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Please Make Google AMP Optional

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Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#171

Post by albedoa »

kartickv wrote: post #144
alanfalcon wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Obscure AMP results appear higher thanbigher quality non-AMP results; What needs to be cited?

Which search result, and which obscure AMP result ranks higher than which non-AMP result? That's what needs to be cited, not an assertion free of evidence. Second, even if that does happen, the question is whether it would have happened without AMP. In other words, is it a bug in the search algorithm, independent of AMP.

I agree with the other comments that you seem overly invested in this, but I'll play along: Do a search for "wwdc" on mobile. This was my first and only test against your challenge.

It isn't just a matter of the AMP results being ranked higher — they are segmented from non-AMP pages. The eleven (!) "Top Stories" are all AMP pages.

Under that is "People also searched for > WWDC iPhone 8", which consists of five (!) AMP pages.

Only then does it go into non-AMP pages, starting with Apple's own WWDC page. That's not just rank prioritization. There is a visual break between AMP and non-AMP pages.

It is crazier for you to blindly trust Google on this than it is for us to infer from a pattern we see over and over again, and for you to require that we provide proof that you acknowledge we can't obtain might be crazier.

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#172

Post by imchillyb »

baconner wrote: post #169
ender7 wrote: post #151

Users: I like AMP pages, they're fast! HN: But the open Internet! Users: What's that? HN: Normal websites! Users: Like...the really slow ones? With all the annoying popovers? And pages that take forever to load? And for some reason cause my fancy new phone to slow to a crawl? HN: Well, those websites should rewrite their entire codebase to be faster. Users: That doesn't help me, though. HN: Trust in the free market!…

Your hypothetical there assumes that AMP actually works well. My experience is it's got painful usability issues at least on android chrome. The worst one I see all the time is scrolling down to actually read the AMP page frequently results in the page closing, returning you to results. Fast is good, but at least it ought to be a good user experience. I used to use google news a lot, but i totally abandoned it after…

Perhaps it's your device @baconner?

I'm using an LG V20 device, with Chrome mobile, and I see a significant improvement with AMP'd pages over normal sites. So-much-so that I dread going to non-amped pages as they are slow and the ads are horrifically annoying.

I guess this is why anecdotal evidence is not as heavily weighed as a thoroughly tested and evidenced study.

YMMV

I <3 AMP

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#173

Post by dingo_bat »

baconner wrote: post #169
ender7 wrote: post #151

Users: I like AMP pages, they're fast! HN: But the open Internet! Users: What's that? HN: Normal websites! Users: Like...the really slow ones? With all the annoying popovers? And pages that take forever to load? And for some reason cause my fancy new phone to slow to a crawl? HN: Well, those websites should rewrite their entire codebase to be faster. Users: That doesn't help me, though. HN: Trust in the free market!…

Your hypothetical there assumes that AMP actually works well. My experience is it's got painful usability issues at least on android chrome. The worst one I see all the time is scrolling down to actually read the AMP page frequently results in the page closing, returning you to results. Fast is good, but at least it ought to be a good user experience. I used to use google news a lot, but i totally abandoned it after…

Although AMP is not a performance beast by any measure, your experience is coloured because you're using Chrome on Android. Google news works pretty well on Samsung browser. It still annoys me that I can't see the link to the actual website but that's it.

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#174

Post by dingo_bat »

floatboth wrote: post #69
Twirrim wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problems are you running in to? I've been using duckduckgo at work for just over a year now (took a change of job as an ideal time to try a complete switch in search engine too), and it has been excellent. I've been getting almost as good results as I do from google on even from some fairly vague terms, and comparable to Google when I give it explicit text to search for. Unlike Google it also seems to pay a lot…

DDG does kinda suck at finding specific programming things sometimes. The results are just not as good for the more obscure and rare stuff.

I've found this to be true for Bing too. For general search, it matches Google in accuracy. But in the case when I want to find a specific compilation error, only Google gives me useful results. But I still use Bing, and switch to Google only for such stuff.

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#175

Post by dingo_bat »

amelius wrote: post #121
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started using DDG a few months back and I've been very happy so far. Sometimes results aren't as great, so I just use !g to load Google. But even better, you can search across different websites! For example, !mdn for Mozilla Developer Network, or !yt for YouTube Another thing you can do is use alternative browsers. On mobile I use Firefox Mobile, which has the benefit of allowing extensions, so you can install uBl…

I'm using Android with Chrome, and there is no option to change the search engine to DDG :/ The only options are: Google, Bing, AOL, Yahoo, Ask.

