Live data from Hacker News

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

developers.googleblog.com

151–160 of 247 posts

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

#151

AMP was originally a more interesting project called PageSpeed that was open to anyone running webserver(s). I helped the Goog guys work on it by dint of having founded a premium adexchange company. It was great. AMP? Somewhat less great.

Actually, they're separate. PageSpeed is still here:

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

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

#152
post #95

I implemented AMP on my own project and we implemented it at some clients ... all regret it. The bounce rate, time on site, average page views of AMP pages is always worse than on the responsive version. And as we now have responsive webpages + an AMP version to maintain the overall project costs got higher. Additional the AMP pages are already falling behind as devs and management just hate them. And outside of the…

Question: Why do you not then just switch off the AMP support and stick with responsive pages? It sounds like you just generated an A/B test with some pretty easy-to-interpret results.

a) for deleting amp you need to implement some ping logic https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/update-ping#remove-a...

b) deleting page(variations) big scale is always a traffic risk

c) deleting AMP it's already discussed (by literally everybody), so it will happen (soon...ish)

d) the one reason not to do it is currently market monitoring. even though there is currently no major traffic benefit doesn't mean there will not be one in the future. so it's just a question of when the pain of AMP gets greater than the market-surveillance / curiosity / traffic bet.

Basically everybody who currently has AMP pages is the experiment guinea pig for the whole industry.

My bet: Most of the AMP implementations won't survive 2018.

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

#153
post #115

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 hate the scrolling on mobile (iOS). I don't know what they tried to do, it feels like a JavaScript smooth scrolling on top of native smooth scrolling.

I believe that for some reason, possibly because of the way the pages are set up with the top bar that shows you the URL of the real page (since the AMP page is hosted on google.com and breaks the normal function of the URL bar), they use an element with CSS `overflow: scroll` to hold the main page content. There's a trick to making those elements have momentum scrolling, but it has different acceleration settings than the normal iOS Safari page scrolling, so it feels slightly off. See: https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/momentum-scrolling-on-io...

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

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is exactly the point. Use it as a stronger signal and case closed. Web will change the way they want. Always. Right now they want to change it to their walled garden.

If they've been using it for six years, and it hasn't improved things, what makes you think using it as a stronger signal will (a) actually improve things, (b) not make it trivial to game SEO?

a) It would improve things because website owners, seo's or whatever you want to call them, always listen everything Google says. I'm in the industry. One tweet from Matt Cutts and they are already changing the brand name if Matt tells them so. That is the way industry works. Everyone knows site speed is a weak signal. Google could impose harsh penalties but they don't.

b) Google has become really smart nowadays. You could theoretically game everything in this world. They execute the javascript and run the page, they already know how to detect banners, interstatials etc. They also have manual team giving out bans.

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If browsers detected AMP pages and treated the address bar accordingly: Cached from: nbcnews.com/some-article Would you feel better about it?

Under no circumstances should web browsers be hard-coding special favors to paper over deficiencies in the user experience of Google's news product. The entire idea is insane. Google is just another company on the internet, and should be treated like any other.

SVG was Adobe's open implementation of the ideas of behind Macromedia Flash. It solved a real pain (the lack of vector support on the Web) and has been implemented by all the browsers. Does this upset you? Most of the progress of the web platform is sponsored by companies like Adobe and Google.

AMP is a curated subset of web functionality designed to load quickly and be safely cacheable. Like SVG, it's an open attempt to solve deficiencies in the platform. It's been sponsored by Google and adopted by a lot of their properties, but it's unfair to call it "Google's news product."

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

#156
post #84

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.

AMP annoys my too, but it hadn't occurred to me to switch to DuckDuckGo. Good idea, just made the change.

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

#157
post #68
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is there any relation to the quality of the content?

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

#158

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.

The silliest part is that clicking the x in the AMP bar doesn't redirect you to the real page... it just takes you back to your search results.

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

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a valid point about page bloat, but its a distraction and a poor excuse for hijacking the entire web. My hate for AMP is because Google is using its might to break a fundamental contract for how the web works - the URL bar shows what site you're on, and content is coming from that domain. No other site has gotten away with this. The last time I can recall someone attempting something similar was Digg (rememb…

If browsers detected AMP pages and treated the address bar accordingly: Cached from: nbcnews.com/some-article Would you feel better about it?

That would be far worse.

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

#160

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 the issue were really about page speed, google could penalize the rankings of slow sites. No need to shovel a broken, self-hosted version of the site onto me.
Post reply on HN