I Have Resigned from the Google AMP Advisory Committee(shkspr.mobi)
shkspr.mobi
I Have Resigned from the Google AMP Advisory Committee
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/12/i-have-resigned-from-the-google-amp-advisory-committee/
324 comments
Years ago I worked as a frontend dev for Newsweek & The Daily Beast and saw the other side of this. It boiled down to money, brand, advertising and engagement.
Wrapping the content in an iframe allowed the host to monetize our content by decorating it with ads. This would dillute the CTR on our ads, resulting in less money. Big sites enter into contracts with major brands for full page advertisements, which could include contractual requirements that theirs is the only ad on the page. Serving and decorating a site would create headaches for us to explain why their ads weren't alone.
The iframe also reduced engagement as reader would only read the embedded article and move on. An actual visitor of the site had a far higher likelihood to navigate to other pages. Higher engagement resulted in more money and some brand loyalty. This also dramatically hurt sharing as the browser URL wasn't ours, but the hosts (which I also hate about AMP).
Your site messed with a lot of the ways their business generated revenue, in an industry that was already struggling to adapt to "the internet".
Wrapping the content in an iframe allowed the host to monetize our content by decorating it with ads. This would dillute the CTR on our ads, resulting in less money. Big sites enter into contracts with major brands for full page advertisements, which could include contractual requirements that theirs is the only ad on the page. Serving and decorating a site would create headaches for us to explain why their ads weren't alone.
The iframe also reduced engagement as reader would only read the embedded article and move on. An actual visitor of the site had a far higher likelihood to navigate to other pages. Higher engagement resulted in more money and some brand loyalty. This also dramatically hurt sharing as the browser URL wasn't ours, but the hosts (which I also hate about AMP).
Your site messed with a lot of the ways their business generated revenue, in an industry that was already struggling to adapt to "the internet".
I think what the "legacy" news media failed at more than adapting was effectively communicating the time and effort that goes into serious news gathering and reporting. I regularly get the impression a certain slice of HN commenters think "the media" is a bunch of opinion bloggers fabricating sources to drive "an agenda". In reality, the effort for producing a deep investigative story can be equivalent to an a mid-size software engineering project in terms of person hours and expertise. Three senior reporters working on a Pulitzer-level story can take years, numerous support staff, and legal fees.
Most software engineers innately know that taking an open-source project, stripping the authorship, putting it your own site and running ads next to it is unethical, regardless of the licensing etc. Yet, when it comes to capturing news stories of equivalent production effort, "information wants to be free". I think that may largely be a failure to understand the work that real reporting takes.
Ironically, as prestige newsrooms have shrunk, the percentage of high-quality stories has gone down because revenue has declined and those stories are expensive. So in fact we do perversely end up with more click-bait as Google et al engineered systems to optimize for attention and click-through (the opposite of a multi-part investigation).
Most software engineers innately know that taking an open-source project, stripping the authorship, putting it your own site and running ads next to it is unethical, regardless of the licensing etc. Yet, when it comes to capturing news stories of equivalent production effort, "information wants to be free". I think that may largely be a failure to understand the work that real reporting takes.
Ironically, as prestige newsrooms have shrunk, the percentage of high-quality stories has gone down because revenue has declined and those stories are expensive. So in fact we do perversely end up with more click-bait as Google et al engineered systems to optimize for attention and click-through (the opposite of a multi-part investigation).
> I regularly get the impression a certain slice of HN commenters think "the media" is a bunch of opinion bloggers fabricating sources to drive "an agenda". In reality, the effort for producing a deep investigative story can be equivalent to an a mid-size software engineering project in terms of person hours and expertise.
That's not just an impression, it's a fact. More than once have I seen commenters suggest (with what I assume is a straight face) that amateur bloggers can effectively replace "the media." A similar position I've seen frequently is that science reporting is worthless, and individuals should just sift through the all raw papers instead (which not even actual scientists do).
The best bloggers can do is substitute for opinion writers, since having and expressing an opinion is really a solo endeavor, regardless of where you do it. Pretty much everything else needs a bigger team and more support structure.
That's not just an impression, it's a fact. More than once have I seen commenters suggest (with what I assume is a straight face) that amateur bloggers can effectively replace "the media." A similar position I've seen frequently is that science reporting is worthless, and individuals should just sift through the all raw papers instead (which not even actual scientists do).
The best bloggers can do is substitute for opinion writers, since having and expressing an opinion is really a solo endeavor, regardless of where you do it. Pretty much everything else needs a bigger team and more support structure.
Your incredulity isn't much of an argument. A blogger is usually some person at a keyboard, typing. A journalist is the same.
The major difference is people going in to journalism tend not to be domain experts or leaders in their field. That means bloggers can easily substitute for investigative journalism - university professors, for example, are usually better researchers than news reporters.
In fact, in this rather divided era, it is fair to question character of most journalists and ask exactly what is positive about their contribution. Good intentions do not make good outcomes, and for most things I care about the formal media is more effective at silencing real concerns than amplifying them. Bloggers sometimes get upset about issues that are important to me and tend to sustain the coverage for years. Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groklaw . No competition I'm aware of in the media circuits for that sort of work. I'll take the bloggers thanks.
The major difference is people going in to journalism tend not to be domain experts or leaders in their field. That means bloggers can easily substitute for investigative journalism - university professors, for example, are usually better researchers than news reporters.
In fact, in this rather divided era, it is fair to question character of most journalists and ask exactly what is positive about their contribution. Good intentions do not make good outcomes, and for most things I care about the formal media is more effective at silencing real concerns than amplifying them. Bloggers sometimes get upset about issues that are important to me and tend to sustain the coverage for years. Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groklaw . No competition I'm aware of in the media circuits for that sort of work. I'll take the bloggers thanks.
Amateur journalism came into my awareness through reading about Lovecraft. My impression is that people engaged in journalism for various hobby/interest groups, clubs through at least the 1920s and considered themselves amateurs in the sense of practice for the love of the activity itself. I can see a similar strand in 'zines and later web logs and blogs.
A rather older sense of "profession" (maybe concurrent with people calling themselves amateur journalists) meant any job which entailed a primary responsibility to the public, like a doctor, a lawyer, or a journalist. Unlike the other professions, one didn't need any educational credentials, bonding or special license to be a journalist.
Journalism is unique among the professions: in at least some sense of the word, if one considers oneself a journalist, one is a journalist.
A rather older sense of "profession" (maybe concurrent with people calling themselves amateur journalists) meant any job which entailed a primary responsibility to the public, like a doctor, a lawyer, or a journalist. Unlike the other professions, one didn't need any educational credentials, bonding or special license to be a journalist.
Journalism is unique among the professions: in at least some sense of the word, if one considers oneself a journalist, one is a journalist.
I was an activist that blogged. Data gathering and analysis was exhausting. My efforts changed policies, socialized reforms.
Does your poor esteem for bloggers apply to activists like me?
Does your poor esteem for bloggers apply to activists like me?
I think OP was trying to make a point that the entire investigative journalism industry can't be replaced by freelance bloggers, not that freelance bloggers don't add value.
> I think OP was trying to make a point that the entire investigative journalism industry can't be replaced by freelance bloggers, not that freelance bloggers don't add value.
That's exactly it. I elided some thoughts about sustainability from my comment, but I basically think reporting is so much more labor intensive than opinionating that no configuration of amateur or part-time bloggers can substitute for all the vital civic functions of a newspaper.
That's not to say that bloggers can't to real reporting, but when they do, by necessity it will have a far narrower topical focus and will either burn out an amateur blogger or force that blogger to professionalize and evolve their blog into something a lot like a traditional media organization.
Given how much easier opinionating is, I'd wager 99%+ of bloggers will stick to it (and other easy things like link aggregation) 99%+ of the time. If you skim the cream, you could probably come up with something more-or-less comparable to a newspaper opinion page.
That's exactly it. I elided some thoughts about sustainability from my comment, but I basically think reporting is so much more labor intensive than opinionating that no configuration of amateur or part-time bloggers can substitute for all the vital civic functions of a newspaper.
That's not to say that bloggers can't to real reporting, but when they do, by necessity it will have a far narrower topical focus and will either burn out an amateur blogger or force that blogger to professionalize and evolve their blog into something a lot like a traditional media organization.
Given how much easier opinionating is, I'd wager 99%+ of bloggers will stick to it (and other easy things like link aggregation) 99%+ of the time. If you skim the cream, you could probably come up with something more-or-less comparable to a newspaper opinion page.
Agree completely. I couldn't figure out how to both save democracy and pay my bills. And I'm not well suited to the fund raising, running a non-profit org type stuff.
Only notion I have for addressing this is some kind of grant or fellowship, meaning just give prospects cash.
Only notion I have for addressing this is some kind of grant or fellowship, meaning just give prospects cash.
> In reality, the effort for producing a deep investigative story can be equivalent to an a mid-size software engineering project in terms of person hours and expertise.
Investigative journalism is 1 or 2% of the budget of most media companies. Saying that running a media company is expensive because of investigative journalism is like saying that running a tech company is expensive because of the free snacks.
Investigative journalism is 1 or 2% of the budget of most media companies. Saying that running a media company is expensive because of investigative journalism is like saying that running a tech company is expensive because of the free snacks.
Sadly this. A lot of the "old" media companies saw the "success" of free online content, be it digital-only-ad-based publishers, be it social media, and started to mimic that, and in the process not only desperately pivoted into a market that in fact isn't as successful as they thought but also burnt a lot of their reputation in the process.
Right now it seems back to paid models for a lot, but I wonder if it's too late now with all the damaged reputation and the shift in consumer expectation (that they help create) that news and journalism should be free. I'd guess for a lot of those newspapers and magazines it will be too late, while a few will survive the onslaught and be able to concentrate the willing-to-pay consumers.
Right now it seems back to paid models for a lot, but I wonder if it's too late now with all the damaged reputation and the shift in consumer expectation (that they help create) that news and journalism should be free. I'd guess for a lot of those newspapers and magazines it will be too late, while a few will survive the onslaught and be able to concentrate the willing-to-pay consumers.
Well it's not like they didn't know that people hate ad networks, hate getting tracked the shit out of them, hate downloading 5MB of mysterious JS to read a 2kB article.
The sliminess of the online advertising industry wasn't a secret 10 years ago or something.
So don't talk about it as if they ever were an ethical source of business income. (Not just talking about all the lying that is inherent in advertising, print ads suffer from that too)
They never were, they're not like inert pieces of your magazine. They're little pieces of software doing whatever the fuck it likes, control that you offer to semi-anonymous parties over your readers.
Imagine if a print newspaper didn't just sell ad space in their print, but whoever buys the ad also determines what ink it is printed with. And the ink can be any substance! Sometimes it's ink, sometimes it's poop, sometimes it's smallpox, sometimes it's radioactive.
I mean, MOST of the time it's really just ink, with only a tiny amount of aerosolized heroin, just your average respectable ads. But every once in a while, and there is really nothing to do but hope it happens to the other paper first, it'll really harm the reader.
I mean you can't really expect a news magazine to check all the ink its printed with right, just doesn't scale.
The sliminess of the online advertising industry wasn't a secret 10 years ago or something.
So don't talk about it as if they ever were an ethical source of business income. (Not just talking about all the lying that is inherent in advertising, print ads suffer from that too)
They never were, they're not like inert pieces of your magazine. They're little pieces of software doing whatever the fuck it likes, control that you offer to semi-anonymous parties over your readers.
Imagine if a print newspaper didn't just sell ad space in their print, but whoever buys the ad also determines what ink it is printed with. And the ink can be any substance! Sometimes it's ink, sometimes it's poop, sometimes it's smallpox, sometimes it's radioactive.
I mean, MOST of the time it's really just ink, with only a tiny amount of aerosolized heroin, just your average respectable ads. But every once in a while, and there is really nothing to do but hope it happens to the other paper first, it'll really harm the reader.
I mean you can't really expect a news magazine to check all the ink its printed with right, just doesn't scale.
> the shift in consumer expectation (that they help create) that news and journalism should be free
OK but they created that expectation in the 1890s. The Internet isn't the cause of the media companies' problems, it's just beating them at their own game.
OK but they created that expectation in the 1890s. The Internet isn't the cause of the media companies' problems, it's just beating them at their own game.
Not really. There has been a long tradition of mostly shit quality journalism available for "free", along with some refurbished agency reporting, true. However, the quality journalism for the most part was still paid, as in buy a paper or magazine or a subscription, if you want reliable and regular in depth journalistic reporting and/or investigation (with some exceptions, of course). That really only shifted when publishers en masse put stuff on the web for "free", financed by ads.
It doesn't matter what they do.
Youtube personalities are aggregating and editorializing their content and making millions to pay for a staff of 1.
Others are just going and doing the reporting themselves and doing similarly -- paying for the camera crew and legal defense out of their own pockets.
Those youtube personalities dwarf the reach and viewership that all but the clickbaitiest media companies are getting.
That's what's satisfying the market need right now. That's what media companies have to compete against. They'll never get back the dominant position that they once had and ads will never work for their business again. Why would I pay for a display ad on your site when I can pay for a video ad that has much better targeting?
This is the issue that most people have missed. Advertising dollars flow to where they are most efficient. News site display ads are a shotgun whereas youtube channel, facebook page, news aggregator ads are a sniper. If any periodical is going to succeed, they're going to need to cater to a hyper specific niche that has cash.
Youtube personalities are aggregating and editorializing their content and making millions to pay for a staff of 1.
Others are just going and doing the reporting themselves and doing similarly -- paying for the camera crew and legal defense out of their own pockets.
Those youtube personalities dwarf the reach and viewership that all but the clickbaitiest media companies are getting.
That's what's satisfying the market need right now. That's what media companies have to compete against. They'll never get back the dominant position that they once had and ads will never work for their business again. Why would I pay for a display ad on your site when I can pay for a video ad that has much better targeting?
This is the issue that most people have missed. Advertising dollars flow to where they are most efficient. News site display ads are a shotgun whereas youtube channel, facebook page, news aggregator ads are a sniper. If any periodical is going to succeed, they're going to need to cater to a hyper specific niche that has cash.
> staff of 1
Err no, it might look that way sometimes so that it seems authentic, but most major youtubers have staff. They are way more lean on expense than the TV pundits but still!
Err no, it might look that way sometimes so that it seems authentic, but most major youtubers have staff. They are way more lean on expense than the TV pundits but still!
The Joe Rogan Experience podcast has only one full time employee beyond the host, plus a few part timers for special projects. It is hugely profitable with a valuation far higher than some whole media companies with orders of magnitude more employees.
I'm aware that many do, but some of the ones I'm thinking of, specifically in this context, do not.
Also we're comparing this to entire media organizations, so it's mostly irrelevant.
Also we're comparing this to entire media organizations, so it's mostly irrelevant.
How often are those staff paid with money rather than 'exposure'? AFAIK pewdiepie does not pay his 'staff' editors.
A more interesting number would be the proportion of the budget that goes on journalism full stop. "Investigative journalism" can't be cleanly separated from other kinds. It also costs money to give an informed take on a bill going through Congress, the latest iPhone, or the Covid stats.
Do you have a link to that percentage of the budget? And also what comprises the investigative journalism budget - if it is primarily for the wages of employees doing the investigating part it seems not that bad in salaries are generally not the largest part of most companies' operating costs (although generally significant)
I would suppose the offices, computers, health benefits for family etc. might not count as part of the investigative journalism budget as well. Or they might, accountants of respective media companies would know I guess.
