This article is from WeChat official account:Love Faner (ID: ifanr), author: Musi, head Figure from: vision China

A paper announcement pointed to a veteran product in the Internet industry: Browser.

On the evening of October 26, the State Cyberspace Administration of China announced that it would carry out rectification actions on mobile browsers, focusing on content such as “headline party” articles, vulgar graphics, videos, and rumors.

This is also the first time in recent years that mobile browser apps have received such severe warnings from the Office of the Cyberspace Administration of China, and the scope of coverage is beyond the previous.

From the list, Huawei, Xiaomi, vivo, and OPPO, the four major Android manufacturers’ built-in browsers, are all listed. Considering their respective market shares, it means that this browser rectification will affect About 80% of mobile phone users in China.

In addition, third-party browsers with a large number of users, such as UC, QQ, 360, and Sogou, have also been “named” and included in the first batch of rectification.

Picture from: The Conversation

Many users have long been dissatisfied with mobile browsers and have been complaining for a long time. In addition to the content chaos mentioned by the Office of the Cyberspace Administration of China, the complicated built-in functions of the browser and the uncontrolled pop-up push are also annoying.

But how do these browsers in the list work? Is it really that bad? In the past two days, we have also found a mobile phone of the corresponding brand and actually experienced the functions of several browsers. The following are our findings.

1. Every browser wants to insert a headline today

The problems with mobile browsers will actually be noticed after opening them.

We opened 8 mobile browsers, Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO, vivo, UC, Sogou, QQ, and 360 one by one. Their first screens, without exception, are presented in information flow. Bottomed out.

Eight browsers, stupidly confused

If you can’t see the search box at the top, you might not think that this is a browser application.

But this is indeed the status quo.

In fact, the next day after the rectification notice was issued on the 26th, these browsers had already issued the “Self-Inspection and Rectification Announcement” at the top of the information stream as required.

On the second day after the rectification announcement was issued, some browsers in the list have replaced the content of the information stream, and only reproduced the content of those media with news editing rights

At the same time, some browsers have also replaced the content of the information stream, and only select media sources with news editing rights, reducing the frequency of lace news, celebrity gossip, and self-media news, but the information flow is still The ads are reserved.

A browser that was not on the first rectification list is still full of titles and party content.

But what did the information flow of these browsers look like? We found a mobile phone product that was not within the scope of this rectification, and clicked on its own browser. The content is basically from the media.

Swipe down a few more, and you will see the familiar little video of wiping the ball again. In terms of quality, I can’t flatter you.

This is also the original style of most browsers: all kinds of graphic information from unknown self-media, supplemented by exaggerated titles, and mixed with short videos and advertising banner pages, and we always liked to adjustKan’s “UC shocked body” can be seen everywhere in these information streams.

Regardless of whether it is built-in or a third-party browser, once the push is turned on, the frequency of daily news push is very high.

The push frequency of these browsers is also very high. As long as you don’t turn off push notifications, even if your phone has no browser on, and you leave it for a while, all kinds of news will be piled up on the notification bar, but it’s not the kind of important national event.

I also asked some friends around me about the browser push issues. Most people just turned off the notification permission of the built-in browser just because they don’t want to be tossed by these pushes.

The information flow page is only one of the functions provided by the current mobile browser. Most people complain about the “bloated” and “messy” browsers because they also do a lot of services that browsers should not do.

Eight browsers have integrated functions such as videos, novels and games, and some modules are also placed directly in the bottom bar.

Videos, novels, and online games have now become the “standard features” of current browsers. Some browsers emphasize theseThe function is simply placed directly on the bottom switch page.

The forced opening of the “Notification Bar Tool” is a more rogue behavior than advertising push

We also encountered a more blatant approach: There are two third-party browsers, both of which enable the “Notification Bar Tool” function by default. In fact, the search bar or shortcut function entry is displayed on your notification bar. .

If you want to remove it, you can only turn it off manually.

The functions of mobile browsers have been very expanded, and there seems to be no service that it cannot do.

Looking at it this way, most mainstream mobile browsers in China are no longer a single browser mode. News, videos, novels, games, etc. are all available, and you can hardly even find another application type on the market that can be comparable to browsers in terms of functionality.

Except WeChat.

Looking at the comparison, the web browsing and search that the browser should have done well have been ignored by manufacturers and gradually become an accessory function. You can hardly say that this is a goodThe change.

I want to do everything, I don’t know how to do anything; but if I don’t do it, the frequency and stickiness of the browser cannot be increased.

This may be a dilemma that every browser application is facing in the mobile Internet era.

Second, the browser has “anxiety”, so it wants to install everything in it

Some people will definitely wonder. The same are all browsers. Why don’t applications like Chrome and Safari have these cluttered things?

This is determined by different business models and product positioning. For Google and Apple, the browser does not exist in isolation, but is a tool under their own operating systems. The browser itself has no profit pressure, so you only need to do what the browser should do.

What’s more, these two browsers also have advantages that similar apps don’t have: Safari has iOS and Mac systems behind it, while Chrome has Android. Just pre-installed on the phone already has third-party browsing. Unattainable advantage of the device.

Globally, Chrome is still the dominant browser, and Safari’s share is largely brought by the iPhone< br label="picture note" class="text-img-note">

The third-party browser is different. Today, it is difficult for a simple browser to rely on the user to enter the URL and open the page as a selling point. With the decline in portal status, traffic being divided, and market share facing giants, it is difficult to countermeasures. Even the most important “search” in browsers, many people are already used to completing it in WeChat and Weibo.

Picture from: unsplash

You may not remember, when was the last time you opened the browser actively. Shopping, you will find Taobao; taxi, you will find Didi; order food, you will find Meituan…Most of our daily life and work needs have been divided up by these apps, and the frequency of use And the duration far exceeds that of opening the browser.

If there is no external link blocking, WeChat is already equivalent to many people’s browsers

When will I still need a browser? The external link sent by a friend cannot be opened in WeChat, you may need to use it to do a jump; or you have encountered a knowledge blind spot and want the search engine to save it; someone told me that he is only connecting to the public When using WiFi, I only think of actively clicking on the built-in browser, just to go through the verification code process.

But these scenes are generated passively. As mentioned above, if you want to increase the user’s desire to open the browser actively, the distribution of information flow, games, literature and other content, as well as the notification push that can continuously refresh the sense of existence, They are simple and direct, and the results are more obvious.

In fact, mainstream browsers can’t avoid information flow, Chrome also tries it

This is why some people say that the end of the browser is a platform-level application and content distribution platform.

Because the positioning of the browser is gradually blurred, it can integrate various services without any worries, saving users the time to find, download and use other APPs, and bring more traffic to themselves.

At this time, in terms of grabbing user time, there is not much difference between browsers and applications such as Toutiao and Douyin.

Advertising space is definitely indispensable, as long as it can bring clicks, it also means that more revenue will be credited.

3. In addition to choosing niche, you can also simplify the browser manually

The browser that comes with the mobile phone is not hopeless. At least from our experience, most of the built-in browsers have a built-in switch, which may be called “personalized recommendation” or “information notification” , May also be called “guess you like”, “notification bar message”, anyway, the ultimate goal is to create opportunities for push.