The End of AMP?(lafoo.com)
lafoo.com
The End of AMP?
https://www.lafoo.com/the-end-of-amp/
218 comments
The gamble was higher engagement on the Google app and Chrome. Google have been trying to turn Chrome and their app into news portals to squeeze some more monetization avenues out of them as search revenue growth begins to max out.
Agree with pretty much all you said, but where were the lawsuits?
Pessimistically, seems to be yet another case of a huge company doing something awful with absolutely no consequence.
What has the last time Google was punished? The biggest threat to its business model was the gdrp and it has achieved next to nothing.
Pessimistically, seems to be yet another case of a huge company doing something awful with absolutely no consequence.
What has the last time Google was punished? The biggest threat to its business model was the gdrp and it has achieved next to nothing.
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Here's the solution I've been using on my phone for a long while now: Permanently put Google into desktop mode on my phone.
My only real issue with this workaround is image search where I have to turn my phone sideways to see the images.
My only real issue with this workaround is image search where I have to turn my phone sideways to see the images.
I sure hope it is the end of AMP (even though it was launched by a close friend of mine at Google).
Quite honestly, the concept never really made any sense to me, and often the load speeds were just as poor as the original website itself.
One thing that really bugged me was how disorientating it was for the user; on some AMP pages, you literally could not tell if you were on a legitimate website or some spoofed version. The AMP bar at the top was about as trashy a UI design as I've seen since 1997. And, God help you if you wanted to share the link - it was hard to know if the AMP link would be "persistent" or "sticky" enough to share, or whether you should go to the actual underlying web page (which the AMP bar did a great job of hiding) and share that.
But what is most annoying of all is that smart people at Google were kidding themselves that their botched up implementation of AMP was a great thing to have launched upon the world. It really was not. I bet it didn't really do much for their bottom line either.
Quite honestly, the concept never really made any sense to me, and often the load speeds were just as poor as the original website itself.
One thing that really bugged me was how disorientating it was for the user; on some AMP pages, you literally could not tell if you were on a legitimate website or some spoofed version. The AMP bar at the top was about as trashy a UI design as I've seen since 1997. And, God help you if you wanted to share the link - it was hard to know if the AMP link would be "persistent" or "sticky" enough to share, or whether you should go to the actual underlying web page (which the AMP bar did a great job of hiding) and share that.
But what is most annoying of all is that smart people at Google were kidding themselves that their botched up implementation of AMP was a great thing to have launched upon the world. It really was not. I bet it didn't really do much for their bottom line either.
The amount of effort it can take to the the actual link to the article is just insane. Trying to share something through your phone that has been AMP'd is basically signaling it's not worth the effort to send the article at all.
Add that to how untrustworthy the link looks, it's just terrible execution on an idea that might have merit.
Add that to how untrustworthy the link looks, it's just terrible execution on an idea that might have merit.
That's not been my experience on Android. I just opened an AMP link from Google search which opened in Chrome based WebView. Clicking on share - how I usually share things - presented me with the actual link of the article. From there I could copy or open any of the apps to actually share the link. AFAIK, this has been long fixed.
Disc: Googler.
Disc: Googler.
I usually search for things using the Google widget on my home screen. And from there I will "Open the link in Chrome". This means that I end up opening an massive AMP link not the direct link in Chrome. So I have to basically copy the title of the article from the AMP'd version, and paste that into Google through a new Chrome tab and usually that works.
But why is using the Google AMP service through the Google widget so terrible? I would expect a more fluid experience, but you end up with this really terrible experience trying to leverage the Google ecosystem. Theres nothing from stopping me from opening FireFox and searching the article title in Bing or DDG at that point.
But why is using the Google AMP service through the Google widget so terrible? I would expect a more fluid experience, but you end up with this really terrible experience trying to leverage the Google ecosystem. Theres nothing from stopping me from opening FireFox and searching the article title in Bing or DDG at that point.
Is your original Google search done in Chrome or via the Google "app"? I guess that's why your result opens in a WebView?
I usually just go to google.com in Chrome to search for things, and the amp link in the address bar is really rather confusing.
I usually just go to google.com in Chrome to search for things, and the amp link in the address bar is really rather confusing.
On iOS it is the same way. Apple also figures out the canonical link and shares that.
This is disingenuous given that's not how Google AMP works when viewing an article on its search results:
> Both sites are measurably worse on their AMP versions. The amount of data transferred is higher, the script execution is worse, and the page takes longer to load. So much for the promise of speed and a better user experience.
AMP pages render instantly because Google is able to pre-cache their data. So you're not paying the same price at click as you do when you go to a non-amp page. Yes, AMP doesn't make sense as a tech to render your main site when a user directly visits it, but for embedding your content into another's experience, it does allow for very fast load times.
> Both sites are measurably worse on their AMP versions. The amount of data transferred is higher, the script execution is worse, and the page takes longer to load. So much for the promise of speed and a better user experience.
AMP pages render instantly because Google is able to pre-cache their data. So you're not paying the same price at click as you do when you go to a non-amp page. Yes, AMP doesn't make sense as a tech to render your main site when a user directly visits it, but for embedding your content into another's experience, it does allow for very fast load times.
The whole article is riddled with lies and misleading points.
> they didn’t go to BBC’s website; they view a copy of the BBC’s content on google.com
That's exactly what a CDN is. The only difference between AMP cache and CloudFlare is that the latter uses some DNS trickery to show BBC's domain name, whereas Google can't. Google solved this in Chrome, and there are other ways to solve this with Web Packages [1] and Signed HTTP exchanges which allows the content to be served from Google but with the original url, without DNS changes.
[1] https://blog.amp.dev/2018/05/08/a-first-look-at-using-web-pa...
> they didn’t go to BBC’s website; they view a copy of the BBC’s content on google.com
That's exactly what a CDN is. The only difference between AMP cache and CloudFlare is that the latter uses some DNS trickery to show BBC's domain name, whereas Google can't. Google solved this in Chrome, and there are other ways to solve this with Web Packages [1] and Signed HTTP exchanges which allows the content to be served from Google but with the original url, without DNS changes.
[1] https://blog.amp.dev/2018/05/08/a-first-look-at-using-web-pa...
The difference is that the BBC is a customer of CloudFlare, and that contractual relationship provides a sound legal basis for CloudFlare serving the BBC's content. There is nothing of the sort between the BBC and Google in the AMP case, just a shaky implied-in-fact contract along the lines of "if you put AMP on your website, you consent to us pretending that we're you and serving it to people on your behalf".
I believe you can use AMP without the AMP cache, therefore the decision it's entirely in the hands of the website owner. But, surprisingly, almost everyone wants to use the free world scale fast cache.
Cloudflare also doesn't shove their own UI into the top of your page and hijack left/right swipes on your page.
Indeed. And preloading of pages isn't "cheating" either. Safe preloading is the entire reason for AMP's existence. They're designed to open quickly as embedded content.
Doing a direct comparison is kind of missing the point.
Doing a direct comparison is kind of missing the point.
AMP exists not because it's impossible to build fast web sites without it, but because it's possible to build slow web sites without it. Which means most big sites not using AMP are slow because most places don't have direct incentives for keeping their stuff fast. Against all odds, AMP convinced these sites to build an alternative experience that's reasonably fast. It's good that AMP is no longer required to get good rankings for fast pages. That was always a silly requirement. But from a user's point of view, I'm grateful for AMP, despite that being an unpopular opinion around here.
This is a valid point but ask whether Google couldn’t have had the same effect by telling everyone that page speed / bloat was a strong ranking factor. AMP forced a large amount of unreliable, slow JavaScript into the critical path so the benefits could have gone even further.
They had already done that, perhaps for years. I don't know why it didn't work - perhaps there was a slowness oligopoly, where everyone was slow and no one was strongly incentivized to speed up.
They had it as a minor signal. They could have made it stronger. Posit, for example, that they’d said the carousel was only for sites which rendered in one second on mobile - do you think AMP would really have done more than that?
I think so, because the spec prevents "death by a thousand cuts" and makes it crystal clear what's allowed and what's not.
If your marketing department want one more tracking script and your execs want one more pop up banner etc and each change is bad but not egregiously so, then your average "web guy" at most non-big-tech companies will just do what they're asked to.
With AMP they get to say "it's not possible"
If your marketing department want one more tracking script and your execs want one more pop up banner etc and each change is bad but not egregiously so, then your average "web guy" at most non-big-tech companies will just do what they're asked to.
With AMP they get to say "it's not possible"
That social dynamic is real but it's trivially avoided: imagine if Google said that you had to consistently average, say, 1 second renders on mobile to be in the carousel or avoid being badged with a “This site is not recommended for mobile users” warning. Instead of saying “AMP doesn't allow it” you'd say “We're averaging 0.8 seconds already and this adds 0.4 seconds in our testing” and you could have a business decision about what makes the most sense for your project instead of outsourcing your project direction to Google.
If you think that’s trivial to implement, I’d love to hear where you’ve worked. Getting a change to the main .com at one company where I worked within a month was considered a rush job!
What mattered was that Google set a hard limit: do <x> to be in the carousel. I think that if they had done the exact same thing with a performance metric it would have unfolded very similarly because the key part was that it was a non-negotiable external mandate.
People might have had more room to negotiate on how to hit a performance target but the thing which would have mattered was a number in the webmasters tools console.
People might have had more room to negotiate on how to hit a performance target but the thing which would have mattered was a number in the webmasters tools console.
If Google penalized slow sites, they'd get to say that. I agree that none of this explains the need for AMP.
Or just mark slow pages. The same way everyone started using https once browsers marked http as insecure. I would bet that if Google results featured a turtle or red/orange/green indicator for the result speed, we'd see a massive shift in companies caring.
Exactly: if they had a turtle icon or a “not recommended for mobile users” warning (which would be even better fordata usage, too) it would have been a game change for many companies and it wouldn't have precluded doing anything which the AMP team didn't think they needed to implement.