I would suppose the offices, computers, health benefits for family etc. might not count as part of the investigative journalism budget as well. Or they might, accountants of respective media companies would know I guess.
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Snack expenses are no joke, I've seen them as high as $1k/month per person.
>is like saying that running a tech company is expensive because of the free snacks.
A more apt analogy would be that it was like saying Google was expensive to run because of theoretical CS basic research.
A more apt analogy would be that it was like saying Google was expensive to run because of theoretical CS basic research.
From a business perspective, perhaps. From a social benefit perspective, getting rid of corrupt politicians, exposing pollution, and giving citizens the ability to understand what the powerful are doing has massive benefit. Think of all the fraud and waste that has been uncovered over the years, recouping that money doesn't go to the newspaper, but it may benefit society more broadly. Simple fact is places with less free media have more corruption and misuse of public funds.
most articles are bought, so...
A shockingly high number of people who would have been journalists 20 years ago now work in Public Relations. Many journalism school graduates try to find work in the trade and end up as corporate mouthpieces.
well I wouldn't say corporate mouthpieces, but journalism is mostly rewriting news from bigger agencies (like the dpa from germany) or from freelancers. I mean it's basically impossible to fill a daily newspaper with just own articles/personal. so newspaper call agencies to fill a lot of stuff. and they bring mostly a few original stories.
I mean literally people who are trained journalists, and sometimes even experienced ones, going to work for a company or agency and writing press releases.
Citation needed.
Perhaps equipment, running presses and website, etc. are large expenses too, but humans tend to cost a lot of money.
Perhaps equipment, running presses and website, etc. are large expenses too, but humans tend to cost a lot of money.
Speaking as somebody who has been involved in tech sales for a long time, 'communicating' is not the main problem. You need a monetization model that channels users into paths that oblige them to pay for content. And it needs to work at scale.
$120 a year for a subscription might seem iniquitous to HN readers. From the business point of view you need over 1500 subscription to pay for a single dev working at non-large-city rate, e.g., in Richmond Virginia. That's just to run the website, not to generate content. It's a big hill to climb.
My estimate assumes a $150/year salary + benefits, $120 subscription, and 20% customer acquisition cost for each subscription.
150000 / (120 * (1 - .20))
$120 a year for a subscription might seem iniquitous to HN readers. From the business point of view you need over 1500 subscription to pay for a single dev working at non-large-city rate, e.g., in Richmond Virginia. That's just to run the website, not to generate content. It's a big hill to climb.
My estimate assumes a $150/year salary + benefits, $120 subscription, and 20% customer acquisition cost for each subscription.
150000 / (120 * (1 - .20))
You think you (or anyone else) could earn $150k/yr working as a webdev for a media outlet based in Richmond, VA?
This! I doubt whoever is running the website for the Richmond Times-Dispatch is making more than $75k/year. They're probably also maintaining sites for others papers in their group, and maybe even working on sites for local businesses too.
To pay someone $100k, a business needs to earn $150k assuming a certain level of benefits commonly offered to white collar workers.
Pick your salary. With benefits and overhead it's not going to be far off even in Richmond assuming you can find the right person. Most big media outlets work in more expensive markets.
My point is that you have to make real money to support these businesses, which means figuring out a monetization strategy that results in 10s or even hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
My point is that you have to make real money to support these businesses, which means figuring out a monetization strategy that results in 10s or even hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
My point was more about software engineers having trouble grasping effort/production costs involved in media outside of their immediate domain, despite having the power to dramatically affect revenue calculations in other domains.
> I think what the "legacy" news media failed at more than adapting was effectively communicating the time and effort that goes into serious news gathering and reporting.
Among many parts of the public, the perception (that IMO is correct) is that serious news gathering and reporting is the rare exception, not the norm. It certainly seems like most news pieces these days take the form of uncritically reporting anything the government proclaims as fact, thinly veiled activism, and meaningless outrage click farming. The respectable journalists out there with a shred of integrity and effort put into their reporting are very rare. Maybe a Glenn greenwald (who is an idealogical opposite of mine) is a rare exception. But I’d struggle to name more than like 5 journalists i think are even largely interested in truth, willing to take some risks, and have a bit of integrity. The business model of journalism has changed (outrage based click farming) and the profession’s respectability (to me) has changed with it. Journalism was respectable before you could measure clicks and therefore profit.
Among many parts of the public, the perception (that IMO is correct) is that serious news gathering and reporting is the rare exception, not the norm. It certainly seems like most news pieces these days take the form of uncritically reporting anything the government proclaims as fact, thinly veiled activism, and meaningless outrage click farming. The respectable journalists out there with a shred of integrity and effort put into their reporting are very rare. Maybe a Glenn greenwald (who is an idealogical opposite of mine) is a rare exception. But I’d struggle to name more than like 5 journalists i think are even largely interested in truth, willing to take some risks, and have a bit of integrity. The business model of journalism has changed (outrage based click farming) and the profession’s respectability (to me) has changed with it. Journalism was respectable before you could measure clicks and therefore profit.
> uncritically reporting anything the government proclaims as fact
Not just governments, but also corporations and universities. Very often 'news stories' are just thinly veiled press releases.
Not just governments, but also corporations and universities. Very often 'news stories' are just thinly veiled press releases.
> Most software engineers innately know that taking an open-source project, stripping the authorship, putting it your own site and running ads next to it is unethical, regardless of the licensing
only "stripping the authorship" makes it unethical, all the other things are totally fine and approved in the open source world.
Make an entire copy of debian software repository? People will thank you for another "mirror".
create a webpage which hosts existing docs (like man pages or software package documentation)? Totally fine as long as the docs are not modified (so any AUTHOR section is intact)
create another "how to get started with ZZZ" website, which is three quarter official docs? Ok as long as license allows remixing. Many do.
start a business which took over many project's discussion forums and centralized information in one place? And then the said business gets millions from ads and kills many previous forums? People love this, some even say that Stack Overflow is "the best thing that happened to programming"
and so on... so for people used to open source model, news aggregators are totally fine, as long as content is not modified and there is a clear attribution. The GP comment mentions "iframes", so both of those would have been true - it's not like you can blank out author name from a third-party iframe.
Yes, the journalism is different and the open source rules do not apply to it. But hopefully you can see where does this "information wants to be free" mindset is coming from.
only "stripping the authorship" makes it unethical, all the other things are totally fine and approved in the open source world.
Make an entire copy of debian software repository? People will thank you for another "mirror".
create a webpage which hosts existing docs (like man pages or software package documentation)? Totally fine as long as the docs are not modified (so any AUTHOR section is intact)
create another "how to get started with ZZZ" website, which is three quarter official docs? Ok as long as license allows remixing. Many do.
start a business which took over many project's discussion forums and centralized information in one place? And then the said business gets millions from ads and kills many previous forums? People love this, some even say that Stack Overflow is "the best thing that happened to programming"
and so on... so for people used to open source model, news aggregators are totally fine, as long as content is not modified and there is a clear attribution. The GP comment mentions "iframes", so both of those would have been true - it's not like you can blank out author name from a third-party iframe.
Yes, the journalism is different and the open source rules do not apply to it. But hopefully you can see where does this "information wants to be free" mindset is coming from.
This makes sense for big, well researched investigative journalism. But that is not the case for the other 95% of the drivel on most news sites -— the engagement driving crap that keeps the lights on.
Lots of people want to see sports scores, news, and commentary. I'm not a "sports guy", but those types of benign tribal affinities can help community cohesion and also generate revenue for more expensive forms of journalism. I don't think it's a bad thing, either for people who get excited to "root for the home team" and get that from a newspaper, or the newspaper reaping that reward and reallocating it elsewhere in the business.
They don’t even make most of that 95%. It’s licensed from wire services like Reuters and AP.
> I think what the "legacy" news media failed at more than adapting was effectively communicating the time and effort that goes into serious news gathering and reporting
I think what they failed at was actually putting in the time and effort. I read news stories every day that fail to include basic pieces of information. How many news stories have you read that say "The Republicans proposed X dollars and the Democrats proposed Y dollars" that don't make any sort of historical or international comparison? It seems to me that "serious news gathering and reporting" would include comparing the amount of money to similar situations in the past or to similar situations in other countries, and yet, I almost never see that. The word "stenographers" has become more and more common for a reason - news stories, particularly political news stories, increasingly include quotes from the few active actors on the topic today, but no serious research or serious context outside of the people who literally called the reporter.
I think what they failed at was actually putting in the time and effort. I read news stories every day that fail to include basic pieces of information. How many news stories have you read that say "The Republicans proposed X dollars and the Democrats proposed Y dollars" that don't make any sort of historical or international comparison? It seems to me that "serious news gathering and reporting" would include comparing the amount of money to similar situations in the past or to similar situations in other countries, and yet, I almost never see that. The word "stenographers" has become more and more common for a reason - news stories, particularly political news stories, increasingly include quotes from the few active actors on the topic today, but no serious research or serious context outside of the people who literally called the reporter.
YES! This! I worked for a higher-up “legacy”(?) news paper for three years and what people don’t understand is that “the news” isn’t just some objective collection of facts. It’s work to collect, analyze, verify, source, and interpret those facts. That’s why it’s always so sigh-worthy when I see some other startup crop up in the HN-esque circle that’s “going to fix news” when these people have essentially 0 actual journalists as their friends or even as consultants on their product. Everyone wants to complain about paywalls and say their undemocratic or even say they violate “free speech” (misunderstanding both words in that right) and then offer no other alternative other than “trust us, we’ll do it better.” The fundamental problem is that a contrarian take on pop culture gets vastly (3-10x) more views than something which took several months and dozens of sources to put together. I could go on and on but point being: Y-E-S, us tech people cannot “fix” other industries. We can help, but cannot lead.
Even worse is the amount of time a publisher maintained their status as the "exclusive" source for a story used to be a least a couple days - meaning a subscription to an outlet that regularly has an edge is valuable (particularly in finance journalism, which has fared better than the industry as a whole). Now, a newsroom spends a year preparing a story and somebody summarizes the key points, devoid of context, in a Twitter thread and nobody sees the actual story. Why pay for getting the story first if you can just wait a couple minutes to get the free summary?
Take out some subscriptions. Free news is basically news entertainment. If you want high quality long form articles, pay for them.
> "the media" is a bunch of opinion bloggers fabricating sources to drive "an agenda". In reality, the effort for producing a deep investigative story can be equivalent to an a mid-size software engineering project in terms of person hours and expertise. Three senior reporters working on a Pulitzer-level story can take years, numerous support staff, and legal fees.
You are suggesting these are mutually exclusive.
You are suggesting these are mutually exclusive.
Per my final point, I'm suggesting adtech has given us more of the former to the detriment of the latter.
I don't think there is any evidence to suggest deep, unbiased, evidence-based journalism ever dominated the field, or that the "crass commercial" interests didn't drive the news rooms.
See the "yellow journalism" of Joseph Pulitzer's era, for example.
Further, "expensive, pulitzer level" work may also be agenda-driven. Walter Duranty's bias and agenda, for example, aren't really in doubt anymore.
See the "yellow journalism" of Joseph Pulitzer's era, for example.
Further, "expensive, pulitzer level" work may also be agenda-driven. Walter Duranty's bias and agenda, for example, aren't really in doubt anymore.
> I don't think there is any evidence to suggest deep, unbiased, evidence-based journalism ever dominated the field, or that the "crass commercial" interests didn't drive the news rooms.
> See the "yellow journalism" of Joseph Pulitzer's era, for example.
> Further, "expensive, pulitzer level" work may also be agenda-driven. Walter Duranty's bias and agenda, for example, aren't really in doubt anymore.
Those examples are stale. It's like saying there's no evidence that English language literature was ever common in any library, and citing the contents of some British library circa 1100AD as proof. Pulitzer's yellow journalism phase spanned from the late 1800s to about 1900. In the last decade of his life, he rejected it an apparently turned his paper into a respectable publication [1]. Duranty's reporting occurred in the early 1930s, and has since been scathingly criticized and rejected by the paper he published it in [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism#After_the_wa...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty#Calls_for_revoc...
> See the "yellow journalism" of Joseph Pulitzer's era, for example.
> Further, "expensive, pulitzer level" work may also be agenda-driven. Walter Duranty's bias and agenda, for example, aren't really in doubt anymore.
Those examples are stale. It's like saying there's no evidence that English language literature was ever common in any library, and citing the contents of some British library circa 1100AD as proof. Pulitzer's yellow journalism phase spanned from the late 1800s to about 1900. In the last decade of his life, he rejected it an apparently turned his paper into a respectable publication [1]. Duranty's reporting occurred in the early 1930s, and has since been scathingly criticized and rejected by the paper he published it in [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism#After_the_wa...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty#Calls_for_revoc...
I chose historic examples specifically because they are now universally recognized as biased, and to show that problems of sensationalism and bias in journalism are not new.
More recent examples of bias tend to be still politically controversial, like the years of coverage of Trump-Russian collusion in the 2016 election, which resulted in 2 Pulitzers:
Bias is basically universal, but claiming neutrality while exercising obvious bias destroys credibility.
More recent examples of bias tend to be still politically controversial, like the years of coverage of Trump-Russian collusion in the 2016 election, which resulted in 2 Pulitzers:
For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.
Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.
Bias is basically universal, but claiming neutrality while exercising obvious bias destroys credibility.
The Pulitzer text you cited says "Russians", and the other quote says "Russian Government".
There is compelling evidence of the Trump campaign working with Russians.
https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/staffs-new-york-times-and-w...
There is also good circumstantial evidence connecting the Russian actors to the Russian government, but Mueller couldn't subpoena or extradite across the Atlantic, and declined to follow the money trail.
This undercuts your point somewhat, but on the other hand perhaps you are being intentionally self-referential.
There is compelling evidence of the Trump campaign working with Russians.
https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/staffs-new-york-times-and-w...
There is also good circumstantial evidence connecting the Russian actors to the Russian government, but Mueller couldn't subpoena or extradite across the Atlantic, and declined to follow the money trail.
This undercuts your point somewhat, but on the other hand perhaps you are being intentionally self-referential.
I thought it was widely understood that bias-less journalism is impossible in practice, and that this doesn't diminish its value.
Maybe, but just because it's impossible doesn't mean there shouldn't be an effort to try or that we shouldn't appreciate better journalism.
Biased isn't a boolean, it's a scale. Something that is a little bit biased is more useful for trying to understand all the issues at hand. Something that's very biased is still useful, but only for telling you what the author (and their readership) thinks.
Biased isn't a boolean, it's a scale. Something that is a little bit biased is more useful for trying to understand all the issues at hand. Something that's very biased is still useful, but only for telling you what the author (and their readership) thinks.
It would seem like the content creator has the right to make their site as easy or hard to aggregate as they want. If you’re in the aggregation business, you have to convince them of the benefits to make it easier. If you can’t, you’re not adding value (to them) for what you’re taking.
The problem is that Google can place your content down the search list for not making it easy for them to aggregate it. That is the anti-trust issue.
There was a time when corps pushed the idea that you'd need permission to link to their content, where does this begin/end? seems to me there should be some control on behalf of the user wrt to how data is displayed: It maybe your content, but it's running on my hardware; you say "3rd party not allowed to run ads, only us" I say "my hardware, you aren't allowed to run ads either".
