Following Mobile Search: the dotMobi Way - The Down Side
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According to Tom Berners-Lee's article stating the irrelevance of top multiple level domains, found
here, the .mobi TLD will have a drastically detrimental effect on the Web. By partitioning the HTTP information space into parts designed to be accessed by mobile devices and parts designed (presumably) not for such access, an essential property of the Web is being destroyed.
He stated that the Web must operate independently of the hardware, software or network used to access it. Berners-Lee is very clear in his belief that dividing the Internet into segments (mobile web and "immobile" web) is not good, and that programming device dependence will not work over the long term, since it will encourage some redundant content on the web.
The fact is, Berners-Lee is probably right, but the mobile companies want this (dotMobi that is) -- they want a device-dependent Internet, since this will reduce the amount of work they have to do. Heck, now they won't even have to do what the iPhone did. It's like having a problem with shoplifting and saying everything will be okay if you change your genetic code (instead of just stopping shoplifting).
The device companies do not want to have to build devices that can comfortably use any type of browser; they want to keep pushing their own software, their own platforms, their own SDKs, no matter how bad, unusable or otherwise complicated it is. Until a telco comes out with a handset maker and says that they are teaming up to develop and push open standards, and until it catches on, every telco and device maker is going to keep black boxing their hardware and software and trying to make sure developers make apps that can work on their devices (and LG's devices, and Samsung's devices and Acer's devices).
This said, dotMobi is useful, but only because the device makers and the telcos want to keep everybody out of their lucrative fringe business of selling games and ring tones from telco and device maker stores, tying customers to the whole package. As long as this system remains in place, SEO has an obligation to do what is best for its clients and for the users by making sure that every marketing channel is covered -- but we should keep hoping somebody out there is working on a truly disruptive system that will open the mobile web to open standards and device independent software.
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