If that were the case, there wouldn't have been incentives for them to implement AMP
Because they didn’t actually make it impact ranking. At least not in a meaningful way. This looks to be changing this year with Core Web Vitals, but it’s still to be seen if these scores will really have an effect on ranking.
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Slightly irrelevant sidetrack/goalpost move: I wonder if page speed or page experience should even be a strong ranking factor, considering so much online time is spent in apps vs in mobile web [1]. There will be a time, perhaps in the past for many users, when most search results are just vehicles to open things in apps, and therefore ranking mobile results strongly by their mobile website performance/experience would make as much sense as ranking them by their non-Javascript experience.
[1] Stats for the US: https://www.emarketer.com/content/the-majority-of-americans-... (I wish I could find stats for India or other growing economies)
[1] Stats for the US: https://www.emarketer.com/content/the-majority-of-americans-... (I wish I could find stats for India or other growing economies)
Same - despite all the hate I liked AMP.
Hackers / developers seem to insist on the non-AMP sites to bloat sites to absolute trash and back. If I saw the amp logo, I knew that was the one to click.
Abusing users with bloat is supposedly some great freedom worth fighting for, but AMP forcing these developers into a much smaller box that they can't screw with users as much on I just loved AMP.
I think a lot of the HN hate comes because AMP I think prohibits random third party javascript ad libraries. So obviously it hits folks where it hurts, but the web is much nicer to browse without all the junk.
Hackers / developers seem to insist on the non-AMP sites to bloat sites to absolute trash and back. If I saw the amp logo, I knew that was the one to click.
Abusing users with bloat is supposedly some great freedom worth fighting for, but AMP forcing these developers into a much smaller box that they can't screw with users as much on I just loved AMP.
I think a lot of the HN hate comes because AMP I think prohibits random third party javascript ad libraries. So obviously it hits folks where it hurts, but the web is much nicer to browse without all the junk.
This is true. AMP is a punch in the gut for someone who advocates for the open web. It says: the roadmap you implemented wasn't right for users. It let publishers abuse the user experience. We are taking a step backward, hiding many things that are too powerful, and making it more restrictive.
I completely understand why open web advocates would not greet AMP with a warm welcome. That doesn't mean it wasn't necessary to fix the problems. The problems were and are real.
I completely understand why open web advocates would not greet AMP with a warm welcome. That doesn't mean it wasn't necessary to fix the problems. The problems were and are real.
I'm still confused what problem AMP was fixing.
Google could just make page speed more important in their rankings. They probably don't because page speed isn't as important as content quality in regards to what people are looking for in search.
I still struggle to see how AMP has anything to do with improving the search experience and everything to do with Google abusing their market dominance.
Google could just make page speed more important in their rankings. They probably don't because page speed isn't as important as content quality in regards to what people are looking for in search.
I still struggle to see how AMP has anything to do with improving the search experience and everything to do with Google abusing their market dominance.
Focus was on a "user first" - NOT developer or hacker first approach.
So a ton of the stuff that HN folks demand (being able to do dynamic third party javacript ads and tracker loads, DOM modification after render - gone - you just are totally blocked.
If you try targeting AMP (or just consuming AMP) you'll pretty quickly get what they are going for.
For example - AMP websites really do not reflow that often (or at all). I've never I don't think had something move when I was going to click it even early in page load.
I've found a lot of complaints about AMP are developed / hacker focused complaints. If you switch your mindset to users, including non-tech types, the value becomes more obvious.
So a ton of the stuff that HN folks demand (being able to do dynamic third party javacript ads and tracker loads, DOM modification after render - gone - you just are totally blocked.
If you try targeting AMP (or just consuming AMP) you'll pretty quickly get what they are going for.
For example - AMP websites really do not reflow that often (or at all). I've never I don't think had something move when I was going to click it even early in page load.
I've found a lot of complaints about AMP are developed / hacker focused complaints. If you switch your mindset to users, including non-tech types, the value becomes more obvious.
That doesn't address my point: Couldn't Google just have increased the rank of pages with minimal Javascript and faster load times?
I think you might be strawmanning why some HN folks don't like AMP. To me, at least, it looks like someone abusing their position as the dominant search engine.
AMP lightning icons didn't get attached to pages with just one tracker and fast renders. They were attached to pages served by Google that only supported Google tracking.
I think you might be strawmanning why some HN folks don't like AMP. To me, at least, it looks like someone abusing their position as the dominant search engine.
AMP lightning icons didn't get attached to pages with just one tracker and fast renders. They were attached to pages served by Google that only supported Google tracking.
It really makes me realize HN is not user focused. You can have tiny code and fly a popover ad into a users face with a 20 second cooldown before the x to close appears. Users HATE this. Pages are ALREADY scored on speed etc. AMP was a subset of HTML that simply removed entire classes of features that hackers and developers abused to shove crap at folks. Honestly, the size difference, request count differences also were FAR higher than I expected on the AMP side as well - which also illustrated that developers left to their own devices will push whatever garbage they can - go to the media sites pushing the anti-google messaging - you are SLAMMED with trackers and crap on their regular sites. Privacy they yell as they track everything with MULTIPLE trackers.
There was a win with the AMP user experience. The fact that it had to come from google is embarrassing.
There was a win with the AMP user experience. The fact that it had to come from google is embarrassing.
> There was a win with the AMP user experience.
You can tell people don't use AMP in the real world with mainstream websites when they say this.
You can tell people don't use AMP in the real world with mainstream websites when they say this.
Can you point to a bad site as an example?
I’m also interested- I consumed primarily on IOS via google news carousal - that icon meant fast and clean
Faster load times is really only part of the AMP story. If you do a diff of whats possible between an AMP page and a plain HTML5 page load, you will quickly realize there is a large functional difference. Especially in the early days of AMP. It wasn't trying to steer the user towards Google tracking. A huge effort was put into bootstrapping the AMP ecosystem with 3rd party ad trackers, from day 1. There were some issues with cross-domain user tracking, but that wasn't something Google desired, it was a reality of how the web worked. There was no easy workaround, without turning the AMP cache off completely.
> Focus was on a "user first" - NOT developer or hacker first approach.
The number one user first request was "let users turn off receiving AMP pages." It was never implemented. The AMP advisory board item on it just... disappeared, without explanation or resolution.
AMP was not user first in any way.
> If you try targeting AMP (or just consuming AMP) you'll pretty quickly get what they are going for.
So if I go to Reddit, then the AMP site is basically unusable and pollutes search results. The AMP site removes all the useful comment information in place of application ads. Multiple clicks are required to restore the content.
The Guardian also strips comment content from it's AMP pages.
The number one user first request was "let users turn off receiving AMP pages." It was never implemented. The AMP advisory board item on it just... disappeared, without explanation or resolution.
AMP was not user first in any way.
> If you try targeting AMP (or just consuming AMP) you'll pretty quickly get what they are going for.
So if I go to Reddit, then the AMP site is basically unusable and pollutes search results. The AMP site removes all the useful comment information in place of application ads. Multiple clicks are required to restore the content.
The Guardian also strips comment content from it's AMP pages.
> hacker focused complaints
Most people I've seen who I would consider hackers have web sites that don't do all the things you're complaining about.
I hate the "throw on another library, and stack some ads" attitude as much as anyone else, but AMP isn't the way. I would be less offended if Google had just down-ranked pages with heavy JS load, and boosted pages that didn't move content around.
Most people I've seen who I would consider hackers have web sites that don't do all the things you're complaining about.
I hate the "throw on another library, and stack some ads" attitude as much as anyone else, but AMP isn't the way. I would be less offended if Google had just down-ranked pages with heavy JS load, and boosted pages that didn't move content around.
How is “does not allow a bunch of useful functionality” “user first”?
And frankly, if the argument is that news websites should be text only, then maybe Google shouldn’t have killed off Google Reader, because that was a much faster way of loading news articles.
And frankly, if the argument is that news websites should be text only, then maybe Google shouldn’t have killed off Google Reader, because that was a much faster way of loading news articles.
This debate comes up repeatedly on HN - HN is really not a good spot for it I don't think.
HIGHLY predictable behavior - some users like that. The apple walled garden, the apple billing flow, the AMP subset of HTML etc - all hated here.
Too many users have been burned by developers flying interstitial ads over the content (still happens) with a tiny unhittable x in a corner that comes in 10 seconds later. It's not the size of the content (that was already ranked), it's the absolute crap that hackers and developers shove down users throats.
I get it, you don't see or chose not to see the value in this. But there is value, at least for me and I'm sure many others started learning that the AMP icons meant less crap.
HIGHLY predictable behavior - some users like that. The apple walled garden, the apple billing flow, the AMP subset of HTML etc - all hated here.
Too many users have been burned by developers flying interstitial ads over the content (still happens) with a tiny unhittable x in a corner that comes in 10 seconds later. It's not the size of the content (that was already ranked), it's the absolute crap that hackers and developers shove down users throats.
I get it, you don't see or chose not to see the value in this. But there is value, at least for me and I'm sure many others started learning that the AMP icons meant less crap.
> Abusing users with bloat is supposedly some great freedom worth fighting for
The thing people were offended by wasn't the lack of bloat, it was the fact that it was ceding even more control to Google.
The thing people were offended by wasn't the lack of bloat, it was the fact that it was ceding even more control to Google.
But yet these users never deploy a non-google debloated world.
Billing on line is the same thing. Unless you are on a trusted site (Amazon / Apple) you can just get hosed trying to cancel subscriptions with jack up pricing etc.
Same thing with spam - at some point users stopped trusting the hackers and developers and migrated to more controlled worlds (ie, gmail etc) which blocks HUGE quantities of the junk.
I just wish hackers spent some time trying to make users experience and lives better rather than the constant push to spam them (EFF wanted to pass laws banning anti-spam measures), now AMP (which was amazing) is being attacked endlessly and the list goes on.