...then the publisher says "OK, you can't show my content then"
Then you say "OK", then they focus on tricking the general public into allowing it anyway and/or forcing DRM onto new hardware etc.
Then I scrape the page using JS from the browser side and render it dynamically. It’s all client side.
Where would this sit on that line? It’s just an example but for the 1000 ppl trying to create laws there are 10000x trying to bypass them.
I don’t think restrictions are the way forward but as of now I haven’t come up with a viable alternative.
Where would this sit on that line? It’s just an example but for the 1000 ppl trying to create laws there are 10000x trying to bypass them.
I don’t think restrictions are the way forward but as of now I haven’t come up with a viable alternative.
If a brick and mortar store refuses services and kicks you out for disruption... breaking in at night, taking what you want, and leaving money is still illegal.
I love web scraping (it and tampermonkey basically got me into CS) but lets not act as if this behavior has no moral precedent.
I love web scraping (it and tampermonkey basically got me into CS) but lets not act as if this behavior has no moral precedent.
Web scraping is completely legal, see the LinkedIn case recently
You really shouldn't expect to be able to put up a public website and then get upset when people start connecting to it using a standard, open protocol to retrieve the information you're deliberately exposing to the world.
Ah, the old "unauthorized content handling is the same as theft" nonsense, because a more fitting metaphor wouldn't justify police-state copyright enforcement.
Also, what do you mean by "disruption"? Using "their" content in a way they don't like? content manipulation on my machine is my house, not theirs.
Also, what do you mean by "disruption"? Using "their" content in a way they don't like? content manipulation on my machine is my house, not theirs.
More like a brick and mortar starts harassing people on the sidewalk for writing down what is on the posters on the side of their building.
At the end of the day you can't legislate everything to the letter if the people just don't want to do it. If people want to steal content the content creators will suffer and we as a society will lose high quality content. I think that some sort of NPR or BBC patron approach is the only way out, i.e. sponsor a high quality production organization as a charity. Communist countries did this too, though it ended up quite biased.
> If people want to steal content the content creators will suffer and we as a society will lose high quality content
This sounds like a PR copypaste. I don't want to "steal" content, I want to restrict the number of ways I can be influenced to view it. And "high quality content" is often not the case here; I have to get through a lot of crap to get to real news in a lot of cases. There is also the problem of who gets to judge quality - often those that tell people what they want to here are judged so - Reality has a subjective bias.
This sounds like a PR copypaste. I don't want to "steal" content, I want to restrict the number of ways I can be influenced to view it. And "high quality content" is often not the case here; I have to get through a lot of crap to get to real news in a lot of cases. There is also the problem of who gets to judge quality - often those that tell people what they want to here are judged so - Reality has a subjective bias.
My sense is if you put it on the public internet, by default you are giving people the ability to link to it. It’s just a matter of how hard or easy you choose to make it.
Copying copyrights is more complex.
Copying copyrights is more complex.
Then where do ad-blockers fall? Am I violating copyright/rights-management by altering how content is viewed?
If a content provider can dictate the terms by which their content is consumed, why not dictate linking rights too?
If a content provider can dictate the terms by which their content is consumed, why not dictate linking rights too?
We are getting further from my expertise. My inclination is on the public internet it’s ok to make an ad blocker and ok to make something that thwarts the ad blocker. Different on a private network.
iframe is super reasonable line to make. "You cant show my content in iframe" is alright rule to make.
> Your site messed with a lot of the ways their business generated revenue, in an industry that was already struggling to adapt to "the internet".
In 1972 Alan Kay predicted that one of the first programs the user of a global network would write would be a "filter to eliminate advertising."
However, I don't know if he foresaw that opportunistic republishers would strip the original ads and replace them with new ones.
In 1972 Alan Kay predicted that one of the first programs the user of a global network would write would be a "filter to eliminate advertising."
However, I don't know if he foresaw that opportunistic republishers would strip the original ads and replace them with new ones.
> The iframe also reduced engagement as reader would only read the embedded article and move on.
The entire point of RSS was to put the reader into exactly that position though.
The entire point of RSS was to put the reader into exactly that position though.
Which is why RSS (and by extension the kinds of open standards that facilitate things like aggregation) is dead
I blame marketeers trying to control the brand, messaging and experience.
I blame marketeers trying to control the brand, messaging and experience.
Most of the major news websites still offer RSS feeds, although you do have to search quite a bit to find them. NYTimes, WSJ, Vox Media, The Atlantic, Time Magazine, etc etc all have them. Those last two are even full-text feeds, which is super lovely!
I have a suspicion that journalists rely on RSS more than the general population, which gives the technology support within news organizations themselves.
I have a suspicion that journalists rely on RSS more than the general population, which gives the technology support within news organizations themselves.
I can speak first hand to that, in Canada. RSS is actively supported. Specific RSS feeds are even run to (web, Apple News) aggregators after agreements are made to syndicate the content.
And we maintain feeds for the Canadian government archives.
I can only imagine American outlets do something similar.
And we maintain feeds for the Canadian government archives.
I can only imagine American outlets do something similar.
The reader independently, yes. Not aggregators that operate as a business.
If this is a case of one party trying to throw more ads at the "user", and being miffed about earning less of the ad network tracking points than the other (meanwhile the ad networks win either way), then what are you defending?
Because in that case there is no good guy, no "other side", just garbage.
Stuffing the WWW with ad networks isn't exactly saving it.
Because in that case there is no good guy, no "other side", just garbage.
Stuffing the WWW with ad networks isn't exactly saving it.
I'm not really defending anything, just explaining. But I do sympathize with any content creator trying to get paid for their work even if it is a large organization.
[deleted]
As someone who works at TDB now, I can tell you we did the analysis and we were losing money from AMP, so we completely opted out of it.
I wonder I any of my ads and analytics code still exists in CQ5, or whatever it's called now.
WPNI?
Mind you, the problems with iframe embedding are technical and security-related, and it’s quite possible that news sites broke iframing at that time not because of you or any one else specifically, but because that was about the time people started making noise about clickjacking attacks, and so they protected themselves against that form of technical abuse by blocking such embedding. AMP doesn’t suffer from that technical problem, instead saying “please implement your page in such a way that it’s safe to embed and can’t possibly cause trouble for either of us if we happen to host it instead of you”.
> Google Amp doing essentially the same thing
Iframe is a security trainwreck. You could clickjack Google's login widget iframe to steal account details as late as 2018, maybe even later.[1]
Whatever legitimate gripes you may have with AMP, it's not the same as iframes at all.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17044518
Iframe is a security trainwreck. You could clickjack Google's login widget iframe to steal account details as late as 2018, maybe even later.[1]
Whatever legitimate gripes you may have with AMP, it's not the same as iframes at all.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17044518
> Iframe is a security trainwreck
That seems like it should be relatively fixable. For example, iframes could be visible, clearly marked (including the URL), and sandboxed like any separate page. One could go further by insisting that they are display-only and can only be displayed rather than interacted with. Then an iframe would basically be a glorified jpg with a URL.
That seems like it should be relatively fixable. For example, iframes could be visible, clearly marked (including the URL), and sandboxed like any separate page. One could go further by insisting that they are display-only and can only be displayed rather than interacted with. Then an iframe would basically be a glorified jpg with a URL.
Then you need to kiss embedded video players and login/auth widgets goodbye, which are like 95%[1] of what iframes are used for outside ads.
But if you just want to embed completely static article, I suppose it could work, but then there’s no incentive for anyone to allow them.
[1] Yes, I pulled that number out of my ____.
But if you just want to embed completely static article, I suppose it could work, but then there’s no incentive for anyone to allow them.
[1] Yes, I pulled that number out of my ____.
"Deep Rectal Extraction"
X-Frame-Options should fix it now? If a server sets that header, the browser shouldn't show it in a frame. But of course, the server has to be set up properly.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/X-...
Edit: looks like Safari, IE, and Edge don't check all ancestors which is a potential flaw. Chrome and Firefox do though.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/X-...
Edit: looks like Safari, IE, and Edge don't check all ancestors which is a potential flaw. Chrome and Firefox do though.
Yes, except some pages are designed to be embedded (like the Google login widget in the linked article), and those may still be vulnerable to clickjacking. If your page isn’t explicitly designed to be embedded then at least SAMEORIGIN is basically a must. In fact most run of the mill security checkers would warn you if you don’t prevent cross origin iframe embedding.
> Fast forward a few years and imagine my dismay when I see Google Amp doing essentially the same thing - but on a much larger scale....
Amp isn't even close to the same thing as iFrames. And the difference is they did it with the publishers' consent. Why is it okay to put their content on your own site?
Amp isn't even close to the same thing as iFrames. And the difference is they did it with the publishers' consent. Why is it okay to put their content on your own site?
While I agree with your objection to the comparison of AMP and iframes, I think "with the publisers' consent" is a tough phrasing to swallow in this context, given that many publishers were put in a position of having to do AMP or risk seeing their content pushed down the page and lose a ton of traffic.
That's because the publishers are dependent on Google, because they have no discoverability of their own. It's a systemic problem but it's not Google's problem that they are the only discovery platform for most media outlets. Those brands don't have the inherent value or reputation they think they do, or it wouldn't matter where they were on google results.
Quarter-baked idea: I wish we had a better way to build these kinds of sites anonymously and in a decentralized fashion, like Bitcoin/Ethereum.
No matter how much they want ligitate and threaten they wouldn't actually know who to send the threat to, and it wouldn't be possible to take it down.
No matter how much they want ligitate and threaten they wouldn't actually know who to send the threat to, and it wouldn't be possible to take it down.
It's called TOR. Pressure your web browser maintainers to support it (not that that will help without antitrust action, but the problem isn't lack of a technical solution).
I realized today that it is nearly impossible to load anything in an iframe anymore... Which is really fun if you want to load content in tabs in the Microsoft Teams client, because that is how that works...
You still can if you're the server owner.
You could use X-Frame-Bypass (https://github.com/niutech/x-frame-bypass) to circumvent frame busting.
The missing piece is you had no leverage. As PG says leverage is everything.
These days it's a security concern to allow any random site to iFrame your property due to clickjacking. This is why you see X-Frame-Options headers blocking / whitelisting who can iFrame sites.
> Before a year had gone by, almost all the major news sites had updated their pages with JavaScript intended to either block iframing altogether, or to “break out” of the iframe, redirecting the viewer to their actual page. We even got a few nasty letters and emails about it with terms like “litigation” casually thrown in.
Web feature: works as intended, allowing aggregation and republishing
Businesses/lawyers: we hate that, shut it down!
> Fast forward a few years and imagine my dismay when I see Google Amp doing essentially the same thing
Google has the deep pockets to defend itself against spurious lawsuits.
Web feature: works as intended, allowing aggregation and republishing
Businesses/lawyers: we hate that, shut it down!
> Fast forward a few years and imagine my dismay when I see Google Amp doing essentially the same thing
Google has the deep pockets to defend itself against spurious lawsuits.
AMP is opt in, so no drama there. What Google have is a giant big carrot in the form of the news carousel.
[deleted]
Why were you dismayed if your idea was implemented, but better (larger scale, no iframe) ?
So cool that you and notjustanymike worked on this idea. My startup, The Factual, does something similar, grouping related articles across the political spectrum and rating them for credibility in a transparent (if imperfect) manner. We don't use iframes so your clicks open a new page as with most aggregators.
As for a business model we've found that a freemium model with a modest subscription fee is a good way to monetize while making this accessible to a wide audience.
As for a business model we've found that a freemium model with a modest subscription fee is a good way to monetize while making this accessible to a wide audience.
> I remain convinced that AMP is poorly implemented, hostile to the interests of both users and publishers, and a proprietary & unnecessary incursion into the open web.
Brutal, but at least we know an insider agrees that AMP is hostile to the web. If others leave, will that push Google to make better decisions? Probably not.
Brutal, but at least we know an insider agrees that AMP is hostile to the web. If others leave, will that push Google to make better decisions? Probably not.
Thank goodness. AMP is the reason I don’t use Google on mobile. It just sucks. They could have done a million things that could have improved the quality of the mobile web and they chose one that actively makes using it unbearable.
I get that AMP sucks from a "Google control the web" point of view but you make it sound like it sucks from a user point of view. I can't see why though? It's basically only used by news sites and it just gives you the article content faster and with fewer ads. What's not to like about that (as a user)?
One consistent place I see it used is Reddit. Say you want to find a risotto recipe and a Reddit thread comes up. So you go there and it’s a question and comments have the answers. Now with AMP you can only see so much of the comments, can’t upvote/downvote, cannot expand/collapse comments, can’t see the URL, your light/dark mode preferences stored on Reddit isn’t respected, and the whole thing is weirdly slow and has scrolling issues. And the best part is that the whole bottom half of the page is taken up by links to random other Reddit posts that have nothing to do with the one you’re looking at. It is a shitty shitty experience to the point if it was invented by AOL we would all be laughing at it.
Don’t forget the “signed into google as ...” banner that blocks the “no i don’t want to download the app” button, and that it makes the “read more...” button on a long text post require a full page reload
A lot of this is reddit’s fault, as they completely undoubtedly have deliberately ruined their own mobile browser experience to try and force you to download the app, but AMP makes it at least doubly bad
A lot of this is reddit’s fault, as they completely undoubtedly have deliberately ruined their own mobile browser experience to try and force you to download the app, but AMP makes it at least doubly bad
May I ask what you use instead? Duckduckgo?
DDG for life (honestly the first thing I do with all browsers, mobile or desktop, is swap out Google for DDG).. It's good enough, and when it isn't I can just throw a '!g' on it and hope Google will be better. Mileage varies on that, though. Some people think Google is still the best search engine, and some of us don't (I mean that in regards to quality of search results, not 'Google is evil' or some other emotional metric), if you're still in the former group then switching to DDG may not be your best move.
Google has gamed their search algorithm so much that DDG is IMO objectively better now. Top results on Google for things I'm interested are always trashy fake blogs for affiliate links and things like that.
It's funny, I usually have the opposite experience. I try to use DDG as much as possible for ideological reasons, but I find myself coming back to Google search most of the time because I get better results.
I think it is shaped by your searches. When I am searching for some math term to help my kid do his homework !G is better, but for anything business or media related I stick with DDG results. Not just affiliate links but literally hijacking search with their own content is insufferable.
Related: Can we start an HN trend of replacing the word Google in posts with !G to throw some shade at the evil empire?
Related: Can we start an HN trend of replacing the word Google in posts with !G to throw some shade at the evil empire?
Depends how niche it is. More niche things google does well on: that error code, that specific game discussion on Reddit. Duck duck go now does better on searches which will be optimised for google by businesses.
Love whichever search engine you want, but "IMO" and "objectively" can't go together, by definition.
One common search I often compare is searching for a specific topic on Reddit. Google is really annoying there because of AMP but if you search something like “3d printing layer shift Reddit” you will get a full page of results from Reddit and they are relevant. DDG will return about 3 even though there are clearly more, and the rest aren’t Reddit results. So for this kind of search Google produces better results but shittier experience. Still, I will take DDG for this and switch to Google if I really can’t find what I need in the first three results.
