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Google Argues for Mobile Web

By Jason Grigsby

Published on July 23rd, 2009

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At the recent MobileBeat Conference, Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra told the audience that the Mobile Web will be the larger portion of mobile application development in the long run instead of native applications.

Mr. Gundotra argued the web was the only technology to provide the potential for cross platform development. He said not “that even Google was not rich enough to support all of the different mobile platforms from Apple’s AppStore to those of the BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android and the many variations of the Nokia platform.”

His comments echo those that he made earlier at Google I/O. I recommend reading Tim O’Reilly’s summary of his presentation.

This is very similar to what I’ve been saying in my presentations at Web 2.0 Expo and Web Visions.

I’m not arguing that native applications will not continue to be important. I’m simply arguing that there will be far more mobile web sites and mobile web applications than native applications over the long term.