Google has a commercial reason for pushing this stuff - the web was turning into a trash bit (flyover ads with audio etc etc).
Billing on line is the same thing. Unless you are on a trusted site (Amazon / Apple) you can just get hosed trying to cancel subscriptions with jack up pricing etc.
Same thing with spam - at some point users stopped trusting the hackers and developers and migrated to more controlled worlds (ie, gmail etc) which blocks HUGE quantities of the junk.
I just wish hackers spent some time trying to make users experience and lives better rather than the constant push to spam them (EFF wanted to pass laws banning anti-spam measures), now AMP (which was amazing) is being attacked endlessly and the list goes on.
Google has a commercial reason for pushing this stuff - the web was turning into a trash bit (flyover ads with audio etc etc).
Which users? What a sweeping generalization. Your disdain for some mythical group of people is very odd.
Besides, does blocking ads and trackers not at least partially alleviate the issue? Works well for me and, in combination with a reader view, is a significantly better experience than AMP. I'd argue that those "hackers" you very much hate are the exact ones fighting against corporate bloat on the web.
Besides, does blocking ads and trackers not at least partially alleviate the issue? Works well for me and, in combination with a reader view, is a significantly better experience than AMP. I'd argue that those "hackers" you very much hate are the exact ones fighting against corporate bloat on the web.
Apple is a complete walled garden, and plenty of folks have migrated to their phones for example - they actually want an experience that is very predictable and can be trusted. Apple charges HIGH amounts of money as a result of this level of user trust. I also think users are more likely to spend money inside this garden - I know I do because it's much harder to get screwed there. I'll subscribe to an apple app long before I'd do the same on a random website.
"blocking ads and trackers" on the phone means that there's basically only one choice which is firefox, no? not saying firefox is not good but it's at least not for everyone.
I'm using Opera on Android, it has ad-blocker built-in. I think Vivaldi has it too.
> "blocking ads and trackers" on the phone means that there's basically only one choice which is firefox, no? not saying firefox is not good but it's at least not for everyone.
I'm blocking a good percentage of ads in Safari on my iPhone via third-party apps Hush[0] and Magic Lasso[1]. I typically read articles in Reader mode. Because of this, I can't give a great accounting of how many ads actually get through. Certainly, the number is small enough that I don't think about it.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hush-nag-blocker/id1544743900 [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ad-blocker-by-magic-lasso/id12...
I'm blocking a good percentage of ads in Safari on my iPhone via third-party apps Hush[0] and Magic Lasso[1]. I typically read articles in Reader mode. Because of this, I can't give a great accounting of how many ads actually get through. Certainly, the number is small enough that I don't think about it.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hush-nag-blocker/id1544743900 [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ad-blocker-by-magic-lasso/id12...
Reddit's AMP pages have lots of design bloat and much less information than the non-AMP pages.
That's not uncommon.
That's not uncommon.
I mostly consumed news stories via google news - so my exposure was relatively narrow
The slippery slope of bloat is back. "We're currently at a score of 87 so surely a few more ad dollars are worth losing a few points." (one year passes) "Adding just one more chumbox will only drop us from 70 to 66 so we really can't turn it down."
I wish they added not just page speed but also "how many obnoxious popups does the site show" as a strong scoring factor.
popups have their positive uses. Security on banking websites, anti-cheating on web games, and social logins are a few good reasons I can think of to have popups on a website.
How does security and anti-cheating require (or is helped by) pop-ups?
Social logins are user-initiated. That's fine.
What's not fine is that as soon as you visit the site, a giant in-frame "GIVE US YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS" newsletter popup shows up, covering the content.
Social logins are user-initiated. That's fine.
What's not fine is that as soon as you visit the site, a giant in-frame "GIVE US YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS" newsletter popup shows up, covering the content.
Google have now said they'll allow any web page in the carousel if it's fast. Which means companies have the same incentives to invest in performance, with the added benefit that the faster experience is on their main web site, not the AMP sidecar.
From a pure performance perspective AMP had one secret weapon: Google could safetly prerender content before the user clicked on it. This was offset by the fact that AMP made lots of other page speed optimisations impossible.
From a pure performance perspective AMP had one secret weapon: Google could safetly prerender content before the user clicked on it. This was offset by the fact that AMP made lots of other page speed optimisations impossible.
AMP sites still load slower than with surgical application of NoScript because of all the JS bloat and superfluous image assets they still manage to deliver. There is a better way that doesn't involve AMP.
As a user I am not interested in disabling scripts or digging through the dozens of umatririx rules.
As a user I just expect things to be fast and working out of the box.
As a user I just expect things to be fast and working out of the box.
Sites didn't get fast "against all odds" but rather due to a very clear incentive from Google – adopt AMP and you will be ranked higher.
Instead of going that route, Google could have said on day 1 that they would just rank based on the site's experience score (as they are doing now), and the end result would be the exact same.
Instead of going that route, Google could have said on day 1 that they would just rank based on the site's experience score (as they are doing now), and the end result would be the exact same.
In terms of full web sites, AMP isn’t that helpful.
However, it is impossible to beat AMP’s speed when doing something like loading an article from a Google search result.
The AMP spec makes it possible for a search engine to preload an article safely, and as a result, the article can be shown instantly when the user clicks on it.
However, it is impossible to beat AMP’s speed when doing something like loading an article from a Google search result.
The AMP spec makes it possible for a search engine to preload an article safely, and as a result, the article can be shown instantly when the user clicks on it.
Yeah, it is: just make your website load faster than AMP can hydrate a news page.
Google could just penalize websites for being JS heavy or loading slow but instead they built a walled garden they have control over.
I get some happiness about it but hopefully we can have nice things without such massive sacrifices.
I get some happiness about it but hopefully we can have nice things without such massive sacrifices.
You know what makes most sites slow? Ads and tracking.
You know what the biggest ads and tracking provider is on the internet? Google DFP and Google Analytics.
AMP is a solution to a problem of their own making, a clever solution that gives them even more control over search results and data collection (since it never leaves Google domains) while pressuring publishers to spend limited dev resources on a limited subset of viewers while making no impact on the existing website and apps they also run.
There's nothing good about AMP beyond technical experimentation. If incentives are a problem, then fix the incentives.
You know what the biggest ads and tracking provider is on the internet? Google DFP and Google Analytics.
AMP is a solution to a problem of their own making, a clever solution that gives them even more control over search results and data collection (since it never leaves Google domains) while pressuring publishers to spend limited dev resources on a limited subset of viewers while making no impact on the existing website and apps they also run.
There's nothing good about AMP beyond technical experimentation. If incentives are a problem, then fix the incentives.
I don't agree with this, ads are just a part of the problem. Bloat on the web is insane. Open any site using WordPress with a popular off the shelf theme, they weigh in many mb of CSS and js just to show a text article before you count in any ads. Incidentally these sites are the ones who get to benefit most from amp.
Most of that doesn't affect the site UX. Visit any "static" site that are tremendously popular today and you'll see tons of JS files.
It's ads/tracking with their complex network payloads and rendering that create the slowdown.
It's ads/tracking with their complex network payloads and rendering that create the slowdown.
The only thing I noticed when I used AMP instead of the regular site, is that the comments are missing. Never saw an advantage of this, as 'slow websites' is not an issue in my country.
With luck, this will move emphasis to fast web sites, rather than web sites using a specific technology stack controlled by Alphabet.
Using the AMP libraries has never been the issue. Google hijacking the URL's has.
Using the AMP libraries has never been the issue. Google hijacking the URL's has.
Who would not like to see white amp page with three old comments when he already configured dark theme on real page and real page has also 20 new comments on it.
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If that was their goal they could just have banned javascript. Much easier and faster.
Would also improve the web dramatically.
Would also improve the web dramatically.
Shameless plug for my Chrome Javascript toggle extension, JS Toggle. No unnecessary permissions required, very small footprint, and easy to audit (5.48KiB). Feature set is complete (it does one thing).
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/js-toggle/bnhjfamo...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/js-toggle/bnhjfamo...
As a user, I don't have any complaint for news sites using AMP. But Reddit links using AMP is a crime against humanity, and I search Reddit threads using Google a lot.
I guess you probably do not read article comments?
For some reason I almost always want to read them, and most of the time the AMP version does not have them, and most of the time there is no way to get to the non-AMP version.
Example from my Google feed: https://www-tomshardware-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.toms...
For some reason I almost always want to read them, and most of the time the AMP version does not have them, and most of the time there is no way to get to the non-AMP version.
Example from my Google feed: https://www-tomshardware-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.toms...
You're right, I don't tend to read comments on articles themselves. In fact I don't even know if many of the news sites I frequent (CBC, BBC) have comment section or not. But I can totally see that being a usability issue with AMP if that's what you're into.
Absolutely, and honestly I blame reddit much more than AMP there. AMP was clearly not created for the sort of dynamic page like reddit. Honestly, looking at reddit's mobile page in general, it's clear that they try to make it as awful of an experience as possible to get people onto the app, which is common with some sites.
Just in case someone is excitedly expecting that AMP is going away (like I did :p), sorry beforehand to burst your bubble -
>>Part of the Google update is that all pages with high Page Experience scores are eligible to be in the featured top news carousel. This effectively means that publishers will no longer be forced to use AMP and can instead provide fast, rich experiences on their own domains
>>Part of the Google update is that all pages with high Page Experience scores are eligible to be in the featured top news carousel. This effectively means that publishers will no longer be forced to use AMP and can instead provide fast, rich experiences on their own domains
It may end up being the same thing. Publishers reluctantly used AMP because of the carousel placement. Depending on the effort to revert, removing the incentive may effectively kill AMP.
Publishers absolutely want to take people to their main site, not the AMP facsimile. If Google actually do what they say here, this will kill AMP.
You are very optimistic about publishers actually making the websites fast. (like just how they did before AMP existed).
Disc: Googler but not associated with AMP whatsoever.
Disc: Googler but not associated with AMP whatsoever.