Try Samsung internet. It has ddg by default. Also you can install ad blockers for it from the play store.

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#176

Post by imchillyb »

themodelplumber wrote: post #120
godot wrote: post #118

There's a lot of complaint about Google AMP and Facebook Instant Articles, e.g. walled garden, anti-open-web and whatnot. Here's something simpler from a non-developer, average-consumer point of view. I recently began taking BART to work daily (new job). For those who don't know, BART is Bay Area's subway system, and (at least on the east bay side) cell reception is notoriously spotty. When I'm on the train, which in…

Yeah, but maybe there's a better way to get you your nice BART outcome, you know? I think that's really part of the pushback here. We haven't really given social permission for Google to convert the web to AMP by force.

> ...convert the web to AMP by force. @themodelplumber

Complete hyperbole. Google's not forcing anyone to use AMP. They're not forcing developers or users to use AMP.

There is no force. There is only usability. Users prefer usability. Developers prefer people use their products. If a user does not, or cannot, connect to the developer's product the developer loses. If a user cannot connect easily and speedily to a page, they will not consider the product.

I rock an LG V20 and I use Chrome mobile. AMP lets me connect to the content I wish to consume speedily and easily. I connect at a significantly faster rate than without AMP. Thus...

I <3 AMP. I don't care who controls it. As long as I can connect to the content I want, I'm good.

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#177

Post by whoami_nr »

ender7 wrote: post #151

Users: I like AMP pages, they're fast! HN: But the open Internet! Users: What's that? HN: Normal websites! Users: Like...the really slow ones? With all the annoying popovers? And pages that take forever to load? And for some reason cause my fancy new phone to slow to a crawl? HN: Well, those websites should rewrite their entire codebase to be faster. Users: That doesn't help me, though. HN: Trust in the free market!…

I personally don't see any major improvements in speed when using AMP. It might be marginal but too small to notice for a regular user. Another factor can be that AMP might work better on Chrome which is again Google sucking you into their ecosystem.

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#178

Post by rufius »

ender7 wrote: post #151

Users: I like AMP pages, they're fast! HN: But the open Internet! Users: What's that? HN: Normal websites! Users: Like...the really slow ones? With all the annoying popovers? And pages that take forever to load? And for some reason cause my fancy new phone to slow to a crawl? HN: Well, those websites should rewrite their entire codebase to be faster. Users: That doesn't help me, though. HN: Trust in the free market!…

Lol no. AMP is a trash experience. I hate it so much.

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#179

Post by whoami_nr »

endorphone wrote: post #17
epistasis wrote: post #6

I'm trying to imagine the uproar if Apple had done AMP instead of Google. Somehow AMP has some staunch defenders, but everything, and I mean everything about how it's been approached has felt very anti-web and pro-Google. The overall concept may be sound, but the implementation, and the inability to escape it, has significantly hurt my opinion of Google. In fact, I no longer use Google's search because of it.

Do you think there would be an uproar? Apple introduced reading mode, built-in content/ad blocking, etc. AMP actually fits in the profile of Apple -- prioritizing a fast, usable solution. This author notes that they "feel bad" about consuming AMP content. Which is extremely weird given that content creators intentionally volunteer their content to AMP (aside from this user who got famous claiming that Google was stea…

> If Google blacklisted non-AMP content, or even just deranked it, sure there's an argument, but as of yet this notion that it's some content theft is quite strange.

They do kind of do this. AMP pages get highlighted and populate the top results( at least for me) which kind of has the same effect as reducing the rank of normal websites.

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#180

Post by kartickv »

eanzenberg wrote: post #148
kartickv wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google said that they prioritise fast pages, not AMP pages. You can use some other way to make your pages load fast, and it won't make a difference. Unless you have solid evidence to the contrary, I see no reason to believe you over believing Google.

Do you work there or something? I've never seen someone so hyped about the 2nd biggest corp in the world.

Rather than respoding to the points I made about AMP, you're focusing on an ad-hominem criticism of me personally. Please stop doing that.
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