maephet

That's a great insight, to think beyonds the bounds of the app ecosystem itself. In a lot of ways the mobile is a tool to deliver a service. However, a company has to prioritize and nowadays the app is the first foot forward. It's important to realize the constraints of the system that you're operating in so that you can properly gauge expectations and strategy.

More importantly than 'crushing their innovation brand' (which seems like a small consequence), he headed off a potential competitor who might enter the personal device ring. Well done.

Just a plug because I built it, but branch.io gives this service away for free. We open all the 'black-box' fingerprinting parameters (like match duration) for you to tune as well.

We just discovered that one a few weeks ago - It was then we realized that we had just dedicated our lives to the premise of an xkcd comic

I disagree with your last comment as you could make the same argument for websites in general - there will always be spectrum of usefulness/scamminess. Utilities or games might not have the concept of 'pages' as a news app or a social photo upload app, but imagine being able to link to specific constellations in the star chart app, the various calculator faces of some popular calculator apps, or a user's city in Clash of Clans. It's going to be awesome.