3D printing layer shift site:reddit.com
Or:
3D printing layer shift !r
Or:
3D printing layer shift !r
What everyone else said: DDG.
Kiwi Browser > Settings > Privacy > Remove AMP
Nice, I didnt know this, I have have just been using a extension in Kiwi Briwser instead.
I’d love a browser that can do this for iOS if anyone has recommendations
Thought it'd be appropriate to plug what we're working on here. We're a YC company (W19) are building an iOS browser that's extensible. You can build "extensions" to inject your own JS into pages if they match a certain condition.
We're still beta testing (and launching early next year) but you can get the browser testflight beta from here https://insightbrowser.com/ and the AMP disabling extension here http://share.insightbrowser.com/8
Would love feedback or any changes you'd like to make. Feel free to respond here or [email protected]
We're still beta testing (and launching early next year) but you can get the browser testflight beta from here https://insightbrowser.com/ and the AMP disabling extension here http://share.insightbrowser.com/8
Would love feedback or any changes you'd like to make. Feel free to respond here or [email protected]
Will this pass Apple’s review? I thought anything that allowed you to run arbitrary code on their platform was an automatic hard no.
I run a Chrome extension that's popular here on HN, called BeeLine Reader. We have an iOS app (and share/action extensions) and have toyed with the idea of building a general-purpose web browser, but we'd much rather be part of an extensible mobile browser. Would love to chat about how you're attacking this problem (and avoiding related App Store prohibitions)!
Nice I'll take a look!
bromite.org removes AMP results automatically.
Same here. I use DDG as the default search engine on my iPhone just to avoid AMP
> If others leave, will that push Google to make better decisions?
Certainly not. If decision-makers believe it is in their interests, and they can get away with it, they will keep doing it. So you can try to convince decision makers that it is not in their interests, or you can try to show them that they can't get away with it. Quitting an advisory board does neither.
Note that the OP didn't really say they thought or intended it would. They said they were glad they tried to impact AMP positively, they don't think they succeeded, and they are choosing to spend time on other things such as an educational program. Of course by making a public announcement perhaps they hope to affect something, but probably more encourage others in the struggle; after seeing how they couldn't have much impact on the advisory committee, I am sure they know they won't have much impact simply by resigning from it, at least not impact on Google directly.
Certainly not. If decision-makers believe it is in their interests, and they can get away with it, they will keep doing it. So you can try to convince decision makers that it is not in their interests, or you can try to show them that they can't get away with it. Quitting an advisory board does neither.
Note that the OP didn't really say they thought or intended it would. They said they were glad they tried to impact AMP positively, they don't think they succeeded, and they are choosing to spend time on other things such as an educational program. Of course by making a public announcement perhaps they hope to affect something, but probably more encourage others in the struggle; after seeing how they couldn't have much impact on the advisory committee, I am sure they know they won't have much impact simply by resigning from it, at least not impact on Google directly.
The attorneys general case led by Texas [1] asserts that Google created AMP so that Google could stop "header bidding" (which subjects them to competition):
> To respond to the threat of header bidding, Google created Accelerated Mobile Pages (“AMP”), a framework for developing mobile web pages, and made AMP essentially incompatible with JavaScript and header bidding.
1.https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
> To respond to the threat of header bidding, Google created Accelerated Mobile Pages (“AMP”), a framework for developing mobile web pages, and made AMP essentially incompatible with JavaScript and header bidding.
1.https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
You can use Prebid Server to provide ad competition on AMP. So I would imagine that it’s less about competition and more about removing the very negative web performance impact of JS header bidding.
I'd encourage you to read the Attorneys General allegations by searching for 'amp' in the link shared (https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...)
This committee is window-dressing. AMP is about Google revenue alone, remaking the web as a consumer portal, not an open platform for information exchange and creativity.
The premise that the web ought to compete with native app experience is flawed to begin with. Executing that goal through a corporate gateway is perverse.
The premise that the web ought to compete with native app experience is flawed to begin with. Executing that goal through a corporate gateway is perverse.
Why is that premise flawed? That's precisely what happens on mobile platforms. At least on desktops we recognize the absurdity of installing an app for every Web page we want to use
Literally no one is installing an app for every web page they use.
The kind of web pages that people install as apps are made significantly worst by amp - like reddit is unuseable monstrosity with amp.
The kind of web pages that people install as apps are made significantly worst by amp - like reddit is unuseable monstrosity with amp.
I'm not sure what the New York Times app would give me that AMP wouldn't.
It’s actually navigable, supports offline viewing, and isn’t a weird, messed up approximation of a real webpage the way AMP is.
Better navigation and offline viewing might make sense if I really want to read the New York Times specifically, but that probably isn't the case if I'm getting there by way of a search engine.
You complained about people using apps instead of web. Then you said "I'm not sure what the New York Times app would give me that AMP wouldn't"
And when people answered with tangible good reasons to use app instead of web ... you move goalposts.
And when people answered with tangible good reasons to use app instead of web ... you move goalposts.
OK, I can see what it might give you. Nevertheless I do not want to install apps for any but my most frequently visited Web sites.
This is also to push out other advertisers out of the market. Given the glaringly obvious conflict of interest, Google should have never been allowed to create such "standard". I hope this will lead to forced break up of this company.
AMP is a concern, but I am more concerned about HTML.
Google holds a large amount of sway over HTML's direction. This is derived from the fact that WHATWG is the standards body for HTML. (W3C is just a rubber stamp per the agreement between the two last year.) And this group is directed by four companies--Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla.
The power balance in this relationship heavily favors Google. It controls the purse of Mozilla. Microsoft's browser is based on Chromium. And Chrome already owns the majority of the market.
What Google wants from HTML, Google can get. Even if there is push back from others, they only need to release "beta" versions of their changes for the standard, wait for developers to take advantage of them, and then reintroduce the suggestions. At that point, Apple and the others will have little resource.
Google is simply too powerful and a threat to the open Web.
Google holds a large amount of sway over HTML's direction. This is derived from the fact that WHATWG is the standards body for HTML. (W3C is just a rubber stamp per the agreement between the two last year.) And this group is directed by four companies--Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla.
The power balance in this relationship heavily favors Google. It controls the purse of Mozilla. Microsoft's browser is based on Chromium. And Chrome already owns the majority of the market.
What Google wants from HTML, Google can get. Even if there is push back from others, they only need to release "beta" versions of their changes for the standard, wait for developers to take advantage of them, and then reintroduce the suggestions. At that point, Apple and the others will have little resource.
Google is simply too powerful and a threat to the open Web.
One partial solution is to get Microsoft off the WHATWG, because they also use Chromium.
Perhaps instead of looking at which companies release browsers, they should just start putting the Chromium, WebKit, and Gecko teams there.
Perhaps instead of looking at which companies release browsers, they should just start putting the Chromium, WebKit, and Gecko teams there.
Microsoft isn't just rubber stamping Google's initiatives because they are using Chromium and have been shown to have different priorities, though. More seats at the table is obviously a good thing, but removing Microsoft from a seat at the table at the same time won't help and might make things worse.
I never felt like anyone outside Google had any power to fix AMP, but Terrence is one of the good guys, he got involved on our behalf to see if anything could be done.
Terence didn't say how he would fix it. From reading the article, it's unclear if he even understands what AMP does.
Terence has been involved in AMP's advisory committee since the beginning. Suggesting he "doesn't even understand what it does" isn't really an even reasonable perspective.
> remaking the web as a consumer portal, not an open platform for information exchange and creativity
True, but that assumes without google, that's what we have. In fact, many of the content providers themselves don't want free exchange, every website trying to be it's own walled garden.
If google can force the hand of those trying to lock their content in their own formats, there maybe benefit to the clout of google.
True, but that assumes without google, that's what we have. In fact, many of the content providers themselves don't want free exchange, every website trying to be it's own walled garden.
If google can force the hand of those trying to lock their content in their own formats, there maybe benefit to the clout of google.
AMP is Google's way of subsuming other sites content into their own engine, as much as they can get away with, anyway.
I don't see this as Google trying to open up other sites, as much as it is trying to rebrand and gut other sites.
I feel bad for any other provider out there who thinks they 'have to' create AMP pages. They really shouldn't, if they don't it'll die like so many other Google fiascos.
I don't see this as Google trying to open up other sites, as much as it is trying to rebrand and gut other sites.
I feel bad for any other provider out there who thinks they 'have to' create AMP pages. They really shouldn't, if they don't it'll die like so many other Google fiascos.
I don't see it as Google trying to open up other sites either, I'm saying it might have this effect whether it's Googles aim or not.
It was only Monday that they announced 9 new people joining the AMP AC to replace 10 others leaving: https://blog.amp.dev/2020/12/14/amp-advisory-committee-2020-...
I can't understand - where do they find all these people from outside Google willing to sit on a committee for a Google product? Why are people volunteering for this? It sounds like there's two committees?! Why so much bureaucracy and why do people want to take part in it?
The committees exist essentially as an antitrust defense - "Look, see, people outside Google have an influence on this project!" - we'll see how effective that is. As to why someone would sit on such a committee, that's a much better question. I suppose they might be flattered to be invited. It looks good on a resume and they might get some speaking gigs out of it? But I don't see how someone with the necessary expertise to be considered could also be ignorant enough to take Google at their word.
Because Google doesn't give a shit about their advice, it's probably a very small time commitment.
I suspect having "Sat on Google Committee" is a pretty nice résumé item.
There's lots of extremely qualified people fighting over working with/for Google, even for free.
Also, there are many idealists, who believe that they, alone, can "bring light to darkness."
I can't really blame them, but I'm old and cynical, with a singed tuchus, from playing that game, so you probably won't find me sitting on these committees.
There's lots of extremely qualified people fighting over working with/for Google, even for free.
Also, there are many idealists, who believe that they, alone, can "bring light to darkness."
I can't really blame them, but I'm old and cynical, with a singed tuchus, from playing that game, so you probably won't find me sitting on these committees.
> I suspect having "Sat on Google Committee" is a pretty nice résumé item
Absolutely. I'd take it. I'd probably try to undermine the effort, but I'd still take the position!
I think the era of subversive engineering is dawning. We've had wave after wave of high-profile resignations and data leaks in the name of ethics, only to see their position filled with two worse candidates: a hydra of corruption!
How soon until ethical engineers realize protests don't work and start to corrode monopolies from the inside out? (like when Agent K jumps down the throat of The Bug in MiB.) Is that in itself ethical? That's a tough question, we'll know it when we see it?
Absolutely. I'd take it. I'd probably try to undermine the effort, but I'd still take the position!
I think the era of subversive engineering is dawning. We've had wave after wave of high-profile resignations and data leaks in the name of ethics, only to see their position filled with two worse candidates: a hydra of corruption!
How soon until ethical engineers realize protests don't work and start to corrode monopolies from the inside out? (like when Agent K jumps down the throat of The Bug in MiB.) Is that in itself ethical? That's a tough question, we'll know it when we see it?
I would join the committee but I don't think they'd want me. I'd spend all of my effort trying to get the project shut down.
They all simultaneously found out AMP is not good for web when there started to be legal problems with AMP.
Considering one of the lawsuits specifically cites AMP as part of the project to wall in the web, it's now public information that there is no real effort on Google's part to be a good steward of web technologies here.
I've followed your participation from time to time, and appreciate the lengths you've gone to keep an eye on them and push them in the right direction, but it's pretty clear what their goals were from the start.
I've followed your participation from time to time, and appreciate the lengths you've gone to keep an eye on them and push them in the right direction, but it's pretty clear what their goals were from the start.
I'm a big fan of the open web, but I also think Google is on the right track with AMP.
Whenever I'm on an AMP website I make an effort to use the "real" version instead by following the link in the top right corner.
Nine times out of ten that non-AMP page content is harder to read – the notifications more intrusive, the content jumps around while loading.
It looks like Google are now taking a more-refined approach to prioritising pages in mobile results, but I like that AMP forced publishing companies to take a hard look at page performance, for the first time in a while.
Whenever I'm on an AMP website I make an effort to use the "real" version instead by following the link in the top right corner.
Nine times out of ten that non-AMP page content is harder to read – the notifications more intrusive, the content jumps around while loading.
It looks like Google are now taking a more-refined approach to prioritising pages in mobile results, but I like that AMP forced publishing companies to take a hard look at page performance, for the first time in a while.
The solution is not to let Google be the gatekeepers of the internet.
There are so many other things you could do that fixes your problem WITHOUT handing over the internet to a single company.
There are so many other things you could do that fixes your problem WITHOUT handing over the internet to a single company.
Ok. What are they and who's doing them? At a certain point we need to engage with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. In fact, one might argue that AMP would never have taken off if Google did not already serve that gatekeeper role.
Google is the disease itself. Clicks are a terrible way to incentivize, and this has been shaking the foundations of our democracies in the last decade.
You will note that Wikipedia, for example, doesn’t have the type of bloat that an online newspaper article does. Why is that? The question is one of incentives.
You will note that Wikipedia, for example, doesn’t have the type of bloat that an online newspaper article does. Why is that? The question is one of incentives.
I don't think every Web site begging its users for money is a solution that will scale out. Wikipedia also has the advantage of not needing to pay its contributors.
Incentives such as earning sufficient income to secure resources for one’s self and family.
It seems pointless to bring up a volunteer run website where people do charity work in a discussion about business practices of businesses that need to have cash flow to pay employees.
It seems pointless to bring up a volunteer run website where people do charity work in a discussion about business practices of businesses that need to have cash flow to pay employees.
Such as? I agree with the OP, for what it's worth. In the vast majority of cases amp content loads quicker, is presented better, and is less obtrusive, even browsing with an adblocker
Such as using page speed and the presence of annoying elements (ads, etc) as a ranking signal but without forcing websites to use AMP which involves having Google as a proxy.
But sites aren't doing that, they're serving up bloated pages with megabytes of JS and rammed with ads. Nothing is stopping them from doing that, and yet they're not. If they were, it's possible amp wouldn't exist (in it's current form)
Also, the parent said there was many things the GP could do, while the GP was talking about as an end user, not a developer. As an end user if my choice is between a fast smooth sleek amp page or a 10 second blank screen and a page that hides the content, has autoplaying videos, and required me to dismiss a 1/3 cookie banner, I'm going to pick the amp version.
Also, the parent said there was many things the GP could do, while the GP was talking about as an end user, not a developer. As an end user if my choice is between a fast smooth sleek amp page or a 10 second blank screen and a page that hides the content, has autoplaying videos, and required me to dismiss a 1/3 cookie banner, I'm going to pick the amp version.
Because they have no incentive to do otherwise. If Google could tune its PageRank algo to favor sites that load the fastest they could convince website operators to do lot of what AMP does heavyhandedly. Perhaps it could be the death of 20,000 JS loads every page
So now they do have an incentive, AMP, and we're here arguing about how amp is not the solution..
This one makes it all the more obvious what Google is actually doing. They have a search monopoly and supposedly are heavily biased on speed as a ranking factor. Well golly gee, if you want the Web to be a lot faster, smash sites with brutal speed ranking penalties until they get the message. It wouldn't be difficult nor would it take much time to get the point across (in fact it would be trivially easy). There is no other logical explanation other than Google's intentions are gatekeeper (and plausibly much worse in time: hostage taker), not primarily to make the Web a better place (that's merely the lie they're pitching as a cover story).
