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Google AMP Cache, AMP Lite, and the Need for Speed

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Re: Google AMP Cache, AMP Lite, and the Need for Speed

#61

Post by CaptSpify »

accountface wrote: post #43
CaptSpify wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they? I'm not arguing, I'm genuinely curious because I guess I don't ever see that happening. Whenever I search for something that has a bunch of results, like weather, I end up with 30s loading, JS-filled, nightmare sites that are slow, bulky and don't show the information in a clean format. Yet there are good, simple sites like http://myfreeweather.com/ that are ~8 pages into the results. I don't pretend to kn…

It's part of the algorithm, but it's not enough to offset the fact that a bloated site like weather.com gets astronomical amounts of traffic from all sources (direct, paid, organic). It's more like if you had two sites with identical traffic and identical content relevancy the faster site would rank higher... which makes sense. If your site is incredibly popular, it's logical to think that people are finding it usefu…

I guess I see it as chicken and egg problem: Is the site popular because it's one of the top results? or is it the top result because it's popular?

I've seen too many of the former to believe Google is trying to push the later.

Re: Google AMP Cache, AMP Lite, and the Need for Speed

#63

Post by e12e »

neilcarpenter wrote: post #20
anilgulecha wrote: post #2

I've been critical of AMP in some previous posts, but an AMP like infrastructure has the impressive advantage of trying out such optimizations and solutions, without a large affect on the users. I'd still like to push for an open, standards based approach to tackling the issue of content delivery under resource constraints.

AMP is open - https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml

That's what's so insidious.

You enable amp, like maybe you started using png over just gifs - and then Google takes your search hits hostage by rewriting the url, adding a banner - and forcing you to keep the amp version if it turned out to fit you and your users or not.

The amp spec looks friendly and harmless - a good use of html5's flexibility. On the surface the only odd bit is the reliance of js to get the "new" image tags to work (with resulting reduced flexibility wrt Web user agents, like w3m).

And suddenly Google controls your page design for everyone that finds your site through Google!

Re: Google AMP Cache, AMP Lite, and the Need for Speed

#64

Post by fragmede »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #25

I think HN crowd doesn't fully appreciate the benefits of AMP to people having slow connections. In third world countries still on 2G networks AMP has been an absolute boon. Additionally, lot of these users have limited data packs so they're better served by pages which are light in data consumption. This is true even for a lot of low income neighborhoods in the US. Making AMP opt-in would defeat the purpose as a lot…

I'd settle for being able to opt-out, but as it stands, no such global setting exists, or is far too hidden.

Re: Google AMP Cache, AMP Lite, and the Need for Speed

#65

Post by mikecb »

greenspot wrote: post #39

I have a bad feeling. Google is creating a proprietary version of the mobile Internet, a layer between them and us. Looking at the specs, it's open but paired with the AMP cache and Google's ranking algorithm which already clearly prefers AMPed pages it doesn't feel like a free choice. What if I don't want to use Google's AMP cache and rather my own CDN? What if I don't want this useless AMP banner at the top of my A…

Cloudflare just launched their own amp cache. Nothing proprietary about this.

Re: Google AMP Cache, AMP Lite, and the Need for Speed

#66

Post by pmlnr »

neilcarpenter wrote: post #20
anilgulecha wrote: post #2

I've been critical of AMP in some previous posts, but an AMP like infrastructure has the impressive advantage of trying out such optimizations and solutions, without a large affect on the users. I'd still like to push for an open, standards based approach to tackling the issue of content delivery under resource constraints.

AMP is open - https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml

If I can't host it, it's not open, end of story. With AMP, it's always by google.

This is not open, there is no source, because AMP is a hosted service.

