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Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

shkspr.mobi

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Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#91

Post by makecheck »

This experience basically ruined mobile Google for me and caused me to switch my entire search engine to avoid it.

It is completely wrong to optimize for viewing while breaking expectations for anything else. COPYING THE URL is very frequently the next thing I want to do, and AMP destroys this. For example, when looking up recipes, I often create a multi-device-sync note containing the URL, where I add a shopping list and whatever other notes I want to make; it makes no sense to be forced to copy a mobile-only, Google-domain link for almost every search result when next time I might be opening the page from my desktop machine!

Another major problem is that the only indication of this hijack is a little lightning-bolt and "AMP" next to certain links. I guarantee most users don’t know what that even means so problems will be blamed on “the site I clicked” and not “Google”.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#92

Post by cdata »

throwbsidbdk wrote: post #82
cdata wrote: post #57

Disclosure: I work at Google. Opinions are my own. I'm surprised when I read discussions about AMP on HN (typically carrying a negative tone regarding AMP) without anyone mentioning an obvious competing concept: Facebook Instant Articles. Here is an excerpt from Facebook's FAQ on instant articles: > Rather than loading an article using a web browser, which takes over 8 seconds on average, Instant Articles load using…

Isn't google drawing it's own line around the open web with AMP? I mean with AMP I'm literally browsing a site hosted at Google with a Google top bar on my page. If a user hits the 'x' on my page it takes them back to google. AMP is a competitor of instant articles rather than the 'cure'. If google really cared that much about speed they would just punish slow sites. I see amp as a land grab in cute packaging.

> Isn't google drawing it's own line around the open web with AMP?

Yes, I mean, AMP isn't the solution I might build independently. But, it is built on standard, open web platform features. You can render an AMP article from any source in a manner of your choosing, using the features available in a web browser.

> If google really cared that much about speed they would just punish slow sites.

They have started doing this as well, I believe, by rewarding sites that are optimized for mobile devices.

> I see amp as a land grab in cute packaging.

There is a land grab taking place, whether AMP exists or not. The territory at stake is the growing mindshare of users who browse published content (sometimes exclusively) on mobile devices. I would personally love to see a more open movement than AMP or Facebook Instant Articles participating, but I would take AMP over Instant Articles without much consideration.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#93

Post by [deleted] »

throwbsidbdk wrote: post #82
cdata wrote: post #57

Disclosure: I work at Google. Opinions are my own. I'm surprised when I read discussions about AMP on HN (typically carrying a negative tone regarding AMP) without anyone mentioning an obvious competing concept: Facebook Instant Articles. Here is an excerpt from Facebook's FAQ on instant articles: > Rather than loading an article using a web browser, which takes over 8 seconds on average, Instant Articles load using…

Isn't google drawing it's own line around the open web with AMP? I mean with AMP I'm literally browsing a site hosted at Google with a Google top bar on my page. If a user hits the 'x' on my page it takes them back to google. AMP is a competitor of instant articles rather than the 'cure'. If google really cared that much about speed they would just punish slow sites. I see amp as a land grab in cute packaging.

[deleted]

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#94

Post by snappy173 »

acdha wrote: post #68
snappy173 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>2.) top banner plague the top banner is something that Google adds, and isn't, strictly speaking, part of AMP.

Is there any use of AMP which isn't driven by Google? I've never seen it referenced except in Google search results.

Well, you can access the AMP version of the page from anywhere, not just Google search results. I could see apps that use an in-app browser serving the AMP version of a page, instead of the full version, for instance. I guess we'll see?

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#95

Post by jhayward »

tdkl wrote: post #84

Google just place the opt-out for AMP search results in the search settings - thank you.

> Google just place the opt-out for AMP search results in the search settings - thank you.

Which means it's unavailable to people who use anonymous browsing.

AMP should be opt-in only.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#96

Post by mxuribe »

throwbsidbdk wrote: post #78

I think everyone is missing the point of AMP. Google could have just as easily SEO punished slow sites and had the same effect as amp. If a site was slow you wouldn't see it in search results anyway. Nothing inherent in AMP makes the web any faster than an optimized site. The whole point of AMP is so that nobody ever really leaves Google. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naïve, and it's pretty fucking obvious with how…

+1 on this one.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#97

Post by sintaxi »

cdata wrote: post #92
throwbsidbdk wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't google drawing it's own line around the open web with AMP? I mean with AMP I'm literally browsing a site hosted at Google with a Google top bar on my page. If a user hits the 'x' on my page it takes them back to google. AMP is a competitor of instant articles rather than the 'cure'. If google really cared that much about speed they would just punish slow sites. I see amp as a land grab in cute packaging.

> Isn't google drawing it's own line around the open web with AMP? Yes, I mean, AMP isn't the solution I might build independently. But, it is built on standard, open web platform features. You can render an AMP article from any source in a manner of your choosing, using the features available in a web browser. > If google really cared that much about speed they would just punish slow sites. They have started doing t…

> But, it is built on standard, open web platform features.

- url highjacking isn't standard, or open, or a feature.

- forcing javascript to load from a specific domain is not standard either.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#98

Post by majewsky »

cbdfghh wrote: post #58
hannob wrote: post #30

AMP is the result of webmasters being unable to provide any kind of reasonable site performance. Which isn't hard. Don't include content from dozens or hundreds of thirdparty hosts. Don't do crazy amounts of super slow javascript. If people would do that there would be no need for AMP. The whole concept is mostly "Google tells people their webpages suck and puts them into a cage where they can guarantee that they don…

The solution is very simple. Google's spider uses headless chrome which runs Javascript (to index flash and Ajax content). Why can't they detect how long it takes to run your page before getting useful content? What about just penalizing Javascript? What about penalizing download size?

Websites already can detect whether the client on the other side is Google's spider (either by checking for the well-known IP ranges, or by looking at the User-Agent). So they could supply a fast, cached version to Googlebots, and thus appear faster than they are.

I can see why Google would do this AMP thing. It's much easier to detect fast websites through positive rather than negative evidence.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#99

Post by majewsky »

jakasto wrote: post #77
edent wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm the author of the blog post) I agree with you. My site was already fairly lightweight, but I wanted to see if AMP improved things and made a better user experience. It made it slightly faster, but other than that, didn't create a big enough impact for me to notice.

According to Google PageSpeed Insights, your speed scores are 59/100 for mobile and 40/100 for desktop. The "optimize images" section says there are 1.3MB of image optimizations to do. That's just the image bloat, not the image content, and it's just one of the improvements to make. If you want to make AMP go away, make slow webpages go away. https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Interesting. I put my own blog (link in my profile) into there, and it scored only 90/100 on mobile. Google now wants to talk me into enabling compression and caching on a website that is literally 4.98 KB large (including all assets).

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#100

Post by [deleted] »

PaulHoule wrote: post #18
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AMP is yet another good idea Can you explain why AMP is a good idea? I still don't really understand it, I'm afraid.

Serving everything from one hostname means (i) you don't get 20 DNS lookups to serve a page, one of which might hang up for 5 seconds; (ii) you can use a protocol like http/2 to avoid TCP and SSL renegotiations; (iii) you can stop people from loading up pages with 20MB of Javascript. There is no doubt that AMP is fast. The other angle is how it reinforces Google's position for advertising, analytics, search, video an…

[deleted]
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