Publishers have shown that they can devote developer effort when there is a clear ROI. Google just need to make the criteria for inclusion in the carousel understandable and measurable.
This is disturbing. I think it is up to people like the ones who read hacker news to at least raise awareness of the issue with ordinary people. A lot of people are uncomfortable with the monopoly power of Google but aren't sure exactly what is wrong with it.
The author of this post (Dwayne Lafleur) has a linked post on additional changes being made in the Google update.
All pages with high Page Experience scores are eligible to be in the featured top news carousel.
This effectively means that publishers will no longer be forced to use AMP and can instead provide fast, rich experiences on their own domains.
His call to action is pretty straightforward:
"Get to work right now to ensure that your site has a great user experience AND has a great user experience score. Avoid unnecessary JavaScript, plugins and bloat, and make your site easy-to-use". https://www.lafoo.com/javascript-is-driving-your-visitors-cr...
All pages with high Page Experience scores are eligible to be in the featured top news carousel.
This effectively means that publishers will no longer be forced to use AMP and can instead provide fast, rich experiences on their own domains.
His call to action is pretty straightforward:
"Get to work right now to ensure that your site has a great user experience AND has a great user experience score. Avoid unnecessary JavaScript, plugins and bloat, and make your site easy-to-use". https://www.lafoo.com/javascript-is-driving-your-visitors-cr...
Google AMP breaks full screen safari and reader mode on iPhone. I've gotten so fed up with it that I've set google.com to always load as desktop. Search results are smaller and harder to read, but it's well worth the tradeoffs IMO.
I'll be that person. Have you tried DuckDuckGo? No AMP and their "bangs" are great.
Yeah I try every ddg every six months or so. Their results are getting better but I still find myself using g! enough that it's annoying.
Amp was what pushed me over the line to using it full time
> publishers will no longer be forced to use AMP and can instead provide fast, rich experiences on their own domains.
Great joke. Visit any non-amp news site and tell me that one again.
The only, major benefit AMP brought to the internet is that it was legitimately light and fast.
Great joke. Visit any non-amp news site and tell me that one again.
The only, major benefit AMP brought to the internet is that it was legitimately light and fast.
news.bbc.co.uk
A lot of news sites are instantaneous now, without amp, simply because now there are a business incentive to be fast.
> Let me package that up for you – Google, the most dominant search engine globally – used that dominant market position to encourage publishers to adopt technology so that Google could store and serve publisher’s content on Google’s domain.
It's absurd, how could regulators and authorities let this happen? Let's also mention how hard and counterintuitive is getting to the original site from the amp version.
It's absurd, how could regulators and authorities let this happen? Let's also mention how hard and counterintuitive is getting to the original site from the amp version.
>how could regulators and authorities let this happen
because they have been asleep at the wheel for almost two decades now, letting tech companies privatize and eat away at the open nature of the internet, so now we have to live in tech giant fiefdoms where they can determine the very form and content of everything displayed on the web because they're the ones who control every access point and standard.
because they have been asleep at the wheel for almost two decades now, letting tech companies privatize and eat away at the open nature of the internet, so now we have to live in tech giant fiefdoms where they can determine the very form and content of everything displayed on the web because they're the ones who control every access point and standard.
But also a few times on this site in the past few years when someone complained about AMP, technical people on HN would also say that Google was doing the right thing to make mobile pages more responsive.
Google was saying they were trying to solve a real problem, and it isn't easy (for me at least) to have known their true goals. Now if you read the the Texas anti trust suit -- and I recommend it to anyone who is interested-- it seems pretty clear that their motive for AMP was to improve their ad revenue.
Google was saying they were trying to solve a real problem, and it isn't easy (for me at least) to have known their true goals. Now if you read the the Texas anti trust suit -- and I recommend it to anyone who is interested-- it seems pretty clear that their motive for AMP was to improve their ad revenue.
> their motive for AMP was to improve their ad revenue
It can be both. AMP legitimately sped up a lot of crappy news sites. That put pressure on non-AMP sites to get their game together. It was probably a net positive at first. But then Google abused their position.
It can be both. AMP legitimately sped up a lot of crappy news sites. That put pressure on non-AMP sites to get their game together. It was probably a net positive at first. But then Google abused their position.
All they needed to do, in my opinion was to let it be known that sites that were optimised for mobile accessibility and fast loading would prioritised in mobile search result placement, above slow, inaccessible sites.
All they needed to do was boil the ocean.
Clearly they could since they somehow got every site on AMP…
Thats the point im making. It took leveraging search to offer premium real estate for AMP pages to force adoption. It was a compelling value prop for top publishers. Enough to boil the ocean. However, simply asking the ecosystem to build faster pages.. isn’t going to work.
> But then Google abused their position
Absolute market dominance corrupts absolutely. Even, and in spite of, efforts to the contrary from within the company.
Absolute market dominance corrupts absolutely. Even, and in spite of, efforts to the contrary from within the company.
Some of those technical people singing praises of AMP literally worked on it, helped it ruin the web and once finished left and renounced it: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/12/i-have-resigned-from-the-go...
I am a tech person and I have only maintained AMP is a blight. Anyone of us, with even a smidge of business sense could see what they were doing/going to do for quite some time. The people who argued for its benefits very much lacked perspective (or didn't care) outside of the immediate technical effects of speeding up mobile sites. People in tech are not particularly homogeneous in their opinions on a lot of these things and you probably saw a small slice of the various opinions.
Yeah, I saw those, and I didn't recognize any of the people, but their arguments never made sense to me, and it ended up really damaging my opinion of Google even more. What other bad things has Google done, that other people have defended, that I silently accepted without thinking it all the way through?
> letting tech companies privatize and eat away at the open nature of the internet, so now we have to live in tech giant fiefdoms where they can determine the very form and content of everything displayed on the web because they're the ones who control every access point and standard.
Wooow slow down buddy. Nothing like that is hapening. I can still hook up my computer to the internet and start serving websites right away. Google can't do anything about that. Neither can Facebook, or any GAFAM.
However Google did change your behavior is entirely on you. You can live without them just fine. Until that is changed I can't see any need for regulation.
Wooow slow down buddy. Nothing like that is hapening. I can still hook up my computer to the internet and start serving websites right away. Google can't do anything about that. Neither can Facebook, or any GAFAM.
However Google did change your behavior is entirely on you. You can live without them just fine. Until that is changed I can't see any need for regulation.
Your answer is technically correct (I know, I know, it's the best kind of correct...) but the typical case is that without using the tech giants to propagate your site (search engines, social media, instant messenger services), your site is effectively banished to the dark recesses of the internet, where only your friends and the people who mistype an URL will visit.
I mean, that is pretty much the open nature of the internet. Everything was banished to the dark recesses of the internet and just your friends and family, until we had Yahoo, Altavista, Excite, Lycos, and then Google...An open internet doesn't mean everyone has equal visibility and promotion.
"Google just blocked my site as deceptive" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26326528
The site in that article was set up to allow random malware to be uploaded and effectively hosted. So not a good example.
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Easy there partner. Are you saying that it’s time to regulate a Corp if and only if grandparent commenter needs them to live? Do they do baptisms in the google analytics data lake so you can make that decision with the requisite omniscience?
> because they have been asleep at the wheel for almost two decades now
Lobbying.
Lobbying.
It’s simply very difficult to regulate the internet, laws are an extremely blunt tool and while I agree that more could have been done, I’m also convinced that regulation would have stifled innovation.
The AMP mess is not the death knell of the open internet, perhaps the sick idea of a rotting company
The AMP mess is not the death knell of the open internet, perhaps the sick idea of a rotting company
For as much as I hate Amp it's way better than what came before it. Especially for ad heavy sites that typically rank high in Google searches for random stuff. The only time for me it's not an improvement is for reddit where it is a huge annoyance.
Google could have simply made page weight a more important factor in the ranking algorithm if that was their goal.
The minute these publishers weren't getting as much search/news traffic anymore, they would have capitulated, making their sites run faster immediately, the same way they quickly capitulated to AMP.
As proven by AMP, when Google says jump, the entire interest responds by saying "How high?"
Can anybody give me a single non-nefarious reason for why AMP was necessary instead of simply enforcing page weight/loading-speed factors via the algorithm?
The minute these publishers weren't getting as much search/news traffic anymore, they would have capitulated, making their sites run faster immediately, the same way they quickly capitulated to AMP.
As proven by AMP, when Google says jump, the entire interest responds by saying "How high?"
Can anybody give me a single non-nefarious reason for why AMP was necessary instead of simply enforcing page weight/loading-speed factors via the algorithm?
AMP allows tech people at non-tech companies to push back against all the "just one tiny little thing it won't effect load speed much" requests.
Your marketing department wants another tracking script? no can do. Your exec wants a javascript "click the monkey" promo? not on the AMP site. The UX folks want parallax webGL spinning logos? Sorry AMP doesn't allow it.
It puts people who were previously not in a position where they could push back against decisions which effect load speed in a position where they can push back.
Your marketing department wants another tracking script? no can do. Your exec wants a javascript "click the monkey" promo? not on the AMP site. The UX folks want parallax webGL spinning logos? Sorry AMP doesn't allow it.
It puts people who were previously not in a position where they could push back against decisions which effect load speed in a position where they can push back.
Again, literally all they had to do was announce specific page speed numbers you need to hit to get featured in a special carousel (just like AMP!).
The tech team could have just as easily have said, "sorry, that would put us over our X ms page speed limit."
The fact Google spent 100X the resources of a simple algorithm update by creating AMP, tells us there were other motives behind this.
The tech team could have just as easily have said, "sorry, that would put us over our X ms page speed limit."
The fact Google spent 100X the resources of a simple algorithm update by creating AMP, tells us there were other motives behind this.
Every single one of those things could be done by google providing a simple webpage analysis tool that said "These features are lowing your score in search rank!"
