Google’s transformation not only changes the layout, as one would expect, but advertising may get dropped as well, something that is strange, as Google knows very well about the importance of advertising. It also is interesting that Google doesn't seem to have a transformation for their own ads, from desktop to mobile, or do they? I am sure they are working on that.
The decision to change content layout and drop content from a website is (should be) the content’s owner decision ONLY.
For people that only read or consume content, such transformation may be just fine and not a big deal, but obviously for content owners & producers, such transformation is a big deal, as differentiation through look-and-feel and advertising may be at the center of their business models.
This situation may be the result of a decision that was made based on pure “technical” merits (i.e. bandwidth, screen real-estate, etc) — good intentions, but nevertheless a bad decision since it affects website's look-and-feel, and revenue streams, and without permission.
As a final note, Google owns ReqWireless, and those folks know very well about what it takes to bring content to mobile, and about content transformation – Google should leverage them, if they are not already doing so…
ceo