I think the positive approach (use amp, the page will load faster, which users like) is a good alternative to the negative (downranking). It's not just "make your page faster, or else!", but provides a good solution, too. As I user, I love amp. As a developer, I understand the concerns (though I don't think they materialized in the way HN sentiment goes).
You've portrayed amp as a positive change and basing search ranking on page load times as a negative change, while clearly some websites would be "downranked" with either system.
One could just as well portray "downranking slow pages" as "boosting fast pages". With the latter system developers would be encouraged to reduce filesizes and JS bloat on their existing pages. As a mobile, and desktop user, I would appreciate that.
One could just as well portray "downranking slow pages" as "boosting fast pages". With the latter system developers would be encouraged to reduce filesizes and JS bloat on their existing pages. As a mobile, and desktop user, I would appreciate that.
It doesn't provide a good solution.
It's Google's arbitrary proprietary subset of web technologies.
It's only fast because Google preloads all of JS while you search.
It aggressively hides the origin source, depriving sites of user traffic.
Google prioritizes AMP content over any other content even if that other content may be better and/or load faster.
It's Google's arbitrary proprietary subset of web technologies.
It's only fast because Google preloads all of JS while you search.
It aggressively hides the origin source, depriving sites of user traffic.
Google prioritizes AMP content over any other content even if that other content may be better and/or load faster.
> It aggressively hides the origin source, depriving sites of user traffic.
What does this mean? If I click a link on an amp page, I may end up on the full site, and if not, analytics and ads are supported. What do I lose other than the cost of rendering a page view?
What does this mean? If I click a link on an amp page, I may end up on the full site, and if not, analytics and ads are supported. What do I lose other than the cost of rendering a page view?
> What does this mean?
You don't land on the original page. You land on a Google page. Even the URL says google.com. To get to the actual original page, you need to click on the tiny (i) in the corner. And even there the link is styled as non-clickable link.
If you swipe, for example, you end up on the next Google property ^W^W that is a news item that Google displays on its own domain.
And AMP may provably drive traffic away: https://kinsta.com/blog/disable-google-amp/
You don't land on the original page. You land on a Google page. Even the URL says google.com. To get to the actual original page, you need to click on the tiny (i) in the corner. And even there the link is styled as non-clickable link.
If you swipe, for example, you end up on the next Google property ^W^W that is a news item that Google displays on its own domain.
And AMP may provably drive traffic away: https://kinsta.com/blog/disable-google-amp/
> You don't land on the original page. You land on a Google page. Even the URL says google.com.
Yes. So what? If I, from the AMP page, click on a link, I'll go to the full site (I just checked this on CNN's amp pages). Ads and analytics are still supported.
> If you swipe, for example, you end up on the next Google property ^W^W that is a news item that Google displays on its own domain.
This didn't happen when I just attempted it.
> And AMP may provably drive traffic away:
If you read the article, they say that they got more clicks and pageviews, but fewer conversions, likely because they hadn't spent time optimizing the AMP site for conversions.
Yes. So what? If I, from the AMP page, click on a link, I'll go to the full site (I just checked this on CNN's amp pages). Ads and analytics are still supported.
> If you swipe, for example, you end up on the next Google property ^W^W that is a news item that Google displays on its own domain.
This didn't happen when I just attempted it.
> And AMP may provably drive traffic away:
If you read the article, they say that they got more clicks and pageviews, but fewer conversions, likely because they hadn't spent time optimizing the AMP site for conversions.
Honestly, AMP shouldn't even be required. Bandwidth speeds are way up from before. We have a bloated ecosystem where ads come first and content second. They are putting a draconian bandaid on the problem. What we need is a more civilized internet with content FIRST. The old Google adwords worked in that way, as it was fairly unobtrusive text. But now visiting the vast majority of websites and it's tough to even find the content...
Completely agree. Given the choice between a lightweight non-amp page and an amp page, the choice should be the amp page. But that's not the choice, it's between a shitty bloated slow impossible to navigate (often times one that doesn't scale to mobile well) and a lightweight responsive amp site. The user isn't to blame if the site is making that decision
> Such as?
I realise the irony as this still relies on Google, but: I'm surprised that such user-hostile designs are still around, considering Google presumably takes steps to punish such designs in their search rankings.
I realise the irony as this still relies on Google, but: I'm surprised that such user-hostile designs are still around, considering Google presumably takes steps to punish such designs in their search rankings.
> I like that AMP forced publishing companies to take a hard look at page performance, for the first time in a while.
True and false. It forced companies to pay attention to page performance... and then create an entirely separate version of every page they have, using up valuable developer time that could have been spent making the original pages faster.
Google should (and now/soon are?) assess the performance of the page and rank it accordingly, not force everyone to make two versions of their site. But this is where the sneaky part of AMP comes in: they wanted that side-swiping carousel that meant you never engaged deeply with any one site and instead stayed on google.com (and kept those google.com ad cookies, natch). There was no way to force people into that without AMP.
True and false. It forced companies to pay attention to page performance... and then create an entirely separate version of every page they have, using up valuable developer time that could have been spent making the original pages faster.
Google should (and now/soon are?) assess the performance of the page and rank it accordingly, not force everyone to make two versions of their site. But this is where the sneaky part of AMP comes in: they wanted that side-swiping carousel that meant you never engaged deeply with any one site and instead stayed on google.com (and kept those google.com ad cookies, natch). There was no way to force people into that without AMP.
> Google should (and now/soon are?) assess the performance of the page and rank it accordingly
If the reading I've done is accurate, Google tried this for quite a long time before AMP. The issue seems to be that there are just too many other factors with higher ROI for speed to be prioritized consistently.
IMO, AMP put companies in a position where speed mattered and most other things didn't. It focused minds in ways that using speed as a factor in ranking did not.
If the reading I've done is accurate, Google tried this for quite a long time before AMP. The issue seems to be that there are just too many other factors with higher ROI for speed to be prioritized consistently.
IMO, AMP put companies in a position where speed mattered and most other things didn't. It focused minds in ways that using speed as a factor in ranking did not.
> The issue seems to be that there are just too many other factors with higher ROI for speed to be prioritized consistently.
That argument makes zero sense to me. Either they rank faster and lighter sites higher or they don't. AMP is completely orthogonal to that.
That argument makes zero sense to me. Either they rank faster and lighter sites higher or they don't. AMP is completely orthogonal to that.
Overall, I think Google does prefer to rank faster-loading sites higher.
With that said, as far as I can tell, the difference between two sites is almost never a simple as a single factor. There are hundreds of things that influence rankings. So companies can and do worry more about other concerns, including squeezing more ad income out of each pageview and getting into more search results in the first place.
AMP took away a lot of the other things that companies would invest developer time in.
With that said, as far as I can tell, the difference between two sites is almost never a simple as a single factor. There are hundreds of things that influence rankings. So companies can and do worry more about other concerns, including squeezing more ad income out of each pageview and getting into more search results in the first place.
AMP took away a lot of the other things that companies would invest developer time in.
And the result are ... crappy amp pages so I have to edit url to see actual page.
Having to edit url would matter little on PC, but massively sux at mobile. And it is overall slower then however slow original page was.
Having to edit url would matter little on PC, but massively sux at mobile. And it is overall slower then however slow original page was.
All that "valuable developer time" didn't make any difference - AMP did.
...how do you think those AMP pages got made other than with valuable developer time? AMP versions of sites aren't just magicked out of thin air! Without "valuable developer time" there are no AMP sites.
I think the point you're actually making is that without AMP forcing these sites to be faster, they would still be slow. Which I agree with. But as I said in my original post, Google ranking sites according to their performance would have the exact same effect as forcing AMP on people, except that it would let sites choose their own implementation rather than be strong-armed into one controlled by Google.
I think the point you're actually making is that without AMP forcing these sites to be faster, they would still be slow. Which I agree with. But as I said in my original post, Google ranking sites according to their performance would have the exact same effect as forcing AMP on people, except that it would let sites choose their own implementation rather than be strong-armed into one controlled by Google.
Of course. The parent argument was that the time spent differently would have the same effect. Many years of crappy slow mobile pages show differently.
> The parent argument was that the time spent differently would have the same effect.
Again, no. The argument was that time spent focused on page performance would have the same effect. If Google punished slow pages in rankings that is all the incentive needed, not the creation of an entirely new platform.
Again, no. The argument was that time spent focused on page performance would have the same effect. If Google punished slow pages in rankings that is all the incentive needed, not the creation of an entirely new platform.
Ah, I missed that, thank you. I'm still not convinced it would make so much of difference, but it's definitely more likely. Any good examples out there of sites which optimized for speed and achieved similar results?
I mean sure, Google put the gun to every website and said “We are using our monopoly power to ensure your business will fail if you do not conduct business as we see fit”. Really, really positive way of bringing about change.
What AMP could have been, which in my mind would have been a lot better, is some type of open standard that Google offers free hosting for, but does not require Google to use.
The m.foo.com usage has been around for ages in Internet time, it could do with some standardization and tooling to ensure it gives the quickest page loads possible.
The m.foo.com usage has been around for ages in Internet time, it could do with some standardization and tooling to ensure it gives the quickest page loads possible.
That wouldn't be issue if google let people turn it off.
They do not, and they will not.
I don't like amp. I don't like that unrelated amp results get promoted over the actual content i was looking for (that can't be amped because it's dynamic content) in search results, I don't like that have to use to inferior search engines on mobile to get rid of it, and I don't like how watered down amp sites are.
They do not, and they will not.
I don't like amp. I don't like that unrelated amp results get promoted over the actual content i was looking for (that can't be amped because it's dynamic content) in search results, I don't like that have to use to inferior search engines on mobile to get rid of it, and I don't like how watered down amp sites are.
I find the opposite to be the case. AMP websites often don’t scroll down in my mobile browser (Firefox), so I have to click on the link to the original article in order to be able to read it.
I use firefox on mobile. AMP is completely unusable - I can't use google news anymore.
If only there would be like...some incentive...for people to optimize their webpages towards usability. Like if we image a...giant monopolistic search engine...rating pages along certain parameters?
Maybe Google should just build something like this if usability is in their interest. Someone pitch this idea to them!
Maybe Google should just build something like this if usability is in their interest. Someone pitch this idea to them!
I think it's a missing piece of a lot of sites that AMP is trying to fill. Users landing from search don't have the same set of priorities as organic traffic. Have a page rendition explicitly for search visitors that is different than what you show to engaged users makes sense a lot of the time. Like the old 90/9/1 rule. AMP tried to fill that 90% segment with some generic rules that could be overlayed on any site. It's like the Squarespace of SEO pages. Easy to get to market, but not a natural fit and not worth it for any site that has enough resources to do their own version.
You dont need amp, just build better pages.
I know HN hates AMP (overall), and I understand it from an ideological perspective (they trying to be the 'gatekeeper of the web' and all), but I think it's because the audience here includes many content 'creators', not consumers alone. Purely as a user, I love the fact that when I click on an AMP'ed page, it loads almost instantly on my mobile, as opposed to a few seconds that I have to wait before they load completely. How it could have been done in a way that didn't hurt publishers is not a consumer's concern. For an end-user who doesn't know much about tech, they 'made the web better'.
As a user, I fucking hate searching on mobile google now.
I was trying to find some information on something, can't remember what, and all I got on the first 3 pages were amp links to news sites talking about the thing, but nothing to do with the info I was looking for.
I ended up opening duckduckgo and it was on the first page.
Did google just forget that static article content does not exclusively make up the internet?
I'm gonna re-post the rant I posted last time this came up:
> As a mobile user, I hate it.
> I hate that every fucking google search result on mobile web has its stupid little icon
> I hate that there is no way for me to disable it as a user
> I hate that it has muddied the waters in what the url bar means
> I hate that it has trained users to not question fake url bars.
> I hate that cloudflare so thoroughly jumped on its dick
> I hate that we invented a way to fake the address in the url bar just for this stupid fucking feature.
> I hate that we now have a system where somebody can share a page url with a friend, and that friend can view it on the same device model using the same browser with the same settings, and will get a different page because one was viewing an amp page but shared it's real url.
> I hate that every fucking amp page is lower featured in some way, and almost never works in desktop mode.
> And most of all, I hate that it leads to everybody offloading shit onto google's servers.
> AMP is not fast because it's served from google's CDN. AMP is fast because it's incompatible with 99% of the bullshit client cpu heavy tracking and ad libraries, so they don't get included inside AMP pages.
I ended up opening duckduckgo and it was on the first page.
Did google just forget that static article content does not exclusively make up the internet?
I'm gonna re-post the rant I posted last time this came up:
> As a mobile user, I hate it.
> I hate that every fucking google search result on mobile web has its stupid little icon
> I hate that there is no way for me to disable it as a user
> I hate that it has muddied the waters in what the url bar means
> I hate that it has trained users to not question fake url bars.
> I hate that cloudflare so thoroughly jumped on its dick
> I hate that we invented a way to fake the address in the url bar just for this stupid fucking feature.
> I hate that we now have a system where somebody can share a page url with a friend, and that friend can view it on the same device model using the same browser with the same settings, and will get a different page because one was viewing an amp page but shared it's real url.
> I hate that every fucking amp page is lower featured in some way, and almost never works in desktop mode.
> And most of all, I hate that it leads to everybody offloading shit onto google's servers.
> AMP is not fast because it's served from google's CDN. AMP is fast because it's incompatible with 99% of the bullshit client cpu heavy tracking and ad libraries, so they don't get included inside AMP pages.
> AMP is fast because it's incompatible with 99% of the bullshit client cpu heavy tracking and ad libraries, so they don't get included inside AMP pages.
That is wrong. AMP is fast because it prerenders. Everything included in AMP is designed to enable safe prerendering. That is the entire point of AMP markup.
That is wrong. AMP is fast because it prerenders. Everything included in AMP is designed to enable safe prerendering. That is the entire point of AMP markup.
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
> 211. Google falsely told publishers that adopting AMP would enhance load times, but Google employees knew that AMP only improves the [redacted] and AMP pages can actually [redacted] [redacted] [redacted]. In other words, the ostensible benefits of faster load times for cached AMP version of webpages were not true for publishers that designed their web pages for speed. Some publishers did not adopt AMP because they knew their pages actually loaded faster than AMP pages.
The AGs of 10 states disagree with you.
> 211. Google falsely told publishers that adopting AMP would enhance load times, but Google employees knew that AMP only improves the [redacted] and AMP pages can actually [redacted] [redacted] [redacted]. In other words, the ostensible benefits of faster load times for cached AMP version of webpages were not true for publishers that designed their web pages for speed. Some publishers did not adopt AMP because they knew their pages actually loaded faster than AMP pages.
The AGs of 10 states disagree with you.
The AGs of 10 states don't understand how the web works. This is a technology site, so we can do better. How are you going to beat prerendered pages in speed?
Here's a different way to think about what you're saying:
They are reducing margins and removing control from those content creators.
So that content you love so much? Over time there will be less and less of it, as less and less publishers can stay afloat in a world of rent-seeking and monopolistic Internet gatekeepers.
Enjoy it while you can...
They are reducing margins and removing control from those content creators.
So that content you love so much? Over time there will be less and less of it, as less and less publishers can stay afloat in a world of rent-seeking and monopolistic Internet gatekeepers.
Enjoy it while you can...
The other option to get instant article loading for publishers to publish via Apple News, which gives publishers far fewer monetization options.