Re: Google AMP Cache, AMP Lite, and the Need for Speed

#67

Post by tiffanyh »

greenspot wrote: post #50
tiffanyh wrote: post #42

There's a lot of hate going on in this thread towards Google ... maybe unfairly. Keep in mind, a huge reason why Google created AMP is because website bloat has gotten out of control. It's not uncommon for a simply Wordpress blog to be 4MB in size and have 70 requested objects to fetch. I live in a geography that has LTE and web site are painfully slow to load on mobile devices. I can't even imagine what the Internet…

> 5 different JavaScript frameworks This is not the problem. You can easily use i.e. React and some related libs on mobile without slowing down the experience at all. Everything will be fast and responsive, loading times and the mobile site itself (if done right). The problem Google tries to address (and this is a real problem) are the cascaded ad networks on webpages which load hundreds of JS libs once a page is loa…

>> "This is not the problem. You can easily use i.e. React and some related libs on mobile without slowing down the experience at all."

Hasn't Facebook proven this to be incorrect.

Facebook mobile app was originally just HTML5 & JavaScript. The experience was so slow, they ditched it and instead built a native iOS & Android app. [1]

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2012/12/13/facebook-android-faster/

Re: Google AMP Cache, AMP Lite, and the Need for Speed

#68

Post by blowski »

jwr wrote: post #27
saycheese wrote: post #10

There is zero reason for AMP to be hijacking URLs or embedding any additional elements into a page that are detectable by the average user. Beyond that, universal opt-out should be possible and stats on the percentage of users opting out should be published real-time. As such, until this is addressed, I am against AMP.

Same here. In addition, the reasoning in the article doesn't sound sincere. If Google really cared about site speed, they would already promote fast pages more in their search results. They said they would, but it seems the boost is almost negligible. I am worried by the attempts of several huge companies (Google & Facebook, mostly) to get more of the open internet under their control.

Would you rather see a fast site with rubbish content, or a slow site with good content?

My guess is that some altruistic folks at Google see AMP as a way of offering the best of both worlds.

But most of us know that in big business, every good idea gets abused for short term profits.

Re: Google AMP Cache, AMP Lite, and the Need for Speed

#69

Post by liquidise »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #25

I think HN crowd doesn't fully appreciate the benefits of AMP to people having slow connections. In third world countries still on 2G networks AMP has been an absolute boon. Additionally, lot of these users have limited data packs so they're better served by pages which are light in data consumption. This is true even for a lot of low income neighborhoods in the US. Making AMP opt-in would defeat the purpose as a lot…

I think you are missing the disagreements with AMP entirely. Google, with less effort, could have released a series of requirements for a page to be considered "AMP"ed: (examples) 0 blocking script requests, less than 500KB in total page load, page loads in under 1s, etc. Once your pages meet these requirements, they gain the AMP moniker.

Instead, google built an entirely new presentation method itself. This engineering effort can not be ignored and it was not on accident that this happened. They are quite literally stealing the traffic of users who implement AMP.

Re: Google AMP Cache, AMP Lite, and the Need for Speed

#70

Post by mtberatwork »

greenspot wrote: post #50
tiffanyh wrote: post #42

There's a lot of hate going on in this thread towards Google ... maybe unfairly. Keep in mind, a huge reason why Google created AMP is because website bloat has gotten out of control. It's not uncommon for a simply Wordpress blog to be 4MB in size and have 70 requested objects to fetch. I live in a geography that has LTE and web site are painfully slow to load on mobile devices. I can't even imagine what the Internet…

> 5 different JavaScript frameworks This is not the problem. You can easily use i.e. React and some related libs on mobile without slowing down the experience at all. Everything will be fast and responsive, loading times and the mobile site itself (if done right). The problem Google tries to address (and this is a real problem) are the cascaded ad networks on webpages which load hundreds of JS libs once a page is loa…

> This is not the problem.

It's certainly a large part of the problem. All this unnecessary offloading of processing to the client has gotten way out of hand. Why does a simple Wordpress blog (or any blog for that matter) that is essentially serving read-only pages need React in the first place? I have yet to see a blog that needs to be designed as an SPA.

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