> Google could have simply made page weight a more important factor in the ranking algorithm if that was their goal.
They actually did this a few years ago: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2018/01/using-page...
They actually did this a few years ago: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2018/01/using-page...
And I'm sure that whosever pitched this idea to management made a big deal of how benefitial it would be for the company.
Good in theory but liable to be endlessly gamed. Using something like Amp is easy to implement even if it's not ideal.
And who, pray tell, serves all those annoying ads and makes those ad-heavy sites rank high in searches, thus controlling the nudges that push people onto AMP? Are you seeing the problem yet?
Usually Google ads aren't that bad. It's the 3rd rate ad networks and websites that have the annoying dark patterns and crappy performance.
I’m curious why you assume it’s accident or inaction. If I wanted to surveil Internet traffic with all five of my eyes, what better way would there be then rehosting all the content so people had to connect directly to me?
I think I prefer tech giant fiefdoms to a web where governments are the ones who control every access point and standard.
>>Let's also mention how hard and counterintuitive is getting to the original site from the amp version
I stopped using Chrome as my primary browser and moved to Firefox for exactly same reason - AMP.
I stopped using Chrome as my primary browser and moved to Firefox for exactly same reason - AMP.
I simply moved to DDG as my default search engine on mobile for the same reason.
Oh, now I understand why I've never encountered AMP or had reason to complain about it.
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Me too, without a way to turn off AMP I was forced to take drastic action. Then I adopted DDG on my main computer, after I didn't notice any bad side effects compared to Google web search.
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Which regulators? Which laws or policies have they broken?
The failure here is more that regulation covering this stuff is very unclear. Is it anti-trust? Telecommunications?
And if it is antitrust, what is anti competitive? How is the consumer harmed? How are others being prevented from competing?
Basically you can't just say "Google bad" here. Regulators need to go from that to "Google bad, and illegal." That last thing is not clear right now
The failure here is more that regulation covering this stuff is very unclear. Is it anti-trust? Telecommunications?
And if it is antitrust, what is anti competitive? How is the consumer harmed? How are others being prevented from competing?
Basically you can't just say "Google bad" here. Regulators need to go from that to "Google bad, and illegal." That last thing is not clear right now
Is AMP really that bad? There isn't annoying modals that take over the screen. No ads inject themselves into my scroll. Videos players that work and don't have two minutes of prerolls and the main content just buffers forever. I just hate it messes up the url.
Yes, I fucking hate it.
Every time I search for something on mobile and the result is something from reddit I only get to see only a part of the first post and some of the comments, to read more I have to click "read more".
Why would this ever be helpful to anyone? What purpose does it serve other than waste the users time and make him do more clicks?
Also - has anyone ever been happy to land on an AMP page, and think, "wow, this is really useful, I'm glad I'm on this weird page, instead of the original one" ?
Also - has anyone ever been happy to land on an AMP page, and think, "wow, this is really useful, I'm glad I'm on this weird page, instead of the original one" ?
Isn't that reddit's fault?
I tend to click on AMP results in searches because they always load so much faster.
I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I do think that the stated purpose of having an easily cacheable and loadable webpage is a good one.
I tend to click on AMP results in searches because they always load so much faster.
I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I do think that the stated purpose of having an easily cacheable and loadable webpage is a good one.
When I click a Reddit link, I expect to be logged in as myself with the ability to vote & comment directly. Instead I land on an easily cacheable page that asks me to download the Reddit app without fail.
Reddit is already fast, Reddit does not benefit from AMP - except by putting that "This page looks better in the app!" modal back in the face of people that have otherwise disabled it via their user settings.
Reddit is already fast, Reddit does not benefit from AMP - except by putting that "This page looks better in the app!" modal back in the face of people that have otherwise disabled it via their user settings.
I agree with you but that's not AMP's fault is it?
As far as I understand, when you land on an AMP page, you get the same (cached) page that everyone else gets. Which is basically a shortened version of what you would see if you were not logged in. So while it may not be AMP's fault, AMP enables/encourages the behavior.
If the AMP page is showing everyone the same thing, then of course I won't see Reddit with my user settings (old mobileweb, do not ask me about the app, etc), and of course trying to interact with the page will redirect me somewhere else. If I could opt out of AMP to avoid this issue, I would.
If the AMP page is showing everyone the same thing, then of course I won't see Reddit with my user settings (old mobileweb, do not ask me about the app, etc), and of course trying to interact with the page will redirect me somewhere else. If I could opt out of AMP to avoid this issue, I would.
AMP versions are often inferior because AMP isn’t actually HTML. You can’t even use an <img/> tag. So you have to develop an alternate version of every page for SEO. Inevitably a lot of companies don’t have the resources to actually do that so you end up with half finished, half implemented AMP versions.
I don't think the behavior on the actual reddit site is any better on mobile.
Especially in the early days I was really happy about the AMP pages, because the publishers haven't yet managed to cram so much garbage into them as they have into their regular pages. I don't need e.g. a sticky video player playing some irrelevant video just to create space for a video ad.
Especially in the early days I was really happy about the AMP pages, because the publishers haven't yet managed to cram so much garbage into them as they have into their regular pages. I don't need e.g. a sticky video player playing some irrelevant video just to create space for a video ad.
AMP is an annoying modal that takes over your screen.
Other than the usual reasons why everyone hates it, the most frustrating for me is that sharing articles with others used to be super simple (copy address from browser, paste into messaging app), but now I have to hunt for the actual non-AMP URL which is impossible to find.
That problem is self-inflicted, though. The person you send the link to can use the AMP link just fine.
No, this problem is 100% google-inflicted. This is complacency, fullstop.
I block a bunch of 3rd party javascript trackers and the like. AMP degrades in a horrible way if you do this - it seems to give me multiple seconds of a completely white page, presumably for no reason other than to punish me. I closed so many amp pages assuming they were broken before realising that they do appear if you leave them long enough.
> There isn't annoying modals that take over the screen. No ads inject themselves into my scroll. Videos players that work and don't have two minutes of prerolls and the main content just buffers forever.
All of these functions are already served by my adblocker, which does not hijack the URL to do so.
All of these functions are already served by my adblocker, which does not hijack the URL to do so.
Well, let me break it down for you: The US political landscape looks like this:
Republicans want deregulation everywhere, no matter the cost, the second you talk about limiting big business or monopoly busting they run away.
Democrats on the other hand rely heavily on favors from the tech establishment to keep their agendas front and center and hide any downsides, this means letting BigTech(tm) have free reign.
Thus both parties are incentivized to look the other way. Only recently did the Republicans wake up to TOO BIG = bad; but their solutions are all terrible and thankfully were never entertained by any meaningful majority. Meanwhile the democrats are working very hard to cement the current big tech conglomerates into having control and power so you can expect more of the same.
Republicans want deregulation everywhere, no matter the cost, the second you talk about limiting big business or monopoly busting they run away.
Democrats on the other hand rely heavily on favors from the tech establishment to keep their agendas front and center and hide any downsides, this means letting BigTech(tm) have free reign.
Thus both parties are incentivized to look the other way. Only recently did the Republicans wake up to TOO BIG = bad; but their solutions are all terrible and thankfully were never entertained by any meaningful majority. Meanwhile the democrats are working very hard to cement the current big tech conglomerates into having control and power so you can expect more of the same.
> the second you talk about limiting big business or monopoly busting they run away
Unless big business is de-platforming right-wing content, in which case this principle is instantly forgotten and we need regulation and monopolies need to be broken up...
Unless big business is de-platforming right-wing content, in which case this principle is instantly forgotten and we need regulation and monopolies need to be broken up...
> Only recently did the Republicans wake up to TOO BIG = bad; but their solutions are all terrible and thankfully were never entertained by any meaningful majority.
Covered that here
Covered that here
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The parties have changed since whenever you last read up on this (four years ago? ten years ago?).
Gop politicians (for Republicans call themselves this) don't care about deregulation anymore -- they just want to funnel money and power to the wealthy.
Dem politicians now seem very excited about breaking up Facebook and Google.
Both parties want to hurt Google and Facebook for perceived political bias. Gop politicians want this because Google and Facebook sometimes allow some left-of-center voices to occasionally penetrate their newsfeeds. Dem politicians want this because Facebook has been a vector for QAnon and other wingnut-terrorist radicalization.
Gop politicians (for Republicans call themselves this) don't care about deregulation anymore -- they just want to funnel money and power to the wealthy.
Dem politicians now seem very excited about breaking up Facebook and Google.
Both parties want to hurt Google and Facebook for perceived political bias. Gop politicians want this because Google and Facebook sometimes allow some left-of-center voices to occasionally penetrate their newsfeeds. Dem politicians want this because Facebook has been a vector for QAnon and other wingnut-terrorist radicalization.
> Gop
Is GOP, it's an acronym for Grand Old Party.
But I was just describing the current climate, the Repubs, never cared about dereg until recently when they realized that FB and Google are abusing their power, but all the GOP solutions involved draconian backwards thinking that would only make things worse.
> Both parties want to hurt Google and Facebook for perceived political bias.
Not quite, GOP wants to hurt 'em, Dems are very happy with them, and all their "dereg" is basically aimed at giving them more power.
Is GOP, it's an acronym for Grand Old Party.
But I was just describing the current climate, the Repubs, never cared about dereg until recently when they realized that FB and Google are abusing their power, but all the GOP solutions involved draconian backwards thinking that would only make things worse.
> Both parties want to hurt Google and Facebook for perceived political bias.
Not quite, GOP wants to hurt 'em, Dems are very happy with them, and all their "dereg" is basically aimed at giving them more power.
> Gop politicians (for Republicans call themselves this) don't care about deregulation anymore -- they just want to funnel money and power to the wealthy.
It almost makes one wonder if that's what deregulation was for all along....
It almost makes one wonder if that's what deregulation was for all along....
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Democrats have been very vocal and, more recently, active about bringing antitrust actions against big tech for the last 4 years now, with Senator Elizabeth Warren campaigning for President on a tech trust-busting platform.
