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

developers.googleblog.com

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

#81

Post by shostack »

andy_ppp wrote: post #34

To me AMP feels like embrace and extend for the whole mobile web. I find them caching things this way both pointless and dangerous. I find it hard to believe that publishers so readily lifted up their skirt for Google controlling their content... however I suppose search engine rankings are everything now. EDIT Also I'd add further that at some point, this "free" and compulsory AMP cache will start inserting google a…

This is in essence what happened with FB Instant Articles. Many publishers are hurting from it because their CPMs dropped and they didn't get people on their properties. They didn't really have a choice in the matter though. Some, like BuzzFeed have adapted their models to thrive in this new reality.

Google is thus trying to keep people in their "feed" and reduce the cost of their ad inventory by (in theory) reducing publisher payouts over time as a result of this leverage.

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

#82

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

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…

Sure, but Google can offer tooling and best practices to push people in a certain way, like they do with everything. The best way to encourage people to move to new technology on their own is to change the search algorithms to provide positive incentives to implement those changes. Look at SSL. A lot of people don't care about encryption, but they care about SEO improvements more.

Google's AMP policy has been aggressive and heavy-handed. You can appreciate the technology and Google's desire to make the web faster and disagree with how they are implementing it.

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

#83

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

artimaeis wrote: post #32
MrVitaliy wrote: post #14

I'm against AMP simply because it doesn't work with Safari on iOS. In fact, I switched to DuckDuckGo as a default search engine because less accurate search is still better than a list of accurate results that simply don't open.

Can you detail the issues you've had with AMP pages? I use Safari on iOS 10.2 daily and have never noticed an issue loading AMP pages.

AMP adds an additional horizontal bar on the page, under the native address bar, clobbering valuable screen real estate on a mobile browser. Why anyone thought this was a good implementation and ready for prime time is beyond me.

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

#84

Post by macNchz »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #36

I hate AMP. Not even kind of, I mean so much I've started using Bing (DuckDuckGo hasn't been so useful for me). Beyond the distasteful navigation hijacking, and often broken or buggy page loading... I think Google throwing its weight around to force publishers to use it is an abusive use of power. I also think it's an unnecessary standard since it's nothing more than simple well wittten HTML and CSS. Yes, we should m…

I switched my default search engine on my phone from Google to DuckDuckGo because I got sick of the growing number AMP links, which I also don't like for all the same reasons you listed.

They are a bad reminder of the early days of the mobile internet when lots of websites would automatically redirect you to a terrible 'mobile version'. I certainly want better mobile sites, but not in the form of these AMP pages.

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

#85

Post by djrogers »

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…

If google thinks page bloat and loading speed are a problem, they could have come up with a set of recommendations (likely most of the ones in AMP) and use PageRank to promote websites that adhere to those standards.

Instead, they created a way to hijack the mobile web and become the de facto content presenter for any publisher who doesn't want to be punished by Google.

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

#86

Post by djrogers »

MrVitaliy wrote: post #44
artimaeis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you detail the issues you've had with AMP pages? I use Safari on iOS 10.2 daily and have never noticed an issue loading AMP pages.

I'm on iOS 10.2 also. Searching for something like "site:reddit.com casserole" gives a couple of AMP results. Clicking them just shows google loading circle thingy indefinitely, the page never opens.

I just did this on my iPhone, and it worked instantly. In fact I've never seen an AMP page that doesn't load...

My guess would be that you have a content blocker, ad blocker, anonymizing proxy, DNS server with ad-blocking, or something in your setup that's breaking it, because it's not broken natively.

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

#87

Post by humanrebar »

liquidise wrote: post #69
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 engineer…

> Instead, google built an entirely new presentation method itself.

I'm not a web dev, but I understand there were also requirements about deterministically sizing elements, as having things jump around the page is really disruptive to a mobile user. I thought the presentation method stuff was to help prevent presentation issues, including dark patterns.

Is there a way to use static or dynamic analysis to prevent that sort of thing?

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

#88

Post by matthewmacleod »

tiffanyh wrote: post #67
greenspot wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/

That article's no longer relevant, and in any case the existence of a bad implementation does not mean that a good implementation is not possible.

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

#89

Post by matthewmacleod »

I definitely agree with the overall feeling on HN – AMP is probably one of the worst things to happen to the open web.

I could even just ignore this problem if there was a way for me to say "I have a 10Mbps 4G connection, please show me the actual site and not this broken half-implementation of it." Even then, it's sketchy.

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

#90

Post by bsimpson »

greenspot wrote: post #71
mikecb wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ok, didn't know and good info. Do you know if it will be treated equally SEO-wise?

It's a cache, not an origin.
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