
Facebook allows Google to crawl and index its mobile app - MichaelCORS
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/11/16/google-gets-surprise-ally-in-mobile-app-search-push-facebook/
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sigmar
>>Google’s effort to keep its search engine relevant in a world of mobile apps
just got a boost from a big rival.

I see this as facebook leveraging mobile search more than google leveraging
facebook to keep search relevant. But I guess that is a matter of perspective.

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enos_feedler
From Google's side I think this is about mitigating the threat of iOS 9 native
app search capabilities. iOS users will build the habbit of swiping down to
search for anything. Their native indexing support means Facebook results will
just start popping up. Where is google in this picture? Google search needs to
work great with facebook content everywhere (web, mobile, etc)

~~~
bestnameever
Maybe but IIRC Google announced supporting app indexing on iOS prior to Apple
announcing deep link searching in iOS9 and was already supporting it on
Android 2 years[0] prior despite Facebook decision to support it today.

I see this more along the lines of Google continuing their objective of
getting us the information we want when we want it. Mitigating threats to
competitors is just really a benefit of them continuing their innovation with
search.

[0] [http://searchengineland.com/google-brings-app-indexing-
suppo...](http://searchengineland.com/google-brings-app-indexing-support-to-
ios-apps-221708)

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meeper16
Two companies working on this were Chomp and Mimvi but both got acquired.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimvi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimvi)

[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/chomp#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/chomp#/entity)

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jbi
How is the public web content different from the public app content?

~~~
frandroid
It's not. What differs is which app displays the content once you click on a
link. By indexing the app location of app content, google is able to show you
results that will immediately open it in the app when clicked on from the
results page, as opposed to just showing the web version of the content in a
web browser.

~~~
thetrb
I thought that was just based on URLs. Similarly when I open a yelp.com link
in my mobile browser it asks me whether to open it using the Yelp app or the
browser.

~~~
derefr
That's yelp.com detecting your mobile browser and asking whether to redirect
you to a URL using its private (yelp:// or somesuch) URL schema, which the app
is then registered as the handler for.

This, on the other hand, is Google sending you directly to a yelp://-or-
somesuch URL.

Basically, Google is taking charge of doing the client-negotiation step, so
(if this catches on) sites don't have to worry about doing that redirect
themselves any more.

~~~
mlex
On (newer versions of) iOS, you don't need to send someone to, say,
yelp://rest_of_url to link them to the app anymore. In iOS 9 we have Universal
App Links[0] that let you perform a redirect from an actual website link into
your app.

For example, if you have Twitter for iOS installed on iOS 9 and you click on a
link to [https://twitter.com](https://twitter.com) in a Google search result,
you switch into the app's main screen immediately.

[0]:
[https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...](https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/General/Conceptual/AppSearch/UniversalLinks.html)

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nso95
Sounds like further acceptance of the fact that G+ is dead

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robgibbons
Another death knell for the Web? Find out next week!

