Skweezer, formally known as a

mobile browser A mobile browser is a web browser designed for use on a mobile device such as a mobile phone or PDA. Mobile browsers are optimized to display Web content most effectively on small screens on portable devices. Mobile browser software must be sma ...

. 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 A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

Web portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayin ...

s, and

wireless carrier A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a wireless service provider, wireless carrier, cellular company, or mobile network carrier, is a provider of wireless communications services that owns or controls all the elements necessary to sell ...

s such as

IAC/InterActiveCorp IAC Inc. is an American holding company that owns brands across 100 countries, mostly in media and Internet. The company is incorporated under Delaware General Corporation Law and headquartered in New York City. Joey Levin, who previously led th ...

Bloglines Bloglines was a web-based news aggregator for reading syndicated feeds using the RSS and Atom formats. Users could subscribe to the syndicated feeds for free using a web browser. Bloglines offered an application programming interface that mainta ...

, and

Orange SA Orange S.A. (), formerly France Télécom S.A. (stylized as france telecom) is a French multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 59,000 elsewhere. In 2015, ...

. Skweezer was available in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

, and

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

languages and serves customers in over 175 countries worldwide.

Mobile browsing innovations

Skweezer introduced several mobile browsing innovations since its inception, including the first: * Portal-based

transcoding Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target devic ...

engine: Skweezer (2003) * Globally distributed

mobile advertising Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile (wireless) phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing, mobile advertising can take place as text ads via SMS, or banner advertisements that appear embedded in a mob ...

platform: Skweezer Ads (2004) * Pagination system that splits large Web pages up for viewing on

cell phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

s (2005) * Mobile Web page translation feature (2005) * Portal-based mobile

RSS reader In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs, podc ...

(2005) * "Find in page" search that carries Web search keywords into search result pages (2007)

Controversy

In 2004 Skweezer became the subject of controversy when

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

ger Jason Calcanis objected to advertisements being placed by Skweezer on transcoded versions of blog content. A debate ensued over the legality and propriety of proxy-based services such as

anonymizer An anonymizer or an anonymous proxy is a tool that attempts to make activity on the Internet untraceable. It is a proxy server computer that acts as an intermediary and privacy shield between a client computer and the rest of the Internet. It acce ...

s and

transcode Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target devic ...

rs placing ads against other publishers' content and the scope of coverage under "

fair use Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests ...

" copyright protection. While the subject is still under debate, Greenlight Wireless stopped placing ads on transcoded content in early 2005. As of June 2010, the ads were being displayed again.

Awards

* 2008 Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine's Best Software Awards: Winner - Pocket PC Internet: Web Compression Service * 2007 MobileVillage Mobile Star Awards: Gold Star - Consumer Software: Mobile Web Content Aggregator / Portal * 2007 PDA Friendly Website Awards: Winner - PDA Home Page category * 2007 Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine's Best Software Awards: Winner - Pocket PC Internet: Web Compression Service * 2006 MobileVillage Mobile Star Awards: Gold Star - Personal Software: Mobile Web Content Provider category * 2005 MobileVillage Mobile Star Awards: Gold Star - Personal Software: Mobile Web Content Provider category * 2005 Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine Best Software awards: Finalist - Browsers & Web Utilities category

Similar services

* Google Web Light, but without a URL form. A user-created form is hosted at

Neocities Neocities is a commercial web hosting service for static pages. It offers 1 GB of storage space for free sites and no server-side scripting for both paid and free subscriptions. The service's expressed goal is to revive the support of free web ho ...

. * Loband by Aptivate * Skweezer, a trademarked service similar named to Skweezer Inc.

References

{{web browsers Mobile web browsers Discontinued web browsers Advertising Marketing