  The broad proliferation of mobile devices in recent years has drastically
changed the means of accessing the World Wide Web. Describing a shift away from
the desktop computer era for content consumption, predictions indicate that the
main access of web-based content will come from mobile devices. Concurrently,
the manner of content presentation has changed as well; web artifacts are
allowing for richer media and higher levels of user interaction which is
enabled through increasing access networks speeds. This article provides an
overview of more than two years of high level web page characteristics by
comparing the desktop and mobile client versions. Our study is the first
long-term evaluation of differences as seen by desktop and mobile web browser
clients. We showcase the main differentiating factors with respect to the
number of web page object requests, their sizes, relationships, and web page
object caching. We additionally highlight long-term trends and discuss their
future implications.