Rather than link to those campaign promises, I'll point out that the current legislative strategy for restoring competition to the tech sector is being spearheaded by Democratic Representative David Cicilline. [0]
Additionally, Professor Tim Wu's appointment to the National Economic Council by the Biden administration speaks volumes of the urgency for antitrust action on the part of the Democratic party. [1]
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-big-tech-antitrust/u-...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/technology/tim-wu-white-h...
Rather than link to those campaign promises, I'll point out that the current legislative strategy for restoring competition to the tech sector is being spearheaded by Democratic Representative David Cicilline. [0]
Additionally, Professor Tim Wu's appointment to the National Economic Council by the Biden administration speaks volumes of the urgency for antitrust action on the part of the Democratic party. [1]
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-big-tech-antitrust/u-...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/technology/tim-wu-white-h...
> Rather than link to those campaign promises, I'll point out that the current legislative strategy for restoring competition to the tech sector is being spearheaded by Democratic Representative David Cicilline.
I wouldn't say Cicilline is spearheading anything. However, it's good that after 26 years as a politician, Cicilline now "is preparing to come out with 10 or more pieces of legislation targeting Big Tech companies" [0]
But, don't forget that Ciccilline went to prison after he "pleaded guilty to conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements for his role in the courthouse corruption scheme" [1]
Regarding fiscal competance, Fitch Ratings also downgraded Providence's ratings, and Cicilline was accused of "hiding the scope of the city's fiscal woes through 'illusory revenues, borrowing and other tricks.'"
Cicilline may do something positive today, but there are better people to be the "face of anti-trust." I'd still be wary, due to his past criminal activities, that he isn't continuing to engage in the same practices one more time.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-big-tech-antitrust/u-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cicilline#Controversies
I wouldn't say Cicilline is spearheading anything. However, it's good that after 26 years as a politician, Cicilline now "is preparing to come out with 10 or more pieces of legislation targeting Big Tech companies" [0]
But, don't forget that Ciccilline went to prison after he "pleaded guilty to conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements for his role in the courthouse corruption scheme" [1]
Regarding fiscal competance, Fitch Ratings also downgraded Providence's ratings, and Cicilline was accused of "hiding the scope of the city's fiscal woes through 'illusory revenues, borrowing and other tricks.'"
Cicilline may do something positive today, but there are better people to be the "face of anti-trust." I'd still be wary, due to his past criminal activities, that he isn't continuing to engage in the same practices one more time.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-big-tech-antitrust/u-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cicilline#Controversies
> Rather than link to those campaign promises, I'll point out that the current legislative strategy for restoring competition to the tech sector is being spearheaded by Democratic Representative David Cicilline
This is mostly about forcing BigTech(tm) to censor more free speech and calling that legislation "breaking up big tech" it's anything but.
I will admit that Warren has been beating the monopoly busting drum for 10 years now, unfortunately she's kinda made herself irrelevant with her other policies and claims.
This is mostly about forcing BigTech(tm) to censor more free speech and calling that legislation "breaking up big tech" it's anything but.
I will admit that Warren has been beating the monopoly busting drum for 10 years now, unfortunately she's kinda made herself irrelevant with her other policies and claims.
I'm inclined to think democrats talking about anti trust in relation to tech firms are more looking for influence than honest-to-god anti trust.
It's much easier to get companies to move your way if you threaten them with broad investigations into their activities. They're much more likely to behave the way you want later.
That doesn't change the real danger these companies represent to the continued freedoms and viability of society, given the current social media feedback loop and the death of journalism as a result of tech.
We're in uncharted territory.
It's much easier to get companies to move your way if you threaten them with broad investigations into their activities. They're much more likely to behave the way you want later.
That doesn't change the real danger these companies represent to the continued freedoms and viability of society, given the current social media feedback loop and the death of journalism as a result of tech.
We're in uncharted territory.
Democrats aren't a unified political party the way Republicans are, especially on issues like regulation of business. Some Dems are corporate-friendly and want contributions from lobbyists; others are social democrats who are distressed about corporate dominance. So it depends on who you're talking about: AOC and Joe Manchin aren't going to have the same perspective.
>Democrats aren't a unified political party the way Republicans are,
This is unnecessary and also incorrect comparison
>Some Dems are corporate-friendly and want contributions from lobbyists; others are social democrats who are distressed about corporate dominance.
True, but not relevant. There's a reason Warren stayed in the primaries long enough to make sure Bernie couldn't proceed - and Kamala Harris who didn't go anywhere is now Vice President. There are functional powerblocks that are making decisions, whether the party is unified or not.
>So it depends on who you're talking about: AOC and Joe Manchin aren't going to have the same perspective.
That has nothing to do with what the effective leadership and powerblocks are doing, and both can be used to push a position that does what the powerblock wants by propandazing it in their perspective.
Tech regulation is good! AOC can push it because it will protect against misinformation, protect minorities against hate, and guard against russian intrusion in elections similar to what allowed Trump to be elected. See how easy it is? It's just spin. spin is not what the actual politics going on are.
This is unnecessary and also incorrect comparison
>Some Dems are corporate-friendly and want contributions from lobbyists; others are social democrats who are distressed about corporate dominance.
True, but not relevant. There's a reason Warren stayed in the primaries long enough to make sure Bernie couldn't proceed - and Kamala Harris who didn't go anywhere is now Vice President. There are functional powerblocks that are making decisions, whether the party is unified or not.
>So it depends on who you're talking about: AOC and Joe Manchin aren't going to have the same perspective.
That has nothing to do with what the effective leadership and powerblocks are doing, and both can be used to push a position that does what the powerblock wants by propandazing it in their perspective.
Tech regulation is good! AOC can push it because it will protect against misinformation, protect minorities against hate, and guard against russian intrusion in elections similar to what allowed Trump to be elected. See how easy it is? It's just spin. spin is not what the actual politics going on are.
> It's much easier to get companies to move your way if you threaten them with broad investigations into their activities.
It's also much easier to enforce antitrust by initiating antitrust legislation.
Currently, the strategy of broad investigations is yielding to multiple focused pieces of legislation spearheaded by David Cicilline (link in GP).
It's also much easier to enforce antitrust by initiating antitrust legislation.
Currently, the strategy of broad investigations is yielding to multiple focused pieces of legislation spearheaded by David Cicilline (link in GP).
>It's also much easier to enforce antitrust by initiating antitrust legislation.
Sure, but I don't think thats the case.
>Currently, the strategy of broad investigations is yielding to multiple focused pieces of legislation spearheaded by David Cicilline (link in GP).
I think you have it backwards.
From what I can see David Cicilline will go after social media for pushing 'misinformation' and call for even harsher corporate censorship in the name of information security, and will likely want to alter section 230 to make it easier to punish them for algorithmic 'misinformation' rather than to push more freedom for normal people.
Don't expect more freedoms, expect more control. They aren't going after these companies in your defense, they're doing it to control them and use their power against their enemies. They'll use misinformation and election security and whatever else just as a cover for making things worse but being in control.
Sure, but I don't think thats the case.
>Currently, the strategy of broad investigations is yielding to multiple focused pieces of legislation spearheaded by David Cicilline (link in GP).
I think you have it backwards.
From what I can see David Cicilline will go after social media for pushing 'misinformation' and call for even harsher corporate censorship in the name of information security, and will likely want to alter section 230 to make it easier to punish them for algorithmic 'misinformation' rather than to push more freedom for normal people.
Don't expect more freedoms, expect more control. They aren't going after these companies in your defense, they're doing it to control them and use their power against their enemies. They'll use misinformation and election security and whatever else just as a cover for making things worse but being in control.
Because for everyone except techies, the domain that the content is actually served from is pretty irrelevant.
What's the benefit of this (except caching = faster page loads and navigation) for Google? To my knowledge, the ad revenue goes to the publisher, and any other company that wanted to serve the content under their domain could do so.
What's the benefit of this (except caching = faster page loads and navigation) for Google? To my knowledge, the ad revenue goes to the publisher, and any other company that wanted to serve the content under their domain could do so.
Since all the pages are on Google’s domain they can track whatever they want: which links get clicked, how far someone scrolls, etc etc etc.
a) do they?
b) can they not do that on the publisher domain too, because one of the 300 trackers that every publisher embeds tends to be Google Analytics?
b) can they not do that on the publisher domain too, because one of the 300 trackers that every publisher embeds tends to be Google Analytics?
The reddit bot that automatically de-amp website URLs is pretty nice... https://ns.reddit.com/user/AmputatorBot
> how could regulators and authorities let this happen?
Tech companies were ridiculously popular until recently.
Tech companies were ridiculously popular until recently.
Until this very minute, you mean. Google is viewed more favorably than any other company, organization, or institution in America. Only here on HN is it constantly denounced.
> Google is viewed more favorably than any other company, organization, or institution in America. Only here on HN is it constantly denounced.
This is no longer accurate. Tech companies as a whole have seen a sharp decline in net favorability since 2015 [1]. Within the cohort of tech companies, Google is favourably views [2]. But even then, there is thin popular support for breaking it up.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/29/americans-h...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21144680/verge-tech-survey...
This is no longer accurate. Tech companies as a whole have seen a sharp decline in net favorability since 2015 [1]. Within the cohort of tech companies, Google is favourably views [2]. But even then, there is thin popular support for breaking it up.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/29/americans-h...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21144680/verge-tech-survey...
I mean, did you read those articles? In the first article "tech companies" generally are viewed as positively as churches and more positively than everything else, including universities! In the second one Google has a 90% favorable rating and only 4% think it has a negative impact on society.
> "tech companies" generally are viewed as positively as churches and more positively than everything else, including universities
Google, and tech, is still popular. It's just not ridiculously, untouchably popular.
