Live data from Hacker News

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

developers.googleblog.com

121–130 of 247 posts

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

#121
No one here seems to have mentioned Google's back-end wins from cached smaller, standardized code and images.

It's their datacenter using fewer ops on more content to do what they initially set out to do--organize the world's information.

Normalized images associated with a reduction in front-end presentation content can train the IRL bots orders of magnitude more quickly.

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

#122

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…

Anecdotally, client-side bloat is mostly going to be ad tech -- not React & company. Since Google and Facebook have such a tight grip over ad tech these days, maybe a better fix than AMP would be encouraging server-side, rather than client-side, ad delivery.

Edit: In a way, AMP feels like a scheme by Google to force content providers to enforce the solution to a problem that Google created. They're trying to speed up the web with their right hand while slowing it down with their left.

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

#123

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.

Google can't offer the full amp experience where pages load instantly without controlling the domain. Otheriwse, none of the optimization they outline in the blog post would be possible since it is the proxy that performs them.

That's kind of the point though. Instead of controlling other sites, they should be promoting sites that do the right thing.

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

#124

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…

Not sure why you're being downvoted. You're right. I'm not a fan of React and ilk myself, but they aren't the problem. Ad delivery technology is the problem, and Google itself is a huge part of that since they own so much of the ad industry.

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

#125
post #47

Contrarian view: I love AMP and I find myself clicking AMP links far more often because I can get the information I want much faster. And this is on LTE. AMP should be supported by CDNs and toggleable in the browsers though.

I thought I'm the only one. It's really fast and easy to use. I don't understand all the hate here.

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

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In case your not aware, since 2010 Google has in fact PageRanked higher faster web sites. https://moz.com/blog/how-website-speed-actually-impacts-sear...

I'm not sure that they prioritize it enough. I've used this example elsewhere here but...

Here's a fast loading, well designed webpage: http://myfreeweather.com/

yet when I search for "weather", all of the results are slow, terribly designed sites. The above site is nowhere to be found. The same goes for other "common" sites like lyrics, etc.

Yes, the problem that AMP is trying to solve is real, they are just going about it in the opposite way that they should be.

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

#127
It'd be far more useful if they benchmarked rendering speed for pages (game-able, obviously, but so is everything), and just favored faster ones. AMP could be one of many systems then, instead of taking as much control as possible.

Instead, we have a one-size-fits-all that they control utterly. No option to do something that works just as well, via different means (your own image compression, optimized http2 support, etc).

Kill it with fire.

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

#128

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.

It also sucks if you want to interact with the page, since, inanely, you can't click through to the real page.

What can you do on the real page that you can't do on the AMP version?

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

#130
post #47

Contrarian view: I love AMP and I find myself clicking AMP links far more often because I can get the information I want much faster. And this is on LTE. AMP should be supported by CDNs and toggleable in the browsers though.

The problem AMP is trying to solve is very real. Google is just trying to solve it in a way that gives them more power, rather than trying to fix the root problem.
Post reply on HN