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Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

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Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#101

Post by biot »

cramforce wrote: post #30
rahrahrah wrote: post #7

He avoids really hard addressing the only bit that matters > Guess what happens when the "close" button is clicked inside the AMP view? And the amount of disingenuous on this just rubs me the wrong way: > If you are not comfortable with traffic on your AMP pages, please do not publish AMP pages.

Happy to address the close button: You are on a search page, you go on layer deep by clicking. The close button goes back. I don't see what else it should do. Mind you that I do understand that a link to the origin server would be a good improvement (and I've stated that in the post). I'm not sure what you find disingenuous. AMP are just web pages saying "HEY I A AMP, please use treat me as AMP". You can publish the…

Any time I see a website with a bar that has an "X" on it (think of all those "this site uses cookies..." bars) I expect clicking "X" to dismiss the bar, allowing me to see just the content minus the bar. If it took me back to the previous page, I would find that behavior surprising.

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#102

Post by gman83 »

ef4 wrote: post #91
inimino wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you aren't comfortable with it, just don't use it, right? I'm probably missing something, but I don't understand how something can be such a hard pill to swallow when it is opt-in.

AMP content shows up before other organic search results. So it's not really optional unless you want to lose all your search-driven traffic.

I think Google had to do something, publishers overdid it with their crappy websites with 50 tracking links and banner ads. The mobile web was slowly dying and everything was moving to apps. AMP is their effort to reverse that trend somewhat. I haven't heard any better ideas (Facebook Instant Articles is worse imo).

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#103

Post by nowayyeah »

rakoo wrote: post #95
mintplant wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one more step along Google's path to eating the internet. Google-served content discovered through Google search rendered in Google's browser running on Google's operating system on a Google-manufactured device connected through Google's ISP and Google's network protocol (QUIC). Vertical integration.

You know the cool thing about this integration ? Any part can be replaced. Some instantly, some take more time because they involve physical stuff. People use the Google integration because it's there by default, not because they are locked-in.

Absolutely not.

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#104

Post by yoz-y »

wmf wrote: post #20
cyrusshepard wrote: post #3

This is a good response and I appreciate Malte's effort to engage publishers, but it doesn't calm my nerves about the biggest publisher complaint about AMP: Google owns the chrome (top navigation) on all AMP pages. This makes it easy to navigate back to Google (why would you ever want to leave?) and other publishers in the AMP ecosystem, but much harder to navigate to the publisher that created the page in the first…

The extra chrome appears to be displayed in browsers but not in the Google app. On Android it's more natural to search from the app; I don't know what the situation is like on iOS. I still don't understand why it's mandatory to use the Google CDN, but I probably don't want to know.

According to AMP documentation anybody can build an amp cache. But probably nobody did so yet. Also google will most probably link only their cache from the results. But it seems possible that you could build an AMP CMS that would use the advantages only for you, although I do not see much interest over well written HTML.

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#105

Post by Jaruzel »

nostromo wrote: post #43
FT_intern wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the user coming from a search engine is most likely to want to navigate back to Google than to stay on the page. It might not be benevolent but it is an improvement to the user experience of most people.

That's why we have back buttons, no?

Most (if not all) default browsers on mobile, auto scroll/hide the navigation bar off the display after a few seconds. For most non-techie users this means it's 'gone'. Ergo, they have no back button anymore. I've watched many people just open/shut/open/shut their mobile browser just to get back to previous pages - in many cases even re-searching the same query over and over again.

This is modus operandi for many users, hence why Google inserting a big 'go back to Google' banner at the top, is a bad[1] thing.

--

[1] Or from the standard user point of view, a good thing.

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#107

Post by thomasahle »

andrewguenther wrote: post #37
Sephr wrote: post #34

As positive as the response sounds, it is an empty promise. > We’re looking at ways to make the source link more discoverable and will update once that is done. If Google was actually going to fix the issue, they would have said "we will make the close button direct users to the original site and will update once that is done" OR "we are changing the x (close) button to a ← (back) button". "x" means "close" and "←" m…

Am I in the minority in that I found the function of the "x" to be very clear? I don't know if it is fair to call it "nothing less than a dark pattern" without a bit more data.

Yup, everytime I've seen this X button, clicking it has done exactly what I expected.

I've also sometimes been on a non AMP version, and Chrome has suggested "a version optimized for mobile". Clicking that has opened the AMP version and after reading the article, clicking the X took me back to the non AMP version.

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#108

Post by IanCal »

cyrusshepard wrote: post #3

This is a good response and I appreciate Malte's effort to engage publishers, but it doesn't calm my nerves about the biggest publisher complaint about AMP: Google owns the chrome (top navigation) on all AMP pages. This makes it easy to navigate back to Google (why would you ever want to leave?) and other publishers in the AMP ecosystem, but much harder to navigate to the publisher that created the page in the first…

The top navigation, from a search on android, is almost the same between an amp page and a non amp page. The only difference is the text says "from ..." rather than just the site.

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#109

Post by ComodoHacker »

>Hey, this is Malte and I am the tech lead of the AMP Project for Google.

Of all his 725-words response only 18 words directly address the problem:

>We’re looking at ways to make the source link more discoverable and will update once that is done.

That's 2.5%. Is he really a tech lead?

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#110

Post by gcb0 »

visarga wrote: post #66
mintplant wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one more step along Google's path to eating the internet. Google-served content discovered through Google search rendered in Google's browser running on Google's operating system on a Google-manufactured device connected through Google's ISP and Google's network protocol (QUIC). Vertical integration.

Google is just sending a different type of traffic: "one page traffic", but let's not forget that it is Google that is sending the traffic to AMP pages in the first place, there should be no entitlement on the part of webmasters.

I'm only half sure you're trolling so I will point out for others that lost what I hope was your irony and not naivete: Google only exist because content creators allow their bots to index and display part of the often copyrighted content for Google's own monetary gain, so Google should feel no entitlement on owning anything on the Internet.
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