Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing • Hacker News Board

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#61

Post by brilliantcode » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 10:21 PM UTC

While the article is correct that there's a big conflict of interest emerging in terms of privacy, it will be exactly like the reaction we've had to all other news of violations on the internet. We've got people with remote controlled submarines siphoning data from the pipes. Yet no outright revolt. People just aren't able to fathom the compromises without the technical framework that most HN'ers have to be able to catch these things in the app.

I'm sure 16 years ago we argued that Google eating up search market would be bad for consumers. People gladly voted Google while ditching Yahoo, Altavista, and other search engines for Google. It will be the same case for AMP or PWAMPs (Progressive Web App + AMP), they are here to stay.

So yes, while you can put a sticker with "AMP? Not in my backyard" on your laptop, but the vast majority of consumers simply don't care.

We are all self serving bunch. Unless more is done other than writing articles and sharing, the status quo will be whatever the unchallenged decides it will be, with the money and resources to see to it. The rest of us can only vote with our money.

The internet is not a democracy after all unless we have some type of mesh networking using our mobile phones, is coupled to governments and their willingness to keep the underweater fibre cables. Creating our own satellite mesh network is obviously out of the question as well.

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#62

Post by angry-hacker » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 10:21 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #49

donohoe wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> When ad networks are able to run without almost 2MB of Javascript, then we can talk about how AMP isn't needed AMP pages run ads....

But doesn't AMP force ads to be async?

Majority of the ads nowadays are async, just bloated and record your every move and slow down the experience.

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#63

Post by wffurr » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 10:21 PM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #51

wffurr wrote: post #48

I love AMP because I can easily tell which sites will actually load fast and give me the info I wanted directly from the search results page. Publishers are still able to track pageviews and serve ads, so I don't get what the hullaballoo is all about here. There's nothing in the AMP spec that stops links from working. I just searched for "Is Google AMP a good thing" on my mobile, and got the OP's post as the first re…

I see you have never wanted to link someone to an AMP page. You also somehow didn't notice that there's a huge useless bar at the top of the page.

Just for giggles, I hit "copy link" in the Chrome Webview that the Android Google Search App opened up. Pasted that into Android Chrome, and it took me straight the AMP page, which loaded instantly and let me scroll right away. Seems fine.

I then went to my desktop, used the Chrome history feature to open the tab from my mobile, and the AMP URL redirected me to the publisher's desktop site, which took multiple seconds to load and then displayed an annoying interstitial.

If anything, I'm frustrated that my desktop browser wouldn't open the AMP page and load and allow scrolling immediately with no interstitials.

The "huge useless bar" at the top was the exact same in the AGSA Chrome Webview as the OP's non-AMP site. I don't know what you're on about. I didn't notice it because it's not there.

I went and looked at the search results in Android Chrome (instead of the Google Search app), and there was an extra bar at the top that said "From cio.com" which disappeared as soon as I scrolled, which happened instantly because I was able to load and scroll instantly.

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#64

Post by mikewhy » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 10:21 PM UTC

moomin wrote: post #5

And another thing: it breaks the iOS reader feature, so it's frankly worse than the full fat page.

Reader is working fine here. Do you have an example where it's not?

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#65

Post by teh » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 10:22 PM UTC

wffurr wrote: post #48

I love AMP because I can easily tell which sites will actually load fast and give me the info I wanted directly from the search results page. Publishers are still able to track pageviews and serve ads, so I don't get what the hullaballoo is all about here. There's nothing in the AMP spec that stops links from working. I just searched for "Is Google AMP a good thing" on my mobile, and got the OP's post as the first re…

I'm not sure you are arguing against any point the article made, rightly or wrongly?

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#66

Post by wffurr » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 10:23 PM UTC

davydka wrote: post #59

wffurr wrote: post #48

I love AMP because I can easily tell which sites will actually load fast and give me the info I wanted directly from the search results page. Publishers are still able to track pageviews and serve ads, so I don't get what the hullaballoo is all about here. There's nothing in the AMP spec that stops links from working. I just searched for "Is Google AMP a good thing" on my mobile, and got the OP's post as the first re…

It's true that loading fast and giving you the info you wanted directly from the search results page is a good thing. It is also important to realize there's a trade off happening where you're further locked into Google and their ecosystem. It's a pretty dramatic change to the way search has worked up until now. It more mimics the way internal webviews work in Apps like Twitter and Facebook apps.

Am I locked in? Bing and Cloudflare also both run AMP caches now.

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#67

Post by bermanoid » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 10:23 PM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #51

wffurr wrote: post #48

I love AMP because I can easily tell which sites will actually load fast and give me the info I wanted directly from the search results page. Publishers are still able to track pageviews and serve ads, so I don't get what the hullaballoo is all about here. There's nothing in the AMP spec that stops links from working. I just searched for "Is Google AMP a good thing" on my mobile, and got the OP's post as the first re…

I see you have never wanted to link someone to an AMP page. You also somehow didn't notice that there's a huge useless bar at the top of the page.

I don't really care about that. I just know that if I see the AMP logo on a search result that I'm about to click, it's going to be a pleasant experience when I click through and very quickly am able to read the page. Whereas almost any other news site will be more or less unreadable and unscrollable, constantly changing as it loads over the course of a minute or more, until a huge popover blocks the whole thing and refuses to close.

It may be a non-optimal solution to the problem, but much like Uber, until someone comes up with something better, I'll take it, because it does improve my experience greatly.

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#68

Post by oatmealsnap » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 10:24 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #37

mark242 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay but let's be realistic-- you are not a major publisher trying to make money off these pages. You can say "yes my page loads in 100k and 300ms until DOMContentLoaded" all you want, that doesn't change the fact that when you slap a couple of pieces of advertising on there, it's going to slow down. To give you an idea-- the New York Times page without any advertising on it is 2MB and has a DOMContentLoaded event at…

> you are not a major publisher trying to make money off these pages. Hate to break it to you, but major publishers aren't making any money of the AMP'd version of their pages - most of the monetization is stripped out, and readers aren't even actually on their site so they won't stay and click around.

They have AMP-approved ads that can be loaded.

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#69

Post by wffurr » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 10:24 PM UTC

teh wrote: post #65

wffurr wrote: post #48

I love AMP because I can easily tell which sites will actually load fast and give me the info I wanted directly from the search results page. Publishers are still able to track pageviews and serve ads, so I don't get what the hullaballoo is all about here. There's nothing in the AMP spec that stops links from working. I just searched for "Is Google AMP a good thing" on my mobile, and got the OP's post as the first re…

I'm not sure you are arguing against any point the article made, rightly or wrongly?

The only "points" the article made were "AMP is bad" because it "breaks linking". Both of which are easily disproved by a moment's casual use.

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#70

Post by mikewhy » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 10:25 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #38

dccoolgai wrote: post #27

I remember when Google had a really awesome thing that provided great content experiences: It was called Google Reader. I wish they would take some of the energy they are using trying to force AMP down everyone's throats and just re-launch Reader.

And the beautiful thing is, RSS feeds load quickly with no scripts, embedded ads, or tracking, and isn't tied to any proprietary cloud service provider. More and more I am convinced Google convinces everyone to move away from things just so they can "reinvent" them down the line in a more proprietary fashion.

There totally are RSS feeds with ads and tracking.