When it comes to Teflon in politics, what matters is (a) having a vocal minority who love you and (b) not having a vocal minority who hate you. The former protect you. The latter attack. Google went from having everyone on their side, strongly, to having most people on their side and a vocal minority against. That's the difference between a Congressional investigation or DOJ complaint gaining traction and getting sniped.
Also, nitpick, universities were expressed as having a positive impact by two thirds of Democrats and one third of Republicans in 2019; the comparable numbers were 54 and 44% for tech companies. In 2010 it was 71% and 66%. You don't lose twenty percent of the country costlessly, even if people start disliking other stuff a bit more, too.
Google, and tech, is still popular. It's just not ridiculously, untouchably popular.
When it comes to Teflon in politics, what matters is (a) having a vocal minority who love you and (b) not having a vocal minority who hate you. The former protect you. The latter attack. Google went from having everyone on their side, strongly, to having most people on their side and a vocal minority against. That's the difference between a Congressional investigation or DOJ complaint gaining traction and getting sniped.
Also, nitpick, universities were expressed as having a positive impact by two thirds of Democrats and one third of Republicans in 2019; the comparable numbers were 54 and 44% for tech companies. In 2010 it was 71% and 66%. You don't lose twenty percent of the country costlessly, even if people start disliking other stuff a bit more, too.
Tech literacy isn't exactly rampant. It's sad really and part of the reason we have memes like the "internet is a series of tubes" and laws like the DMCA in the US.
Literacy isn't the problem, campaign finance is. Google spreads around money to both sides of the aisle at basically the legal maximum level.
Wasn't it for performance and savings too ? It's not just siphoning productions from other companies.. at least officially.
The unofficial motto of the tech industry is "ask for forgiveness, not permission."
Hey but google put a rainbow on its webpage and a BLM banner so that is the only important thing
Once AMP is not favored by Google Search, and ideally Signed Exchange works in all browsers (to fix the domain name issue), AMP might actually become an unambiguously good thing: just another option to speed your page up.
Did Firefox and Apple change their position on signed exchanges? Both were pretty negative about it as I recall.
I suspect that once supporting Signed Exchanges in their browsers no longer has the risk of indirectly benefiting Google, we'll see Mozilla and Apple suddenly drop their highly principled technical objections to the specification.
Sadly it is at this point that Google will also decide that this neutral and open technology is not actually worth pursuing for the good of humanity after all, and will remove support for it from Chrome.
This is a pity, as it would be nice if sites could sign their content with an offline key, to avoid the risks of compromised web hosts. Even better would be if browsers let you pin a version of a web app and only accept signed upgrades if you opted-in, to further protect against hacked or coerced use of the signing key.
Sadly it is at this point that Google will also decide that this neutral and open technology is not actually worth pursuing for the good of humanity after all, and will remove support for it from Chrome.
This is a pity, as it would be nice if sites could sign their content with an offline key, to avoid the risks of compromised web hosts. Even better would be if browsers let you pin a version of a web app and only accept signed upgrades if you opted-in, to further protect against hacked or coerced use of the signing key.
For others that want to get more information:
“ In one given scenario, if an attacker is able to obtain the private key used to sign a particular website for Signed Exchanges, that attacker can then deliver false websites that appear in almost every way to be legitimate. Considering this false page in no way connects to the valid server, it would be difficult for admins to even detect.
Additionally, Mozilla has publicly shared its stance that Signed Exchanges are “harmful” and will not be implemented in Firefox as currently specified. In particular, they take issue with a browser serving a particular website without connecting to its original source (or “authoritative server”).
Mozilla has concerns about the shift in the web security model required for handling web-packaged information. Specifically, the ability for an origin to act on behalf of another without a client ever contacting the authoritative server is worrisome, as is the removal of a guarantee of confidentiality from the web security model (the host serving the web package has access to plain text). We recognise that the use cases satisfied by web packaging are useful, and would be likely to support an approach that enabled such use cases so long as the foregoing concerns could be addressed.
A leader of Apple’s Safari development team, Maciej Stachowiak, recently backed Mozilla’s stance, adding an almost humorously phrased explanation of what Signed Exchanges for AMP really is.
But even so, I’d say we are pretty uncomfortable with this approach, for similar reasons to Mozilla. We can see some advantages to Google re-serving the whole web from their own servers and getting browsers to present it as if it comes from the origin, but it also seems like a worrisome change to the web security model. ”
https://9to5google.com/2019/04/18/apple-mozilla-google-amp-s...
for those of you who want to your support the middleman: http://www.google.com/amp/s/9to5google.com/2019/04/18/apple-...
“ In one given scenario, if an attacker is able to obtain the private key used to sign a particular website for Signed Exchanges, that attacker can then deliver false websites that appear in almost every way to be legitimate. Considering this false page in no way connects to the valid server, it would be difficult for admins to even detect.
Additionally, Mozilla has publicly shared its stance that Signed Exchanges are “harmful” and will not be implemented in Firefox as currently specified. In particular, they take issue with a browser serving a particular website without connecting to its original source (or “authoritative server”).
Mozilla has concerns about the shift in the web security model required for handling web-packaged information. Specifically, the ability for an origin to act on behalf of another without a client ever contacting the authoritative server is worrisome, as is the removal of a guarantee of confidentiality from the web security model (the host serving the web package has access to plain text). We recognise that the use cases satisfied by web packaging are useful, and would be likely to support an approach that enabled such use cases so long as the foregoing concerns could be addressed.
A leader of Apple’s Safari development team, Maciej Stachowiak, recently backed Mozilla’s stance, adding an almost humorously phrased explanation of what Signed Exchanges for AMP really is.
But even so, I’d say we are pretty uncomfortable with this approach, for similar reasons to Mozilla. We can see some advantages to Google re-serving the whole web from their own servers and getting browsers to present it as if it comes from the origin, but it also seems like a worrisome change to the web security model. ”
https://9to5google.com/2019/04/18/apple-mozilla-google-amp-s...
for those of you who want to your support the middleman: http://www.google.com/amp/s/9to5google.com/2019/04/18/apple-...
Thanks for the clear summary. I'm still not particularly convinced by Mozilla and Apple's reasoning, though.
Firstly, there are many use-cases where the content signer does not care whether an attacker has managed to steal their private key. For example, sites that just host static content (like cat pictures). There are even some hosts who don't see the point in TLS at all, as they don't believe they are hosting anything that an attacker would want to interfere with.
Secondly, this is an opt-in feature and not something that would apply to all TLS certificates, so entities who considered it a genuine risk could just not use the technology. (They might also have to keep an eye on certificate transparency logs to make sure that an attacker hasn't requested such a certificate for their domain by controlling their DNS, but hosts should be doing these checks anyway, and if an attacker is in control of your DNS and has received a TLS certificate for your domain then you have bigger problems than Signed Exchanges. In any case, such certificates can be revoked once the legitimate owner has control over their domain again).
Thirdly, hosts which do opt in to using Signed Exchanges can choose to include code in their signed content which sends a background HTTP request to their servers, as a way to "phone home". That wouldn't be able to detect when a key had been stolen, and it probably wouldn't reveal where the content had actually been served from (unless the specification were altered to allow signers to require that) but it would at least give signers visibility of which content was still being served.
Finally, the biggest risk to websites is not that "the host serving the web package has access to plain text", because these are publicly served files which everyone has access to. The biggest risk is phishing, where a victim believes they are visiting a certain site but they're actually visiting a site with a similar-looking name, which TLS doesn't prevent and Signed Exchanges doesn't make any easier.
Firstly, there are many use-cases where the content signer does not care whether an attacker has managed to steal their private key. For example, sites that just host static content (like cat pictures). There are even some hosts who don't see the point in TLS at all, as they don't believe they are hosting anything that an attacker would want to interfere with.
Secondly, this is an opt-in feature and not something that would apply to all TLS certificates, so entities who considered it a genuine risk could just not use the technology. (They might also have to keep an eye on certificate transparency logs to make sure that an attacker hasn't requested such a certificate for their domain by controlling their DNS, but hosts should be doing these checks anyway, and if an attacker is in control of your DNS and has received a TLS certificate for your domain then you have bigger problems than Signed Exchanges. In any case, such certificates can be revoked once the legitimate owner has control over their domain again).
Thirdly, hosts which do opt in to using Signed Exchanges can choose to include code in their signed content which sends a background HTTP request to their servers, as a way to "phone home". That wouldn't be able to detect when a key had been stolen, and it probably wouldn't reveal where the content had actually been served from (unless the specification were altered to allow signers to require that) but it would at least give signers visibility of which content was still being served.
Finally, the biggest risk to websites is not that "the host serving the web package has access to plain text", because these are publicly served files which everyone has access to. The biggest risk is phishing, where a victim believes they are visiting a certain site but they're actually visiting a site with a similar-looking name, which TLS doesn't prevent and Signed Exchanges doesn't make any easier.
AMP improved pages mostly by forcing publishers to start from scratch. They needed to get something out the door, so they made a minimum viable version, without all the cruft and trackers.
Then they started cramming more and more of that into the AMP version, despite AMP making that hard.
Giving better placement for the main page version won't be as effective, because it doesn't force them to start from scratch. At best, we'll see some incremental improvements.
I've seen an ad that managed to consume so many resources that Chrome blocked it. Reducing the threshold for that blocking would be much more effective.
Then they started cramming more and more of that into the AMP version, despite AMP making that hard.
Giving better placement for the main page version won't be as effective, because it doesn't force them to start from scratch. At best, we'll see some incremental improvements.
I've seen an ad that managed to consume so many resources that Chrome blocked it. Reducing the threshold for that blocking would be much more effective.
Not to say this was entirely predictable, but it was entirely predictable. Myself and pretty much the bulk of my larger circle have been saying this was Google's goal with AMP for years now and that speeding up mobile pages must have been very early on co-opted to make more ad revenue anti-competitively.
Good to see it being out in the open and included in the lawsuit no less. I certainly share the sentiment of the author and hope this is the start of the end for AMP.
