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Ask HN: Is it just me or is the AMP project making everything slower?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is the AMP project making everything slower?

#51

Post by ip26 »

acdha wrote: post #44
chuckgreenman wrote: post #2

I think there are definite drawbacks to the AMP project. For starters, it seems like the main goal is for Google to own more of the time people are interacting with the web, rather than anything else. A mark in its favor though is local news sites. They are desperate to be at the top of the search page so when they join AMP, and you look at their AMP pages all of a sudden the loads of dark patterns they usually emplo…

Google could get the same effect by more aggressively factoring page load time & size into page ranking. They don’t because that doesn’t give them control over the ad ecosystem.

They did that for years already, I believe. It didn't work.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is the AMP project making everything slower?

#52

Post by dathinab »

HALtheWise wrote: post #36
_fbpt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downloading a website sans scripts takes strictly less time than downloading and executing scripts. A website that hides its content for 8 seconds because scripts are disabled is a defective website which deliberately stops users from looking static content (amp uses css animation).

The intent of the feature seems to be to hide content until it has been laid out properly, which is generally a positive change to the experience because you can't read stuff while it is jumping around. In that sense, the website is "deliberately" stopping you from seeing static content in the same sense that browsers deliberately don't flash the raw HTML code onscreen before they have finished performing layout oper…

I is actually both. If it would be just a fallback then the time it uses would be at most 5s, more realistic 3s.

The think is, if you are on a internet connection where you have frequent loading time of 3s for the _basic_ content, then you are used to seeing partial loaded pages and you likely love it if the connection happen to load the content you care about first, potentially leaving the page before it's completely loaded when noticing that it's not what you are looking for.

The choice of 8s looks _a lot_ like they where looking for the highest time they can chooses without making it look obvious deliberately but which is long enough to make many "causal" users stop using the script blocker.

I.e. 10+s would look way to obvious as a intentionally long choice. 9s still looks big as we are used to see 9 as nearly 10 from product prices to some degree (e.g. 9.99€). So the highest number which doesn't look obviously high is the 8. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is the AMP project making everything slower?

#53

Post by manicdee »

SquareWheel wrote: post #33
_fbpt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downloading a website sans scripts takes strictly less time than downloading and executing scripts. A website that hides its content for 8 seconds because scripts are disabled is a defective website which deliberately stops users from looking static content (amp uses css animation).

Ha. That's like removing a bunch of methods from a program and claiming it's broken when it crashes. What did you expect to happen when blocking half of a site's libraries?

Completely different.

This is like a car that tries to phone home every time you start it, so either you keep the phone service active and get a salesperson talking to you while driving, or you disable the phone and the car leave the immobiliser active for a minute each time you try to start the car.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is the AMP project making everything slower?

#55

Post by manicdee »

HALtheWise wrote: post #30
nty wrote: post #11

>I'm not convinced the web pages were really _that_ slow to start with, so it feels like an unnecessary project That's because you use umatrix and possibly ublock. AMP is about making the web faster for the common Joe.

It is also likely that you don't spend a significant amount of time browsing on a 2G cellular connection. When ping times are very long, the only way to get web performance anywhere close to native apps is pre-caching, which is what AMP is designed to enable (link-rel="prefetch" is a privacy nightmare). AMP is about the common Joe, but also about the 90th percentile slow performance (like in the developing world or o…

Pre-caching in those cases will cause other things to slow down and needlessly consume bandwidth which the user is paying for.

The real reason for AMP is to allow Google to watch everything your visitors do so they can sell your visitors eyeballs to your competitors.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is the AMP project making everything slower?

#56

Post by wmf »

chuckgreenman wrote: post #2

I think there are definite drawbacks to the AMP project. For starters, it seems like the main goal is for Google to own more of the time people are interacting with the web, rather than anything else. A mark in its favor though is local news sites. They are desperate to be at the top of the search page so when they join AMP, and you look at their AMP pages all of a sudden the loads of dark patterns they usually emplo…

Google isn't "owning more of the time"; all ad revenue, analytics, and branding accrues to the original site owner.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is the AMP project making everything slower?

#57

Post by snazz »

larkeith wrote: post #39
mort96 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite is that they've recently started animating their "Get the app" button in the header. That's both immediately on page load, _and_ on an interval as you're reading, meaning it's impossible to read for more than a minute or so without an animation distracting you. Is it just me or has the mobile web taken a nosedive in recent years? Imgur won't even let you upload images from mobile anymore without their app…

The mobile web has always been utter trash, it's just gotten worse in the last five years as more sites have rolled out mobile versions. Disabling Javascript helps a lot, but the "request desktop site" toggle is still frequently necessary. Imgur is, however, deserving of special mention for actively degrading their mobile experience - direct image links redirect to the mobile site now, which loads low-resolution imag…

Imgur gets another point for loading images with (third-party?) JavaScript, so that it sometimes hangs on the fancy animated loading screen and I never see the picture unless I reload.

It’s unfortunate that so much work goes into UX design but at the same time the web has been going downhill for years.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is the AMP project making everything slower?

#59

Post by kstenerud »

throwawaysea wrote: post #22

They're likely unrelated issues, but I am not surprised that those outside Google's happy path experience severe performance issues. Gmail has been horrendously slow ever since they launched their terrible redesign, with initial page load taking 10+ seconds and actions like opening up emails taking several seconds. I can't help but think this is because I don't use Chrome.

No, it's slow in chrome, too.

Multi user Hangouts is also horribly broken in chrome (first user can't see or hear anyone).

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is the AMP project making everything slower?

#60

Post by SquareWheel »

manicdee wrote: post #53
SquareWheel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. That's like removing a bunch of methods from a program and claiming it's broken when it crashes. What did you expect to happen when blocking half of a site's libraries?

Completely different. This is like a car that tries to phone home every time you start it, so either you keep the phone service active and get a salesperson talking to you while driving, or you disable the phone and the car leave the immobiliser active for a minute each time you try to start the car.

Are you upset that the website is using a CDN? That is the standard distribution method for common libraries.

As for the other half of your analogy - stop poking holes in the gas tank and it won't need active service.

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