My biggest problem with AMP is I can never go directly to the source. AMP has buggy scrolling and can be quite annoying sometimes.
Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic
161–170 of 261 posts
Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's mostly OK. A lot of my problems with mobile would be alleviated if I could get a browser to reflow text on demand. It used to be you could set your zoom level, double tap and the page would reflow to the new zoom level. This doesn't seem possible now, so I'm always scrolling side to side if I want to be zoomed in a bit more. I have a few other minor problems about how Wikipedia's mobile page handles with…
Mobile Firefox does this fine. JumpGo does it, too, which means that it's certainly still possible in Android System WebView.
I use mobile firefox - how do you get it to reflow? I would love that feature if I knew how to activate it.
Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic
#163AMP is essentially Google's answer to people creating terrible web experiences. It's been discussed and documented a lot. Common webpages today load content from dozens of different ad, tracking and whatever hosts, take several megabytes to load. All well known, but people don't stop doing it. Now Google comes along and says: You can't do it, let us do it. Which is perfectly reasonable from their point of view. And w…
Would you rather have an internet where every website has a design like an article from Wikipedia? Google is probably in their right to highlight pages using AMP (it's their search engine) but probably unfair.
not every site has SEO as its main traffic source
Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic
#164AMP is essentially Google's answer to people creating terrible web experiences. It's been discussed and documented a lot. Common webpages today load content from dozens of different ad, tracking and whatever hosts, take several megabytes to load. All well known, but people don't stop doing it. Now Google comes along and says: You can't do it, let us do it. Which is perfectly reasonable from their point of view. And w…
Diet pill mentality. People don't want to put in an effort to lose 25 lbs, they'd rather take a pill. Same here. People don't want to put in the effort to make something better, they want Google to do it.
I don't agree with this analogy. It's not like google is offering to redo your site in AMP for you. You still have to do the lightweight optimization yourself. You're just using a library that will guide you in how to do it by imposing restrictions like not loading from too many sources.
It's more like people don't feel like following a weight loss program until a trusted professional outlines an easy to follow and precise method.
Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic
#165I don't (and never will) use AMP and I feel that it is patently unfair to penalize pages for not using some non-standard tech. Google should index the web fairly, not make use of their tech a factor. Webpage speed is a fair measure (and I really wouldn't know what I could do to make my pages any faster, AMP will not make a measurable difference). I would expect an un-biased search engine to rate pages with and withou…
In my opinion, the problem is that your version of unbiased doesn't add much value to a user (and is actually biased for the website-owners). For example, SourceForge started adding a lot of misleading 'Download' buttons all over their page, and they might ask the same thing about 'an unbiased ranking' (Google's always been criticized for being the 'Web Police'). As a user however, I'd want Sourceforge's rankings go…
I work with people who have limited Internet literacy, or limited literacy, period. I have seen a marked improvement in their experience when Google started to police the web more. Simply ensuring people can surf safely is a service to lots of people who do not frequent Hacker News.
Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty sure non tech users don't even know what AMP is for.
They don't have to though. If there's a symbol and sites with that symbol are faster, they'll learn to look for the symbol, perhaps not even consciously.
>They don't have to though. If there's a symbol and sites with that symbol are faster, they'll learn to look for the symbol, perhaps not even consciously.
Totally disagree. I didn't know what AMP is and I keep seeing it. I avoided it thinking it was yet-another Google adware property like DoubleClick, another cleverly named way to trick users.
For the vast majority of users on 4G connections, AMP loads aren't that much faster (When you download 8MB/sec on 4G, a 2MB page is just not a deal breaker) and I doubt that very many users at all in America are noticing that dramatic of difference on their devices, enough to subconsciously learn to like it.
Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic
#167"I hope I am not being too hard on Google." -- no, the author is being very, very nice. Google has a strong business interest in users never going to other sites. Between AMP & voice search, the future is going to be very rough for businesses that rely on free search traffic. In practical business terms I would strongly suggest website owners build ultra-light versions of their sites. If you have international aspira…
How do you suggest publishers who are dependent on traffic from Google cope with AMP in the short-term? It seems like there is no way to compete with AMP-enabled content on Google ranking except by adopting AMP.
I don't think if you're running a business there's any way to avoid optimizing for Google in the short-term. You simply have to do it, if you want to be seen. Not optimizing for Google won't hurt Google, it'll just hurt you. Because Google can always just promote someone else.
But you should also support antitrust legislation and judicial action against Google. Don't vote for candidates next month receiving large donations from Google (now referred to as Alphabet[1] on most donor lists). The long game is requiring open oversight of Google's search ranking methodologies and forbidding them from modifying them to benefit their own products and services.
[1] http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?cycle=2016&id=D00...
Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be amazing if every website were designed like Wikipedia. With the exception of MediaViewer, Wikipedia is one of the best-designed websites out there. It's light, content-prominent, progressively enhanced, HTTPS-only. Even their mobile site is pretty good (though basically all mobile experiences are bad nowadays). What exactly is wrong with Wikipedia's design?
Wikipedia's mobile site is fantastic, IMO. I really wish all mobile sites were like Wikipedia's. The pain of browsing the web on mobile would go away completely.
I find it laggy when browsing to section anchors or more generally to big pages. Other than that, you're right, the mobile site is nice.
Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author is regretfully realizing that in this day and age when so much of the discoverability of the web is dominated by Google, Facebook, and a handful other players, content is a commodity that these gatekeepers compete over for the privilege of serving as entry-points, and with it, getting analytics and ad network data. But on the plus side, it's a free CDN, if you're passionate about your content.
Actually realised last week I hardly use google search anymore. And cant remember the last time i saw - let alone clicked on an ad (clickbait excluded). Not that I've switched to another search provider as much as search isn't the entry point to the internet it once was (especially with no google on tor sites). That techies like me dont rely on them any more and non techies all share stuff via facebook must be hurtin…
>That techies like me dont rely on them any more and non techies all share stuff via facebook must be hurting their page and ad hits.
The fact that you even think this makes me wonder if you're even a "techie".
Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is it making the Internet worse for current users?
Well do you really like the idea that when you go to some search result it effectively is opening an iframe to the website you're trying to go? Or as a web developer you need to make sure to adopt to their stupid standards like renaming your img to amp-img and making sure it works in amp and non-amp so you'd be doing both? I see it as complete bollocks.
> Do you really like the idea that when you go to some search result it effectively is opening an iframe to the website you're trying to go?
As an end-user or web developer?
As an end-user, I do not care. In fact, it seems that the AMP solution (which isn't an iframe so much as just serving the data from Google's cache at a Google URL) is faster.
> Or as a web developer you need to make sure to adopt to their stupid standards like renaming your img to amp-img and making sure it works in amp and non-amp so you'd be doing both?
As a developer, if I care enough about my user's experience to be bothering with AMP in the first place, I should be using a toolchain that makes it pretty straightforward to go from my meta-representation of my content to the render target (HTML / css, etc.). Because that toolchain should already be doing things like precompiling my CSS, condensing my image data, etc.