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

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

#201

Post by mr_luc » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 2:58 AM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #192

mr_luc wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - that's really, really shocking to me. I paid attention to the AMP project early on, felt like I had absorbed its value proposition, and made a mental note to check on it from time to time. I wasn't expecting the examples of its usage to involve altering the UI on AMP pages! Is it just part of the blessed AMP WordPress plugin? Or is google actually injecting their own UI into AMP pages by default? If the latter…

> Or is google actually injecting their own UI into AMP pages by default? Yes. Google doesn’t actually link to AMP articles, but caches them on their own servers, modifies the markup, or removes non-compliant ad networks, and serves that to the actual user.

Oh. Wow.

The web is supposed to be a platform, and AMP is supposed to be an open standard ... but the end result of this is that Google Search will modify your web application with their own navigation UI?

Yikes. I mean, injecting your stuff into other people's web pages is bad when a cable provider uses it for ads. Is it not bad for the web platform if it's google that does it?

Or is it linked to your usage of their CDN, and not something that necessarily comes with being an AMP site? (Ie, google will cache it for you, but first you have to agree to let them inject your page). That wouldn't be so bad, because it'd mean that you could play in the AMP playground without agreeing to Google having their fingers in your users' navigation.

But if AMP means "Google-injected UI" right now, then that just seems bad.

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

#202

Post by kuschku » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 10:23 AM UTC

mr_luc wrote: post #201

kuschku wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or is google actually injecting their own UI into AMP pages by default? Yes. Google doesn’t actually link to AMP articles, but caches them on their own servers, modifies the markup, or removes non-compliant ad networks, and serves that to the actual user.

Oh. Wow. The web is supposed to be a platform, and AMP is supposed to be an open standard ... but the end result of this is that Google Search will modify your web application with their own navigation UI? Yikes. I mean, injecting your stuff into other people's web pages is bad when a cable provider uses it for ads. Is it not bad for the web platform if it's google that does it? Or is it linked to your usage of their…

You can have AMP without Google-injected UI, but only if you rename it, or don’t allow Google to index your page at all.

If Google indexes a page with AMP, and returns is at as a search result, it NEVER actually returns the AMP page, but always the modified one from the cache.

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

#203

Post by criddell » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 3:37 PM UTC

ryanobjc wrote: post #84

criddell wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amp isn't ideal, but neither is Instant Articles on Facebook. I'm hoping that Amp is really just Google training publishers how to make web pages that aren't terrible for users.

well, AMP is open source. Instant Articles is not. AMP works on many platforms, Bing just announced support of AMP. So, what's the big deal?

Instant Articles is just RSS, isn't it? How is it less open than Amp?

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

#204

Post by yoz-y » Thu, Oct 20, 2016, 5:48 AM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #189

yoz-y wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree. You'd have fast-loading pages - but you can get that by just writing decent HTML. What you likely won't get is Google's preferred handling in search results. The one upside I see is that Google-moderated AMP pages might push ad networks and library developers to develop less bloaty solutions to stay compliant. Those solutions might make it easier to develop regular non-bloaty pages as well.

I think that it is easier to develop a non bloated page even today. But the problem is that the competition got extremely fierce and the ad networks absurdly data obsessed (without much proof that the targeting works).

I wonder whether we can get to a sane level now. Consumers do not seem to be prioritising sites with less bloat (otherwise there would already be a trend for leaner pages). Those who care probably use ad blockers and aren't the target demographic anyway.