Good to see it being out in the open and included in the lawsuit no less. I certainly share the sentiment of the author and hope this is the start of the end for AMP.
I don't see AMP sites because I don't use google search. I prefer Duckduckgo and Safari over Google Search & Chrome
Fortunately for me, 95% of AMP pages that show up on my search results are low-quality news websites crawling with ads and the Taboola chumbox, or pages stuffed with affiliate links like "Best Protein Powders for 2021". Search results that appear on the AMP carousel are generally not websites I would visit.
But maybe that's the point?
But maybe that's the point?
[deleted]
I never see AMP using Kiwi Browser with its "Remove AMP" privacy feature.
I wonder if there's space for CDNs to fill in some of that use case without the monopolism. Having a slimmed down experience geared directly for people landing from search makes a lot of sense.
Even better, just go straight to the slimmed down experience, regardless of where the visitor is coming from.
There's a hierarchy of users. Users who search a topic and land on your site are the least engaged. They don't know your site, they just want to snack on your content and bounce. You can either milk them for revenue or try to convince them to stay. Anyone who either lands directly on your site or is navigating page to page is partly engaged. Middle of the funnel and a step away from identifying themselves. Next step is to collect an email address or even a login. These are the folks you build your experience around.
I mean, at least make this opt-in if you want the Amp experience. Forcing this on users should be a crime.
I forgot AMP existed because I now use duck instead of google
AMP has been #1 on my list of web/Internet things that I hoped would fail since it emerged. It was a transparent attempt to start walled-gardening the web.
I was thinking why the f*k all the websites were turning into g*gle.com domain? That breaks all the link sharing. I thought if this is the problem of the mobile Safari. Turns out it is G*gle's evil plan to dominate all the WWW traffics :-/
Safari will auto-expand the AMP link to the deep link, so at least within iOS's default browser and using its share sheet, AMP doesn't break link sharing.
I usually copy link via long-press the location bar which is not auto converted.
Besides AMP pages break horizontal scrolling in some page as well. For example: https://www.google.ca/amp/s/ca.finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/new... You can scroll left and right but it is not supposed to.
Some app will also render wrong thumbnail for AMP links as well.
Altogether AMP makes the UX much worse :-/
Besides AMP pages break horizontal scrolling in some page as well. For example: https://www.google.ca/amp/s/ca.finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/new... You can scroll left and right but it is not supposed to.
Some app will also render wrong thumbnail for AMP links as well.
Altogether AMP makes the UX much worse :-/
The most simple and least expensive solution for Google, if they actually cared about making the web faster, would have been to simply enforce more strict page-weight rules via the search algorithm.
The fact that they didn't do that, tells us that Google is either:
A) Stupid and inefficient, because creating AMP cost 100X more than a simple search algorithm change
Or
B) Trying to achieve something more nefarious with AMP, something that is worth the extra cost, and that they weren't telling us about.
After seeing the Texas lawsuit against them, it's pretty clear to my eyes that the answer is B.
The fact that they didn't do that, tells us that Google is either:
A) Stupid and inefficient, because creating AMP cost 100X more than a simple search algorithm change
Or
B) Trying to achieve something more nefarious with AMP, something that is worth the extra cost, and that they weren't telling us about.
After seeing the Texas lawsuit against them, it's pretty clear to my eyes that the answer is B.
Search speed was already a ranking factor. It didn't have much effect on publishers, who continued to bloat their pages.
As for why they didn't just "dial it up to 11", I'm guessing that would cause the quality of their search results to go down.
As for why they didn't just "dial it up to 11", I'm guessing that would cause the quality of their search results to go down.
> As for why they didn't just "dial it up to 11", I'm guessing that would cause the quality of their search results to go down.
How would announcing preferential treatment for sites under X kb in weight have been any different than preferential treatment for sites using AMP?
Both would have required similar action from the dev teams at these publishers.
How would announcing preferential treatment for sites under X kb in weight have been any different than preferential treatment for sites using AMP?
Both would have required similar action from the dev teams at these publishers.
AMP's SEO advantage wasn't in organic results, but a separate search vertical ("the carousel") placed above-the-fold. So as mentioned, introducing a new vertical also allowed Google to sidestep any issues of hurting organic results.
In addition, the carousel was a much more desirable placement for publishers to chase. It made them pay attention more than a small ranking factor bump would have.
I do however disagree with Google's decision to implement this. I feel it's one of the legitimate criticisms of AMP, and it took them far too long to fix it.
In addition, the carousel was a much more desirable placement for publishers to chase. It made them pay attention more than a small ranking factor bump would have.
I do however disagree with Google's decision to implement this. I feel it's one of the legitimate criticisms of AMP, and it took them far too long to fix it.
Amp sucks and IMO is a broken concept counter to the way the internet is supposed to work... case in point the only thing I use it for is to link Epoch Times articles since it bypasses the required login prompt.
Blah blah "AMP is bad."
I could agree with the performance sentiment if it were directed at the real issue:
One-click-and-you-now-have-amp solutions, which is like 99% of AMP pages using WordPress.
I could agree with the performance sentiment if it were directed at the real issue:
One-click-and-you-now-have-amp solutions, which is like 99% of AMP pages using WordPress.
Google sequestering the URL is bad.
Exactly, Google <-- is bad.
I don't see how this gets mixed up with AMP.
I don't see how this gets mixed up with AMP.
They're not separable, though. AMP entirely depends on the existence of Google in order to see any benefit from it, even without cacheing layer. Having worked for a few companies that wanted to implement AMP, including one which was a media firm, they both wanted AMP for the SEO benefits. The "carousel" was like where they wanted to be, and they didn't give a flying shit about improving page performance; if they did, I would have explained to them that we already could have good performance now if they stopped asking us to overload their pages with tracking scripts, ads, and other useless crap, and allowed engineers the time to address performance issues.
Without Google, AMP alone doesn't have the speed or the technical advantage to make it worth it. Google's neatest trick is their attempt at framing AMP as something akin to an open-source project that has nothing to do with them when, in reality, it has everything to do with them.
P.S. AMP does give engineers an out by allowing them to build pages from scratch without the cruft imposed upon the OG pages by their employers, but this could be easily avoided by product owners making better(and rather obvious) decisions rather than always making the more exciting ones that cause a lot of dilly dallying and technical debt. Still, at the end of the day, on its own is just busy-work.
Without Google, AMP alone doesn't have the speed or the technical advantage to make it worth it. Google's neatest trick is their attempt at framing AMP as something akin to an open-source project that has nothing to do with them when, in reality, it has everything to do with them.
P.S. AMP does give engineers an out by allowing them to build pages from scratch without the cruft imposed upon the OG pages by their employers, but this could be easily avoided by product owners making better(and rather obvious) decisions rather than always making the more exciting ones that cause a lot of dilly dallying and technical debt. Still, at the end of the day, on its own is just busy-work.
> Having worked for a few companies that wanted to implement AMP, including one which was a media firm, they both wanted AMP for the SEO benefits. The "carousel" was like where they wanted to be, and they didn't give a flying shit about improving page performance;
And that's exactly why I can't hate AMP. Publishers don't give a fuck about performance, and user experience in general as long as they get clicks that can be monetized. They don't want to keep users for their quality content, they want to game search engine results and trap users when they get in.
Things like AMP seems to be the only way to make publishers care. Seen the other way, Google have seen the mess, and took advantage of it and made AMP, which both addresses the problem and get them a comfortable position. If sites were fast the problem wouldn't be there in the first place, and Google would have had to find something else for their monopoly.
And sure, what you said in your PS is true. Unfortunately, that's not how things are. I don't know why, greed maybe? But if it is the case, it is the stupid kind of greed, because now, publishers are struggling and Google is making shittons of money.
And that's exactly why I can't hate AMP. Publishers don't give a fuck about performance, and user experience in general as long as they get clicks that can be monetized. They don't want to keep users for their quality content, they want to game search engine results and trap users when they get in.
Things like AMP seems to be the only way to make publishers care. Seen the other way, Google have seen the mess, and took advantage of it and made AMP, which both addresses the problem and get them a comfortable position. If sites were fast the problem wouldn't be there in the first place, and Google would have had to find something else for their monopoly.
And sure, what you said in your PS is true. Unfortunately, that's not how things are. I don't know why, greed maybe? But if it is the case, it is the stupid kind of greed, because now, publishers are struggling and Google is making shittons of money.
The advantage of AMP is precisely this: when an executive wants to put fifty tracking scripts of various sorts on an AMP page, the developers can say “this is impossible, Google doesn’t allow this”. When it’s on your site’s own page, the developer doesn’t have this leverage.
Did it occur to you that nobody would ever refactor their pages to AMP markup to begin with, had Google not decided to give AMP preferential treatment?
AMP is the symptom of the problem, which is Google and its monopoly on search.
AMP is the symptom of the problem, which is Google and its monopoly on search.
AMP launched in 2015. At that time, Larry Page was CEO, Eric Schmidt was Chairman and David Drummond was the Chief Legal Officer. I don't know how any of them signed off on AMP.
Giving advantageous ranking (including, but not limited to, showing AMP content in Top Stories) is the very definition of using your market power in one area (search) to force publishers to adopt something else you created.
For a company that is (or should be) very careful about attracting antitrust attention from the US/EU, this seems completely reckless.
And what is the upside for Google here? Fast pages? That seems like one hell of a gamble.
And on the user side? I, as a user, absolutely hate AMP and wish I could opt out.
I have poor vision so use larger fonts on iOS. AMP pages routinely render with the edge of pages cropped off and you can't scroll so here so this happens to me way too often:
1. Click on a link
2. Get an AMP page
3. Can't read the page, click back
4. Force touch the link to bring up the preview of the page, which is the non-AMP version
5. Click on that preview to get the non-AMP page.
Why is this still an issue? Why can't I just get this version of the page always? It's ludicrous.
But I honestly don't know why Google pushed so hard on AMP.