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Google is discontinuing its webpage transcoding service, which was used to speed up sites on sluggish mobile connections. It is no longer required, according to him.

Google has announced the retirement of the seven-year-old Web Light service, which optimized webpages for poor mobile devices and mobile connections.

Web Light's official Google developer page documentation Google and the accompanying user agent (googleweblight) have both been decommissioned.

Web Light by Google

The goal of the Web Light service, which was launched in 2015, was to make more of the web accessible to people in countries with sluggish mobile connections and devices.

The service functioned by optimizing webpages to require 80% less data when downloading them, resulting in a four-fold boost in performance over slower 2G mobile networks.

According to Google, the service increased traffic to webpages by 50%.

Web Light was previously only available on Chrome and Android browsers and only when Google identified a sluggish connection. The capability did not activate on desktop or tablet devices, only on mobile devices with sluggish connections.

Google Analytics continued to work in the Web Light optimized sites.

Web Light optimized pages supported Sovrn, Zedo, AdSense, and Google Publisher Tags for ad serving.

In principle, Web Light should have raised ad revenue rather than decreased it because transcoded webpages received up to 50% more traffic at the time.

The service was first offered in Indonesia, subsequently in India.

Web Light's functionality was stated in the now-deleted documentation:

"When consumers search on slow mobile clients, Google displays them faster, lighter pages.

To accomplish this, we transcode (transform) web pages on the fly into a version suited for sluggish clients, allowing these pages to load faster while conserving data.

This technique is known as Web Light.

Web Light pages keep the majority of the relevant content and provide a link to the original page for viewers to read.

Web Light Is No Longer Required

Seven years later, the proliferation of low-cost yet powerful mobile devices, as well as improvements in mobile connection speeds, rendered the service obsolete.

According to Stats, 4G smartphones will account for 99% of mobile data usage in India in 2021.

In 2015, there were just 47 million 4G enabled devices, compared to 650 million by 2021.

The Google developer documentation for Web Light has been withdrawn, and a comment has been added to Google's User Agent documentation indicating that the Web Light user agent has been decommissioned.

According to Google's announcement:

"Removed the Web Light documentation and decommissioned the Web Light user agent.

We launched Web Light to serve faster, lighter pages to individuals looking on low-cost devices.

While this feature performed as intended, allowing greater access to the richness of the web, the rising availability of more powerful smartphones has reduced the necessity for such capabilities.

We remain committed to improving and enhancing the Search experience to meet our consumers' changing needs."

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