Google Web Light, introduced in 2015, [1] was a service offered by Google for faster browsing within its Android mobile browser Chrome. It detected slow Internet connections, such as 2G, and switched to Google proxy servers with built-in data compression. It could speed up loading times for text-based websites. These pages also had the advantage of being less taxing on the hardware of entry-level devices with less processing power.
This service was offered in select countries including Indonesia, Brazil [2] and India. [3]
Google Web Light bypassed content filters, prompting some content filter providers to block it. [4]
On December 19, 2022, Google announced that it discontinued the Web Light service by removing the documentation and retiring the Web Light user agent. Increased affordability of more powerful smartphones, as well as the increasing usage of web filtering and parental controls software was cited as the reason for this decision. [5]
An Internet filter is software that restricts or controls the content an Internet user is capable to access, especially when utilized to restrict material delivered over the Internet via the Web, Email, or other means. Content-control software determines what content will be available or be blocked.
Google Search is a search engine operated by Google. It allows users to search for information on the Internet by entering keywords or phrases. Google Search uses algorithms to analyze and rank websites based on their relevance to the search query. It is the most popular search engine worldwide.
robots.txt is the filename used for implementing the Robots Exclusion Protocol, a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the website they are allowed to visit.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. Unpaid traffic may originate from different kinds of searches, including image search, video search, academic search, news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
Googlebot is the web crawler software used by Google that collects documents from the web to build a searchable index for the Google Search engine. Googlebot was created to function concurrently on thousands of machines in order to enhance its performance and adapt to the expanding size of the internet. This name is actually used to refer to two different types of web crawlers: a desktop crawler and a mobile crawler.
A mobile browser is a web browser designed for use on a mobile device such as a mobile phone, PDA, smartphone, or tablet. Mobile browsers are optimized to display Web content most effectively on small screens on portable devices. Mobile browser software must be small and efficient to accommodate the low memory capacity and low-bandwidth of wireless handheld devices. Traditional smaller feature phones use stripped-down mobile web browsers; however, most current smartphones have full-fledged browsers that can handle the latest web technologies, such as CSS 3, JavaScript, and Ajax.
Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. They can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Google beta-tested a cost-per-action service, but discontinued it in October 2008 in favor of a DoubleClick offering. In Q1 2014, Google earned US$3.4 billion, or 22% of total revenue, through Google AdSense. AdSense is a participant in the AdChoices program, so AdSense ads typically include the triangle-shaped AdChoices icon. This program also operates on HTTP cookies. In 2021, over 38.3 million websites use AdSense.
Parental controls are features which may be included in digital television services, computers and video games, mobile devices and software that allow parents to restrict the access of content to their children. These controls were created to assist parents in their ability to restrict certain content viewable by their children. This may be content they deem inappropriate for their age, maturity level or feel is aimed more at an adult audience. Parental controls fall into roughly four categories: content filters, which limit access to age inappropriate content; usage controls, which constrain the usage of these devices such as placing time-limits on usage or forbidding certain types of usage; computer usage management tools, which enforces the use of certain software; and monitoring, which can track location and activity when using the devices.
Opera Mini is a mobile web browser made by Opera. It was primarily designed for the Java ME platform, as a low-end sibling for Opera Mobile, but as of 2022 only the Android build was still under active development. It had previously been developed for iOS, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows Phone 8.1, BlackBerry, Symbian, and Bada.
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic and also the mobile app traffic & events, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand. Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin.
The mobile web comprises mobile browser-based World Wide Web services accessed from handheld mobile devices, such as smartphones or feature phones, through a mobile or other wireless network.
Microsoft family features is a free set of features available on Windows 10 PC and Mobile that is bundled with the Windows 10, Home edition operating system. On July 17, 2020, Microsoft released Microsoft Family Safety on Google Play and App Store (iOS) as well. Starting in Windows 10, a Microsoft Account is required to use the Microsoft family features. A parent can manage settings for a child if both of their Microsoft Accounts are in the same family. When parents turn on settings for their child, these settings are applied to every device that the child logs into with that Microsoft Account.
Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, and also for Android, where it is the default browser. The browser is also the main component of ChromeOS, where it serves as the platform for web applications.
Schema.org is a reference website that publishes documentation and guidelines for using structured data mark-up on web-pages. Its main objective is to standardize HTML tags to be used by webmasters for creating rich results about a certain topic of interest. It is a part of the semantic web project, which aims to make document mark-up codes more readable and meaningful to both humans and machines.
Skweezer, formally known as a mobile browser. It reformatted and compressed web content in order to reduce a web page's file size and make the downloaded content easier to view on a small screen. It was developed by Skweezer, Inc. and initially released in 2003. Skweezer's technology is used to mobilize Web content service by search engines, Web portals, and wireless carriers such as IAC/InterActiveCorp, Bloglines, and Orange SA. Skweezer was available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Japanese languages and serves customers in over 175 countries worldwide.
Google Safe Browsing is a service from Google that warns users when they attempt to navigate to a dangerous website or download dangerous files. Safe Browsing also notifies webmasters when their websites are compromised by malicious actors and helps them diagnose and resolve the problem. This protection works across Google products and is claimed to “power safer browsing experiences across the Internet”. It lists URLs for web resources that contain malware or phishing content. Browsers like Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Vivaldi, Brave, and GNOME Web use these lists from Google Safe Browsing to check pages against potential threats. Google also provides a public API for the service.
Fire OS is a mobile operating system based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). It is developed by Amazon for their devices. Fire OS includes proprietary software, a customized user interface primarily centered on content consumption, and heavy ties to content available from Amazon's storefronts and services.
Google PageSpeed is a family of tools by Google Inc, designed to help a website's performance optimizations. It was introduced at Developer Conference in 2010. There are four main components of PageSpeed family tools: PageSpeed Module, consisting of mod PageSpeed for the Apache HTTP Server and ngx PageSpeed for the Nginx, PageSpeed Insights, PageSpeed Service, and PageSpeed Chrome DevTools extension. All of these components are built to identify the faults in a website's compliance with Google's Web Performance Best Practices, and automate the optimization process.
AMP is an open source HTML framework developed by the AMP Open Source Project. It was originally created by Google as a competitor to Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. AMP is optimized for mobile web browsing and intended to help webpages load faster. AMP pages may be cached by a CDN, such as Microsoft Bing or Cloudflare's AMP caches, which allows pages to be served more quickly.
Firefox Focus is a free and open-source privacy-focused mobile browser based on Firefox from Mozilla, available for Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. Firefox Focus was initially a tracker-blocking application for mobile iOS devices, released in December 2015. It was developed into a minimalistic web browser shortly afterwards. However, it can still work solely as a tracking-blocker in the background of the Safari browser on Apple devices.