Google has recently announced that it will discontinue the Web Light Service, which has been in operation for more than 7 years, with the details made official through the Google Search Central Blog. For anyone wondering whether this will have any impact on brands or marketers, in this article Relevant Audience will walk everyone through getting to know the Web Light Service, a Google offering, from the day it launched to the day it was shut down. If you're ready, let's dive in.
What Is Google Web Light Service?
Google Web Light Service, which many people may know by the name Google Lite, is a Google service that had been available for a long time, dating back to 2015. It first launched in Indonesia, with the purpose of helping users access websites more conveniently, especially for users in countries with slow internet service or who may not have access to high-performance mobile devices.
The way this technology, called Web Light, works is by optimizing web pages so that users with slow internet or devices that cannot support various types of content, such as image files and video files, can still access all of the content as completely as possible. It filters the various elements on the web page, whether image files, videos, or anything else on that page, and adjusts them for display while preserving the most important content on the page for users as much as possible.
Google claimed that the Web Light Service helps reduce the data used to download a web page by more than 80%, resulting in load speeds up to four times faster, and helps increase Web Site Traffic by as much as 50%. The Web Light Service was a feature that could only be used on Chrome and the Android Browser, so anyone using Google through a desktop or tablet with high performance and high-speed internet would not be able to access it.
Google Officially Retires the Web Light Service
According to data collected by Statista in 2021 in India, 99% of mobile phones supported 4G signal, and looking even deeper, in 2015 there were only 47 million 4G-capable phones, growing to 650 million in 2021. This means that from 2015 until now, as we head into 2023, with technology developing by leaps and bounds, today's mobile devices have much better Connection Speed performance. As a result, even inexpensive base-model phones in the general low-end mobile market can now all use a Web Browser over 4G internet.
Why is the Web Light Service no longer necessary? The reasons above can probably answer this question entirely. Google explained the matter as follows: "In the beginning, Web Light was designed to help users who could not access devices capable of running a Web Browser still access the content they wanted as much as possible. But with the changes in technology of most mobile devices today, the need for the Web Light function has decreased significantly. Therefore, we remain committed to developing and improving the Search Experience to respond to users' needs as much as possible."
Final Thoughts
Google has officially canceled the Web Light Service and removed the various documents related to Web Light as well. As marketers, it can be said that this change does not have any serious impact, since some marketers are of the opinion that Web Light caused website details to not turn out as intended, resulting in more harm than good compared to what Google claimed. But in any case, from now on the Web Light Service has definitely been officially discontinued.
Source: SEJ
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