I don't know, from that perspective my biggest gripe is that it breaks a lot of functionality.
It breaks zoom on a lot of pages, and the pages don't load with whatever settings you have saved on the site (nothing fancy, maybe a night mode or something).
It also removes the url, which is really annoying.
It's full of little things like that, I'd be interested in knowing if when consumers encounter things like that they'd even know to blame google.
It breaks zoom on a lot of pages, and the pages don't load with whatever settings you have saved on the site (nothing fancy, maybe a night mode or something).
It also removes the url, which is really annoying.
It's full of little things like that, I'd be interested in knowing if when consumers encounter things like that they'd even know to blame google.
I wholly disagree as primarily a consumer. Page speeds? Good.
Everything else about it? Awful.
How do I share the page I'm on without sharing the amp link. It's an extra 2 clicks and heavily obfuscated.
When browsing history, if I'm expecting to see something from news org but instead see amp garbage?
Human readability (for URLs but also in other contexts, like json) is a feature.
Amp throws away most features of web browsing in exchange for page speed. It's a devil's bargain, and it's not even a necessary transaction. You can get fast web pages without sacrificing everything else.
That last point is literally the drum that hn has been banging since amp came out. If Google wants to reward pages for being fast, then do that. Don't reward them for being amp.
Everything else about it? Awful.
How do I share the page I'm on without sharing the amp link. It's an extra 2 clicks and heavily obfuscated.
When browsing history, if I'm expecting to see something from news org but instead see amp garbage?
Human readability (for URLs but also in other contexts, like json) is a feature.
Amp throws away most features of web browsing in exchange for page speed. It's a devil's bargain, and it's not even a necessary transaction. You can get fast web pages without sacrificing everything else.
That last point is literally the drum that hn has been banging since amp came out. If Google wants to reward pages for being fast, then do that. Don't reward them for being amp.
> You can get fast web pages without sacrificing everything else.
The thing is, no one was stopping the websites from having fast pages before, but they were just not doing it. Google kind of forced them to be fast (again, it's the end result that I'm talking about, not the ways to reach there).
The thing is, no one was stopping the websites from having fast pages before, but they were just not doing it. Google kind of forced them to be fast (again, it's the end result that I'm talking about, not the ways to reach there).
Google could have forced them to be fast by using the same lightning logo if a page met speed criteria
They instead pushed a proprietary page format
Web pages adopted amp because of the seo carrot
That carrot could have motivated page speed without the existence of amp
They instead pushed a proprietary page format
Web pages adopted amp because of the seo carrot
That carrot could have motivated page speed without the existence of amp
The thing is, you totally ignored the entire critique. They could have achieved the same thing without forcing the garbage iframe.
> How do I share the page I'm on without sharing the amp link. It's an extra 2 clicks and heavily obfuscated.
What are you talking about?
At least on iOS Safari, I can use the regular browser share button (1 click) and it shares the regular (non-AMP) URL.
AMP also provides a share button of its own in the upper-right hand corner (also 1 click) that brings up the identical iOS share sheet, again a non-AMP URL.
So sharing works perfectly at least on iOS. Zero obfuscation, zero extra clicks. Is it different on Android or something?
What are you talking about?
At least on iOS Safari, I can use the regular browser share button (1 click) and it shares the regular (non-AMP) URL.
AMP also provides a share button of its own in the upper-right hand corner (also 1 click) that brings up the identical iOS share sheet, again a non-AMP URL.
So sharing works perfectly at least on iOS. Zero obfuscation, zero extra clicks. Is it different on Android or something?
Honestly, TIL
I usually prefer to share links via copy/paste vs the Android share button (it's much easier to switch to the app I was just using vs the share button, which is a bit hit or miss) -- and bizarrely copy does one thing while the share button does what I want (something I never learned because when I see that ugly url I've always clicked out and tried to use the amp link)
Finally, the amp link on android/chrome is also abysmal. It's like a worse version of the default android share where you have to swipe to a more (...) menu where you can access the normal android share menu
This counterintuitiveness & needing to reinvent the wheel for how to share pages (meaning change user habits) -- these are all reasons why I hate amp
It just doesn't need to exist. And if you told people "from now on Google will reward pages that load more quickly" you can bet that seo seeking news organizations would make their pages faster, without amp
I usually prefer to share links via copy/paste vs the Android share button (it's much easier to switch to the app I was just using vs the share button, which is a bit hit or miss) -- and bizarrely copy does one thing while the share button does what I want (something I never learned because when I see that ugly url I've always clicked out and tried to use the amp link)
Finally, the amp link on android/chrome is also abysmal. It's like a worse version of the default android share where you have to swipe to a more (...) menu where you can access the normal android share menu
This counterintuitiveness & needing to reinvent the wheel for how to share pages (meaning change user habits) -- these are all reasons why I hate amp
It just doesn't need to exist. And if you told people "from now on Google will reward pages that load more quickly" you can bet that seo seeking news organizations would make their pages faster, without amp
> Is it different on Android or something?
Sharing from the browser share button works correctly in mobile Chrome but not in mobile Firefox, which is my preferred browser.
Sharing from the browser share button works correctly in mobile Chrome but not in mobile Firefox, which is my preferred browser.
Correct me if I'm wrong but it is a publisher's choice to be on AMP, no? Publishers can choose to not support it.
Why does the community hate AMP if publishers opt in to it?
Also, publishers could easily create fast-loading pages without AMP as well if they just reduce all the bloat -- GDPR popups, banners, flying "subscribe now" popups, third-party ad libraries (use first-party ads for much faster loading times), weird JS scrolling effects, trackers, all that crap. That's why pages get slow.
HTML alone is fast -- AMP isn't necessary for a fast experience.
Why does the community hate AMP if publishers opt in to it?
Also, publishers could easily create fast-loading pages without AMP as well if they just reduce all the bloat -- GDPR popups, banners, flying "subscribe now" popups, third-party ad libraries (use first-party ads for much faster loading times), weird JS scrolling effects, trackers, all that crap. That's why pages get slow.
HTML alone is fast -- AMP isn't necessary for a fast experience.
As a user, I've found tons of problems with AMP sites. I don't know if this is the website's fault or AMPs, but frankly I don't care.
Some issues:
- back button breaks
- difficult to share links
- when sharing with others, the URL prompts distrust
- parts of the page broken (this happens on a lot of Reddit amp pages where I try to expand comments and nothing happens)
Some issues:
- back button breaks
- difficult to share links
- when sharing with others, the URL prompts distrust
- parts of the page broken (this happens on a lot of Reddit amp pages where I try to expand comments and nothing happens)
It might just be your perception. I usually get similar or better loading times from opening the original URL, and this has been shown to be quite common by independent benchmarks, AMP pages have acquired a lot of bloat.
I mentioned this before, but the only problem I have with AMP is that one can't self-host - you have to link to amp js files on the official servers (you'd think a starting point for fast hosting of webpages would be hosting everything on the same server, but it seems no...). I haven't seen anyone try to justify this; for whatever reason it's not on anyone else's radar that I've seen. For me it's a total deal-breaker.
If you want a standard you can specify a standard, if you want a framework you can specify a framework. But requiring it to give you client-side permission to run scripts is something that requires more justification that I've seen anyone give.
(I haven't checked the official amp website in a year or so, maybe things have changed since then).
If you want a standard you can specify a standard, if you want a framework you can specify a framework. But requiring it to give you client-side permission to run scripts is something that requires more justification that I've seen anyone give.
(I haven't checked the official amp website in a year or so, maybe things have changed since then).
Self-hosting is a thing, at least as far as the amp-geo component is concerned:
> Publishers and caches that re-host AMP JavaScript files...
https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-geo/#self-hosti...
> Publishers and caches that re-host AMP JavaScript files...
https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-geo/#self-hosti...
Huh. Interesting!
https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-f... says that as of April 2020 self-hosted pages don't pass validation:
>The AMP Project is looking into options for validation of AMP pages that use an AMP framework hosted outside of cdn.ampproject.org (#27546). As of April 2020, these AMP pages do not pass validation.
The linked issue is still open: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/27546
And if I look at the official Specs page ( https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/learn/spe... ) it says this:
> Any AMP document MUST [...] contain a <script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> tag inside their head tag.
So it seems they're planning on supporting self-hosting, but it's not there yet (and it might be complex to get working).
https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-f... says that as of April 2020 self-hosted pages don't pass validation:
>The AMP Project is looking into options for validation of AMP pages that use an AMP framework hosted outside of cdn.ampproject.org (#27546). As of April 2020, these AMP pages do not pass validation.
The linked issue is still open: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/27546
And if I look at the official Specs page ( https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/learn/spe... ) it says this:
> Any AMP document MUST [...] contain a <script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> tag inside their head tag.
So it seems they're planning on supporting self-hosting, but it's not there yet (and it might be complex to get working).
I think the justification is something along the lines of "Google's cache is faster than yours" - but I also agree that it's a bridge too far. I should be able to add a <meta> tag in my header that says "this is an AMP page" and assuming I've implemented AMP correctly that should be enough.
surely if you have a js asset on one, official server, then it will just be cached once and you'll never have to serve it at all after that, and as such serving it "fast" isn't the issue?
> make AMP a great web citizen
Why isn't AMP a great web citizen? As far as I can tell, it's just a web component framework. Google took a very unique approach in inventing web components. Most people who invent web frameworks just put them out there as their own arbitrary unilateral design like Django, React, etc. and if enough people sign on board it's a thing. Web components was the one time when someone who wanted a new framework, actually put the time and effort into attracting the involvement of the browser authors and web consortium and standards bodies. That's a real long road and it's incredibly hard. Google did that. It's something worth respecting, even if web components don't feel all the great to code.
Beyond being a web component framework, I have no idea who the hell these AMP people are, and why they're forming consensus committees acting like they're steering the future of the Internet. We can see how quickly that fell apart into public metadrama the moment they lost their big stick SEO, since IIRC Google recently stopped explicitly favoring AMP results.
If Google was smart, they would have invented an algorithm that can tell "your website is a slow bloated popup laden piece of crap" and we're going to officially demote your SEO because of that. If Google actually did that, rather than granting favoritism to the slow popup laden websites like NYTimes, then the mobile web would instantly transform itself overnight. And then they could say, hey, if you're not sure how to make web pages that don't suck, use AMP, which is guideline for the confused on how to achieve a mobile friendly ui that isn't downranked.
> Google’s thesis is that the mobile-web is dying and people prefer to use apps
And I'm still sitting here spending most of my time in a terminal. What is dead may never die. If the mobile web dies then Google only has its own stewardship to blame. Google once understood that its interests were tied with the success of the open web and I'm sorry but they surely didn't think that a horse which died due to their policies would come back to life if they moved its corpse out of the barnyard and into a closed barn? Since that's basically how all this comes across.
Why isn't AMP a great web citizen? As far as I can tell, it's just a web component framework. Google took a very unique approach in inventing web components. Most people who invent web frameworks just put them out there as their own arbitrary unilateral design like Django, React, etc. and if enough people sign on board it's a thing. Web components was the one time when someone who wanted a new framework, actually put the time and effort into attracting the involvement of the browser authors and web consortium and standards bodies. That's a real long road and it's incredibly hard. Google did that. It's something worth respecting, even if web components don't feel all the great to code.
Beyond being a web component framework, I have no idea who the hell these AMP people are, and why they're forming consensus committees acting like they're steering the future of the Internet. We can see how quickly that fell apart into public metadrama the moment they lost their big stick SEO, since IIRC Google recently stopped explicitly favoring AMP results.
If Google was smart, they would have invented an algorithm that can tell "your website is a slow bloated popup laden piece of crap" and we're going to officially demote your SEO because of that. If Google actually did that, rather than granting favoritism to the slow popup laden websites like NYTimes, then the mobile web would instantly transform itself overnight. And then they could say, hey, if you're not sure how to make web pages that don't suck, use AMP, which is guideline for the confused on how to achieve a mobile friendly ui that isn't downranked.
> Google’s thesis is that the mobile-web is dying and people prefer to use apps
And I'm still sitting here spending most of my time in a terminal. What is dead may never die. If the mobile web dies then Google only has its own stewardship to blame. Google once understood that its interests were tied with the success of the open web and I'm sorry but they surely didn't think that a horse which died due to their policies would come back to life if they moved its corpse out of the barnyard and into a closed barn? Since that's basically how all this comes across.
> If Google was smart, they would have invented an algorithm that can tell "your website is a slow bloated popup laden piece of crap" and we're going to officially demote your SEO because of that.
Google does exactly that, which is one reason so many publishers were tempted to adopt AMP.
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/07/search-ads...
However, sometimes a slow site is still the best site for a particular query. There are multiple factors to consider when ranking pages.
> If Google actually did that, rather than granting favoritism to the slow popup laden websites
Again, Google already penalizes sites for popups and interstitials.
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2016/08/helping-us...
> And then they could say, hey, if you're not sure how to make web pages that don't suck, use AMP, which is guideline for the confused on how to achieve a mobile friendly ui that isn't downranked.
That was the reason Google ostensibly introducted AMP in the first place. Unfortunately, it also breaks a lot of standard web interactions and forces publishers to cache content on Google infrastructure.
Looking at your comparison of AMP with React, it's safe to say you are a little bit confused about what it is.
Google does exactly that, which is one reason so many publishers were tempted to adopt AMP.
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/07/search-ads...
However, sometimes a slow site is still the best site for a particular query. There are multiple factors to consider when ranking pages.
> If Google actually did that, rather than granting favoritism to the slow popup laden websites
Again, Google already penalizes sites for popups and interstitials.
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2016/08/helping-us...
> And then they could say, hey, if you're not sure how to make web pages that don't suck, use AMP, which is guideline for the confused on how to achieve a mobile friendly ui that isn't downranked.
That was the reason Google ostensibly introducted AMP in the first place. Unfortunately, it also breaks a lot of standard web interactions and forces publishers to cache content on Google infrastructure.
Looking at your comparison of AMP with React, it's safe to say you are a little bit confused about what it is.
I explicitly said I have no idea how AMP isn't a web framework. Are you saying that it's a CDN too? If that's problematic then fork the web framework code on GitHub and replace GCS with your own thing to make a buck.
The root problem is search engine ranking policies. Frameworks can't fix that systemically. If Google was actually downranking websites that go too far with bloat and popups then people wouldn't do it. It's not complicated. What frameworks actually do is help you "check off a box" for misguided views Google holds about things like mobile friendliness, which punish small web sites, and favor big bloated complicated ones that can afford to devote engineers to sitting around checking off boxes.
The root problem is search engine ranking policies. Frameworks can't fix that systemically. If Google was actually downranking websites that go too far with bloat and popups then people wouldn't do it. It's not complicated. What frameworks actually do is help you "check off a box" for misguided views Google holds about things like mobile friendliness, which punish small web sites, and favor big bloated complicated ones that can afford to devote engineers to sitting around checking off boxes.
its a cdn first and a framework second.
The whole point of amp was suppose to be that google could host the amp'ed pages on their servers. They claim that by hosting it on their servers they can prefetch it from search results (they could otherwise, but it would expose details about the user and their searches to sites the user never ended up visiting) and that this would make it faster. in practice this rarely leads to more then low 2 digit MS improvements over normal because the cache servers are so overloaded dealing with all the prefetch queries. Googles CDN is not what it used to be and i've even taken the step of moving my google fonts off of google and on to my cloudflare'ed domain for my 70mil/ppm website because it made things faster.
The whole point of amp was suppose to be that google could host the amp'ed pages on their servers. They claim that by hosting it on their servers they can prefetch it from search results (they could otherwise, but it would expose details about the user and their searches to sites the user never ended up visiting) and that this would make it faster. in practice this rarely leads to more then low 2 digit MS improvements over normal because the cache servers are so overloaded dealing with all the prefetch queries. Googles CDN is not what it used to be and i've even taken the step of moving my google fonts off of google and on to my cloudflare'ed domain for my 70mil/ppm website because it made things faster.
AMP is a framework, but Google provides caching for AMP results. Basically it serves them from its search index. And people scream about this vertical integration.
AMP does not fit all types of content, so prioritizing it over non-AMP pages penalizes websites that don't make static content or forces them to make all searches a landing page in AMP to the actual page, making shit even more of a mess on the web.
AMP Forces publishers to put their content on googles servers giving google more data about users (that it doesn't share with the publisher) and its the equivalent of a yellow pages phone book provider making the text of all companies smaller unless the company gives yellow pages exclusive access to their front door security camera. Don't defend it.
When yelp started replacing the phone number of restaurants with their yelp delivery service partner's phone number to intercept the sales and use their own provider, everybody on hackernews rightly called it out as shit, but when google does the same shit its "not everybody's cup of tea".
No, you can't divorce AMP from how Google uses AMP. Google made AMP and Google shaped the core foundations of AMP that lets them do this. You can't just hand wave that away.
When yelp started replacing the phone number of restaurants with their yelp delivery service partner's phone number to intercept the sales and use their own provider, everybody on hackernews rightly called it out as shit, but when google does the same shit its "not everybody's cup of tea".
No, you can't divorce AMP from how Google uses AMP. Google made AMP and Google shaped the core foundations of AMP that lets them do this. You can't just hand wave that away.
> Why isn't AMP a great web citizen? As far as I can tell, it's just a web component framework.
To be a good citizen of anything implies an awareness of a broader context, as well as actions and intentions within that context that create benefit to others. By saying it's 'just a web component framework' you're completely divorcing the technology from its context, which is that AMP was part of a strategy to annex part of the open web by acting as a gatekeeper between users and publishers.
To be a good citizen of anything implies an awareness of a broader context, as well as actions and intentions within that context that create benefit to others. By saying it's 'just a web component framework' you're completely divorcing the technology from its context, which is that AMP was part of a strategy to annex part of the open web by acting as a gatekeeper between users and publishers.
Maybe this deserves its own Ask HN (but probably not):
What automatic things do people do to get rid of amp links to see “the original”? In an ideal world I wouldn’t even load the amp. I’m especially interested in solutions for Safari on iOS and Firefox on OS X (will not ever write macOS willingly).
Along the same thread, it used to be that when I clicked an Apple News link on my laptop it’d open in a browser and redirect to the original. Now Apple has “helpfully” provided my with an OS X version of News—a browser without any of the plugins I like. How can I intercept the URL handling and send it to Firefox rather than News?
What automatic things do people do to get rid of amp links to see “the original”? In an ideal world I wouldn’t even load the amp. I’m especially interested in solutions for Safari on iOS and Firefox on OS X (will not ever write macOS willingly).
Along the same thread, it used to be that when I clicked an Apple News link on my laptop it’d open in a browser and redirect to the original. Now Apple has “helpfully” provided my with an OS X version of News—a browser without any of the plugins I like. How can I intercept the URL handling and send it to Firefox rather than News?
I'd ask the opposite instead, what is it that leads people to AMP over "the original"? I have never been directed to an AMP page except in case someone shares AMP urls. And I use a lot of browsers and search engines, just not chrome or google.
For me Google news on mobile(firefox)loads every page as a AMP page. Very annoying.
Google is quite vicious in displaying primarily AMP pages on mobile search results. There are times my inquiry only returns AMP pages, essentially requiring me to use another search engine or use the web as Google demands.
What leads people to it? Google. They intentionally kick you out of search results if you don't do AMP. The end user has very little choice in the subject.
I mostly get AMPed when someone sends me a link.
There's a Firefox add-on for that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/
This is good, and what I will use.
It's snappy---the redirect happens before the page renders / any tracking has a chance to kick in.
HOWEVER It's not perfect---2 of the 4 first examples I tried failed and required manual intervention. I opened an issue https://github.com/da2x/amp2html/issues/23
It's snappy---the redirect happens before the page renders / any tracking has a chance to kick in.
HOWEVER It's not perfect---2 of the 4 first examples I tried failed and required manual intervention. I opened an issue https://github.com/da2x/amp2html/issues/23
> will not ever write macOS willingly
And yet you did.
News app -> preferences -> Open web links in News might help
And yet you did.
News app -> preferences -> Open web links in News might help
> And yet you did.
It was unwilling.
When I navigate to
It was unwilling.
When I navigate to
OS X 11.0.1 -> News -> Preferences
[ ] Restrict stories in Today
(... description ...)
[ ] Restrict stories with explicit content
(... description ...)OS Ten Eleven?
Safari: If you long press a link (or 3D Touch, RIP), and "Open in New Tab", it bypasses AMP; simply selecting "Open" does not however.
Force touch the link on iOS. Or the force touch equivalent in newer models.
I think i am too cynical to think such a committee can stand up to corporate interests. Thank you for trying though.
You mis-spelled "realistic".
I can only assume AMP is dead if Google Analytics 4 doesn't even support it. Not only do they not support it, but you get a run-a-around by anyone and everyone who is simply ass kissing google and insulting you for asking valid questions.
I'm removing AMP from my websites now... it is terrible.
I'm removing AMP from my websites now... it is terrible.
Besides the obvious, I have an additional problem with AMP that I never see getting mentioned:
It completely fucks up redirects on mobile Safari. It requires two or three swipe back gestures to actually return to Google.
Amp is a hackity hack of the modern web, a poster child of some people who try to justify their mere existence in bright google conference rooms and email chains.
It seems like inside google(and outside of it as well) people tend to have forgotten that web performance is all about intelligent work with web standards. And throughout years people-who-care-about-perf introduced and advocated various techniques and changes to engines, standards and languages used across web development to improve end user experience. Prefetching, preloading, multiplexing, minifying, lazy loading, PWA, CDN, et al.
Instead of teaching how to build web properly google puts its enormous resources to what serves as a search result preview for end users, and the only beneficiary of the AMP is google itself.
Care about your users, their experience and performance of your website? Ditch https://amp.dev/
Discover https://web.dev/
It seems like inside google(and outside of it as well) people tend to have forgotten that web performance is all about intelligent work with web standards. And throughout years people-who-care-about-perf introduced and advocated various techniques and changes to engines, standards and languages used across web development to improve end user experience. Prefetching, preloading, multiplexing, minifying, lazy loading, PWA, CDN, et al.
Instead of teaching how to build web properly google puts its enormous resources to what serves as a search result preview for end users, and the only beneficiary of the AMP is google itself.
Care about your users, their experience and performance of your website? Ditch https://amp.dev/
Discover https://web.dev/
That fucking AMP even makes it hard to find the original link of the site it is wrapping. I just hate and abhor its existence.
> Google’s thesis is that the mobile-web is dying and people prefer to use apps
At least this user doesn't prefer apps, it's just that websites downright refuse to make their mobile pages useful, and keep throwing popups for you to get the app, and Chrome on mobile doesn't support extensions to block said popups. Most mobile websites also suck at supporting common navigation modes like swiping between tabs. They entirely could, but they refuse to spend resources developing it.
At least this user doesn't prefer apps, it's just that websites downright refuse to make their mobile pages useful, and keep throwing popups for you to get the app, and Chrome on mobile doesn't support extensions to block said popups. Most mobile websites also suck at supporting common navigation modes like swiping between tabs. They entirely could, but they refuse to spend resources developing it.
The damage is done. AMP has been criticized since its inception, the author is no hero for realizing it after making it this way for years.
With Google Chrome as the most popular browser and Google that earns a lots from Google App Store all we can expect, and what I actually see, is that open web development is blocked. Open web is almost perfectly capable to serve apps on the same quality that native ones. But without a strong competition to Google Chrome we might never experience the full benefit
> AI remain convinced that AMP is poorly implemented, hostile to the interests of both users and publishers, and a proprietary & unnecessary incursion into the open web.
That kind of says it all, doesn't it?
That kind of says it all, doesn't it?
It's trendy to despair, and I want to call it out. I've seen it recently in prominent journalists talking about disinformation, in the former Google AI researcher's exit message to colleagues, in lots of people talking about politics and government and democracy and public affairs (such as racism). 'Let's leave the city - what's the point of being here?'
It seems that people want to say: 'it's useless to try', and 'I don't know what to do' ... sometimes they say they will quixotically continue (to drag out the despair, I suppose).
Perhaps it's a consequence of the pandemic, which creates depressing environments for much of the world. Perhaps it's a the reactionary concept of the 'SJW' (a negative term, which mocked their supposed uselessness) seeping into broader society.
Whatever, despair is a pretty f*g stupid trend. Really? Despair? That's cool now? You sound smart now? I promise you that you will never accomplish anything you don't believe in. Remember the American Dream - anyone can accomplish anything they believe in and work hard for. A friend of mine (now hip to despair) once said, 'the biggest obstacle most people face is that they don't believe' - my friend was right. Who would even choose despair, given the options - what an unhappy life.
I believe. I believe we can do it. I believe that the biggest obstacle is all these people standing around talking about despair, and that we outnumber the actual bad people 100 to 1. I believe democracy and freedom and believing in people has an incredible history of success and we can solve these problems too. I believe we can make the open web work on mobile. I believe we can solve disinformation - it's just a matter of engagement, of finding out what engages them and where; they reading that crap for the content. I believe in the city - the land of opportunities, on every block, at every corner, in every cafe and bar. I love the city, I love people.
Let's do this! LET'S GOOOOOO!
(And I'm not being ironic. I am dead serious. Why are you standing there talking about irony? Is it so rare that someone could be earnest and enthusiastic these days? I'm going to leave you behind; I'm going to make the future while you despair. Let's go!!!!)
It seems that people want to say: 'it's useless to try', and 'I don't know what to do' ... sometimes they say they will quixotically continue (to drag out the despair, I suppose).
Perhaps it's a consequence of the pandemic, which creates depressing environments for much of the world. Perhaps it's a the reactionary concept of the 'SJW' (a negative term, which mocked their supposed uselessness) seeping into broader society.
Whatever, despair is a pretty f*g stupid trend. Really? Despair? That's cool now? You sound smart now? I promise you that you will never accomplish anything you don't believe in. Remember the American Dream - anyone can accomplish anything they believe in and work hard for. A friend of mine (now hip to despair) once said, 'the biggest obstacle most people face is that they don't believe' - my friend was right. Who would even choose despair, given the options - what an unhappy life.
I believe. I believe we can do it. I believe that the biggest obstacle is all these people standing around talking about despair, and that we outnumber the actual bad people 100 to 1. I believe democracy and freedom and believing in people has an incredible history of success and we can solve these problems too. I believe we can make the open web work on mobile. I believe we can solve disinformation - it's just a matter of engagement, of finding out what engages them and where; they reading that crap for the content. I believe in the city - the land of opportunities, on every block, at every corner, in every cafe and bar. I love the city, I love people.
Let's do this! LET'S GOOOOOO!
(And I'm not being ironic. I am dead serious. Why are you standing there talking about irony? Is it so rare that someone could be earnest and enthusiastic these days? I'm going to leave you behind; I'm going to make the future while you despair. Let's go!!!!)
Bad guys are powerful because they are organized. Like you said: an organized 1% can wipe floor with the rest 99%. You can set up a nonprofit org funded by membership fees and call it say "a software engineering guild". That's very legal and very cool. Come up with the mission statement, rules (e.g. one vote per member), basic background checks for new members, figure how you'd protect it from bad actors, and get a few hundred people to join. I'd have no problem with 1k a year in fees. Make sure to provide plausible deniability to members. Maybe call them shareholders: we already own shares from hundreds of companies, nothing wrong with adding one more to the list. With those fees you'll be able to hire law firms and various lobbyists to rock the boat. Luckily, our gov doesn't permit private armies, so you won't need to compete on that front. You'll become the number 1 target for FANG, but if you set up the org right, it will survive even if you have to leave. This type of organizations act like lenses that focus energy of thousands of people into a laser beam.
> Google’s thesis is that the mobile-web is dying and people prefer to use apps – therefore making the web faster and more app-like will retain users.
I'm not sure how to interpret that. Does it mean that Google has given up on PWAs and the likes, and shifted their attention to native? Or is it the converse, that Google is continuing their work in making web apps more "native"-like?
I'm not sure how to interpret that. Does it mean that Google has given up on PWAs and the likes, and shifted their attention to native? Or is it the converse, that Google is continuing their work in making web apps more "native"-like?
I sadly don't think this will make any difference. In fact, it might've had more impact if Terence did this before the suit.
Speaking of which: the Texas suit itself, on the other hand, just might make that difference. (Discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25448718)
Speaking of which: the Texas suit itself, on the other hand, just might make that difference. (Discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25448718)
The Texas suit, the Colorado suit, and the DOJ suit. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/12/new-suits-accuse...
Yeah, interesting timing on this.
He's sat on it for long enough, even though the trajectory of amp has been clear for years. There's no credibility to be reclaimed here.
The timing is terrible.
Google is getting some serious flack.
From NPR this morning... https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/947918291/google-researcher-d...
From NPR this morning... https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/947918291/google-researcher-d...
It's a shame, but it had become pretty clear that the AMP advisory committee had done everything in it's power to ignore the action it had on it's project plan to let end users opt out of AMP.
That preference would live with the link aggregator, not in the AMP spec. Where does it say that this was on any project plan? The idea does not make any sense.
That post was all over the place but it reflects that we have good people trying to improve things everywhere. In some places, the company agenda doesn't allow the team to do what they think is best, and that is okay. As long as we have people trying to do good, despite company motivations (which are important as well), we will keep moving forward.
Love the fact that this AMP nonsense might be the final straw that really got Google in hot water with various entities.
Sadly, the only meaningful way to kill the Google beast is to break it up. If they're fined, even if it's a significant sum, it will just be a rounding error on their balance sheet and another cost of doing (sleazy) business.
Sadly, the only meaningful way to kill the Google beast is to break it up. If they're fined, even if it's a significant sum, it will just be a rounding error on their balance sheet and another cost of doing (sleazy) business.
I don't know, I think it might be for real this time. The previous administration declined to pursue antitrust violations against Google in like 2013, and it's true that Democrats tend to be closer to Silicon Valley. But today there's bipartisan agreement we have a problem, with 40 states filing suit.
But the EU wants to punish Google by taxing a percentage of the profit.
Let's slay the monopolistic beast. I think we're finally headed in the right direction.
But the EU wants to punish Google by taxing a percentage of the profit.
Let's slay the monopolistic beast. I think we're finally headed in the right direction.
I totally agree. I feel like what was once an incredible success story and a real force for good is now a cancer on the Internet.
Same goes for Facebook et al.
Same goes for Facebook et al.
I don't see any chance they would seriously attempt to break them up. Fines, sure, but attempting to break it up? No way. These companies are insanely valuable to the United States.
The tech sector is one of the most influential sectors, the incoming administration leans even more pro Silicon Valley than the previous (which didn't do much to oppose the tech sector apart from a sternly worded five minute interview with Tucker).
The republicans also just pretend their opposition to make sure they keep their followers outraged over the "elite liberals in California". Most likely they just want a bigger piece of the "influence pie" and when they float ideas like breaking them up, it's just a negotiation tactic to get a bigger slice from that "pie".
I also don't see the EU seriously challenge the American tech sector, as the US would not tolerate such an attack on their companies. The US has thousand ways to fight back, increasing tariffs, decreasing military presence, persecuting shady characters from the EU and more (im sure they can get more creative than I just did).
The tech sector is one of the most influential sectors, the incoming administration leans even more pro Silicon Valley than the previous (which didn't do much to oppose the tech sector apart from a sternly worded five minute interview with Tucker).
The republicans also just pretend their opposition to make sure they keep their followers outraged over the "elite liberals in California". Most likely they just want a bigger piece of the "influence pie" and when they float ideas like breaking them up, it's just a negotiation tactic to get a bigger slice from that "pie".
I also don't see the EU seriously challenge the American tech sector, as the US would not tolerate such an attack on their companies. The US has thousand ways to fight back, increasing tariffs, decreasing military presence, persecuting shady characters from the EU and more (im sure they can get more creative than I just did).
>"...increasing military presence..."
What's the point? You think the US will really threaten EU with the war?
What's the point? You think the US will really threaten EU with the war?
Sorry, wanted to write decreasing, making the EU more vulnerable to neighboring countries.
I do not think that would really work either. It would be suicidal for either EU or Russia to fight each other. All this "threat" talk I think is just a way to squeeze the money and governments always need some enemy to deflect attention from their own fuck-ups.
That could be true, it might be more theatre than threat.
I only know that anytime the US reduces (or Russia increases) the military presence in some area, it's in the news for weeks (as examples, Turkey, Syria, Estonia, Germany come to mind).
Also, the "theatre" can also work, as politicians want to be re-elected and if enough people believe that their country is in risk because the US troop numbers are reduced, then it becomes a way to pressure the EU even if the real military threat is not that great.
Though I still think my point stands, as the US must have ways to pressure the EU to not take a strong stand against tech giants.
I only know that anytime the US reduces (or Russia increases) the military presence in some area, it's in the news for weeks (as examples, Turkey, Syria, Estonia, Germany come to mind).
Also, the "theatre" can also work, as politicians want to be re-elected and if enough people believe that their country is in risk because the US troop numbers are reduced, then it becomes a way to pressure the EU even if the real military threat is not that great.
Though I still think my point stands, as the US must have ways to pressure the EU to not take a strong stand against tech giants.
Of course the US can and will pressure. But up to a point. Otherwise they might be told to f.. off and mind their own business. More likely is that they will reach some compromise.
I remain skeptical that they're really going to want to do that in the competition with China era
Why not? I think the West’s ability to encourage market competition via antitrust enforcement is perhaps one of the most valuable tools when competing with China. The more competitive a market the more it will innovate, the more people it will reach, and the jobs it will create. Monopolies hurt our ability to compete with China. Strong antitrust regulation keeps a market healthy.
I don't think a bunch of little business are going to manage the kind of global reach sought here.
I don't think any of the businesses that would spin out from Google would be anything close to "little".
In that case the desired competition might not happen -- or could come from China which is the worst-case scenario if you're planning a sort of economic cold war
The administration is quietly adding tech ppl to high positions to thank them for helping Biden through the election season. They helped him to avoid this kind of regulation.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/with-news-of-hunter-bidens-...
https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2020/12/12/there-it-is-politi...
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/with-news-of-hunter-bidens-...
https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2020/12/12/there-it-is-politi...
Yeah, they had a shot at "regulated as a utility", but that ship has sailed.
I'm looking forward to when criminal charges against corporations and "corporate executions" (i.e. revoking corporate charters and dissolving the firm) enters the Overton window.
I'm looking forward to when criminal charges against corporations and "corporate executions" (i.e. revoking corporate charters and dissolving the firm) enters the Overton window.
Utility never made sense because free software manages the IP part of the commons so much more efficiently.
I.e. utility legislation
- should put the ISP utility in charge of running the physical infra
- require that all the "software used for interoperable protocols"
I.e. we are completely separating "google the data center farmer" from "google the software writer", and then shooting one of them.
I.e. utility legislation
- should put the ISP utility in charge of running the physical infra
- require that all the "software used for interoperable protocols"
I.e. we are completely separating "google the data center farmer" from "google the software writer", and then shooting one of them.
> If they're fined, even if it's a significant sum, it will just be a rounding error on their balance sheet
Ah, that word “significant”. Significant for whom? Perhaps a 100 billion dollars fine would be significant.
Ah, that word “significant”. Significant for whom? Perhaps a 100 billion dollars fine would be significant.
If it’s just a rounding error on the balance sheet then it’s not a significant sum by definition. Fine them a trillion dollars and it won’t be a rounding error.
Or better still a high percentage of profits/revenue
TLDR:
> The stated goal of the AMP AC is to “make AMP a great web citizen.”
> I am concerned that – despite the hard work of the AC – Google has limited interest in that goal.
A "search engine" is completely affecting the culture, technology usage and (directly and indirectly) lives of the people. This is yet another reminder that we need to get rid of the AMP plague.
> The stated goal of the AMP AC is to “make AMP a great web citizen.”
> I am concerned that – despite the hard work of the AC – Google has limited interest in that goal.
A "search engine" is completely affecting the culture, technology usage and (directly and indirectly) lives of the people. This is yet another reminder that we need to get rid of the AMP plague.
Google is not a search engine company, they are an ad company. Everything they do should be viewed through that lense.
How many of you use Chrome, BTW?
How many of you use Chrome, BTW?
They're still the #1 search engine, and I use Firefox as my personal browser and Chrome for work (we're on Google Workspace).
I've been using duck duck go and google side by side for about a year now and I'm actually finding that duck duck go is consistently returning better results now
As far as chrome why bother? My computer grinds to a halt using chrome, been using firefox for years now
As far as chrome why bother? My computer grinds to a halt using chrome, been using firefox for years now
Safari + DDG here. That has currently the best compromise of posture and usability IMHO.
I was using "new edge" before which is no better. And firefox before that.
I was using "new edge" before which is no better. And firefox before that.
Brave currently offers all the benefits of Chrome with few of the downsides.
They are one of the few companies actually trying to change the spyware model of the web into something much more in line with its original principals (p2p ethos)
They are one of the few companies actually trying to change the spyware model of the web into something much more in line with its original principals (p2p ethos)
That's why I used quotation marks for the search engine part. There are still a lot of people thinking Google as a harmless and search engine company. This image is disappearing slowly with their actions over time. Still, there are other players in the advertisement business and they can easily take Google's place.
This problem should be solved more in direction of regulating data collection and usage. Even though the GDPR is implemented, it is obvious that it is not enough. There is simply no "cost" of using the user data and to the end users, the claimed personalization benefits are almost always very very small, if there are even any benefits. Majority of the world is using an Android-based smartphone, almost everybody can be uniquely fingerprintable (https://amiunique.org/). So, Google simply has 7/24 access to what you are doing, what you are buying, watching, listening to, who are your friends, what are your interests, what are your "secret" interests when you use incognito/secret mode in your browser and many more. This sounds like a doomsday scenario or a fancy story but it is simply the objective truth.
Even though the discussion started with AMP and controlling the internet completely, Google -or any from FAANG- is the culprit here.
And to answer your question, I am using Firefox.
This problem should be solved more in direction of regulating data collection and usage. Even though the GDPR is implemented, it is obvious that it is not enough. There is simply no "cost" of using the user data and to the end users, the claimed personalization benefits are almost always very very small, if there are even any benefits. Majority of the world is using an Android-based smartphone, almost everybody can be uniquely fingerprintable (https://amiunique.org/). So, Google simply has 7/24 access to what you are doing, what you are buying, watching, listening to, who are your friends, what are your interests, what are your "secret" interests when you use incognito/secret mode in your browser and many more. This sounds like a doomsday scenario or a fancy story but it is simply the objective truth.
Even though the discussion started with AMP and controlling the internet completely, Google -or any from FAANG- is the culprit here.
And to answer your question, I am using Firefox.
> There are still a lot of people thinking Google as a harmless and search engine company.
I've observed this on FB in comments against news articles about the anti trust case. Common theme is "there are plenty of search engines to choose between, and Google's is free so what's the problem".
I've observed this on FB in comments against news articles about the anti trust case. Common theme is "there are plenty of search engines to choose between, and Google's is free so what's the problem".
thank you for stopping making this awful and hurtful product...
[deleted]
> Google’s thesis is that the mobile-web is dying and people prefer to use apps – therefore making the web faster and more app-like will retain users.
I am not sure, if this is your opinion about Google's view on AMP or is exactly the Google view on AMP, but, Whatever it be, I almost died laughing - what's wrong with these people(Google)?
Either Google is assuming,
- people would only need 1-2 digit numbers of app in their device and rest all of the websites/platform are just hawkers on the street.
OR,
- world is going to be exploded with extreme scalable storage system on mobile/user's devices where people would be able to store hundreds of apps.
The only reason PEOPLE PREFER TO USE APPS in most of the case is the ability of OFFLINE USE CASE for FREQUENTLY used apps, and we know FREQUENT uses are for limited numbers of apps.
Such thesis that people "prefer to use apps" requires citation and contradicts Google's own "search engine" which helps people to explore the world for data. Is that a reason? google prefers to steal the data from various website and show the results in their search engine result page?
I am not sure, if this is your opinion about Google's view on AMP or is exactly the Google view on AMP, but, Whatever it be, I almost died laughing - what's wrong with these people(Google)?
Either Google is assuming,
- people would only need 1-2 digit numbers of app in their device and rest all of the websites/platform are just hawkers on the street.
OR,
- world is going to be exploded with extreme scalable storage system on mobile/user's devices where people would be able to store hundreds of apps.
The only reason PEOPLE PREFER TO USE APPS in most of the case is the ability of OFFLINE USE CASE for FREQUENTLY used apps, and we know FREQUENT uses are for limited numbers of apps.
Such thesis that people "prefer to use apps" requires citation and contradicts Google's own "search engine" which helps people to explore the world for data. Is that a reason? google prefers to steal the data from various website and show the results in their search engine result page?
I don't doubt the claims that AMP causes problems for publishers. But as a user I'll click the AMP page every time.
And as a user I avoid them.
I don't get why HN is hating on AMP so much. Yes, Google's force feeding AMP content to its users is not everyones cup of tea, but it enables devs with little experience in SEO to built fast, well ranking sites much more easily.
It is a great subset of HTML and JS and Web Stories do look like the next best (open source) solution to compete with Instagram, Snapchat and Tik Tok. There is basically NO OTHER CONTENDER in this space...
Why is everybody always hating on the effin' AMP Viewer on Google, if you do not like it, just don't use it.
AMP is great micdrop
It is a great subset of HTML and JS and Web Stories do look like the next best (open source) solution to compete with Instagram, Snapchat and Tik Tok. There is basically NO OTHER CONTENDER in this space...
Why is everybody always hating on the effin' AMP Viewer on Google, if you do not like it, just don't use it.
AMP is great micdrop
AMP does not fit all types of content, so prioritizing it over non-AMP pages penalizes websites that don't make static content or forces them to make all searches a landing page in AMP to the actual page, making shit even more of a mess on the web.
AMP Forces publishers to put their content on googles servers giving google more data about users (that it doesn't share with the publisher) and its the equivalent of a yellow pages phone book provider making the text of all companies smaller unless the company gives yellow pages exclusive access to their front door security camera. Don't defend it.
When yelp started replacing the phone number of restaurants with their yelp delivery service partner's phone number to intercept the sales and use their own provider, everybody on hackernews rightly called it out as shit, but when google does the same shit its "not everybody's cup of tea".
No, you can't divorce AMP from how Google uses AMP. Google made AMP and Google shaped the core foundations of AMP that lets them do this. You can't just hand wave that away.
AMP Forces publishers to put their content on googles servers giving google more data about users (that it doesn't share with the publisher) and its the equivalent of a yellow pages phone book provider making the text of all companies smaller unless the company gives yellow pages exclusive access to their front door security camera. Don't defend it.
When yelp started replacing the phone number of restaurants with their yelp delivery service partner's phone number to intercept the sales and use their own provider, everybody on hackernews rightly called it out as shit, but when google does the same shit its "not everybody's cup of tea".
No, you can't divorce AMP from how Google uses AMP. Google made AMP and Google shaped the core foundations of AMP that lets them do this. You can't just hand wave that away.
If a Corporation is spearheading it, it's not in the user's interest, full stop. Corporations care about Corporations just like Users care about Users. Even Governments, which are supposed to represent Citizens, end up prioritizing themselves over Citizens.
But you don't need Government to clean up a neighborhood block, and you don't need Corporations to define standards. You need Community. But to have Community, it needs to be normal for random people to work together towards common goals and self-organize. I don't think that's normal yet, but it could be.
But you don't need Government to clean up a neighborhood block, and you don't need Corporations to define standards. You need Community. But to have Community, it needs to be normal for random people to work together towards common goals and self-organize. I don't think that's normal yet, but it could be.
Random people organizing themselves to work together toward common goals is the very definition of "government".
If that were the definition of "government" then the word would lose all meaning, because it it generalizes to any collection of people in the world.
What I meant by "random" was that they aren't accountable to anyone but themselves, come from all walks of life, don't require anyone to allow them to engage and contribute, and completely self-organize. Most groups of people do not do all those things. And it really doesn't apply to government.
What I meant by "random" was that they aren't accountable to anyone but themselves, come from all walks of life, don't require anyone to allow them to engage and contribute, and completely self-organize. Most groups of people do not do all those things. And it really doesn't apply to government.
And that's the very definition of "democratic government": accountable to and comprised of everyone, deriving its authority from their consent, and self-organized by definition.
Does anybody know how old Terence Eden is? He doesn't look all that young. I'm surprised that he has chosen to do his MSc now, assuming it will be a MSc related to computer science. Somehow, I've always been under the impression that, when it comes to comp sci, because it's so close to mathematics in nature, you either get all the way to PhD blazingly fast, or you never get past Bachelor's degree. Although, of course, I don't have any data to back that up.
EDIT: I just looked at the blog post again. It's linked to another one where he says it will be a MSc Digital and Technology Specialist, so maybe it won't be very mathematics heavy.
EDIT: I just looked at the blog post again. It's linked to another one where he says it will be a MSc Digital and Technology Specialist, so maybe it won't be very mathematics heavy.
The site caught on in certain circles and pageviews skyrocketed within a few months. I was not the only person pursuing this strategy at the time.
Before a year had gone by, almost all the major news sites had updated their pages with JavaScript intended to either block iframing altogether, or to “break out” of the iframe, redirecting the viewer to their actual page. We even got a few nasty letters and emails about it with terms like “litigation” casually thrown in.
The project became untenable because of this and I shut it down.
Fast forward a few years and imagine my dismay when I see Google Amp doing essentially the same thing - but on a much larger scale....