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Please Make Google AMP Optional

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Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#281

Post by xiphias »

whoami_nr wrote: post #177
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.

Let me take a guess: you are a regular user, so probably you're in rural China with your 4 year old mobile phone that you got for $100 back then. Or you are in India (30% yearly mobile growth) with your shiny new $30 phone, loading a big web page of a web site in U.S., and you still don't see any difference?

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#282

Post by Aaargh20318 »

Akath19 wrote: post #212
ShellGh0st wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"on mobile" these days is a device with a quad core, 3GB of RAM, and a 1080p + screen. I don't want your stupid "mobile" website that doesn't work, your cut-down "optimized" walled-garden product. I just want the normal web, in all its glory.

"on mobile" these days can be anything from a 3'' device with 512MB RAM to the device you mention. It's very easy to assume that everyone has the latest device in an affluent society that doesn't have much of a problem buying the latest and greatest, but I can assure you this isn't the case in most of the world. You're failing to see that Google is used everywhere in the world and not all countries (in fact, very few…

> You're failing to see that Google is used everywhere in the world and not all countries (in fact, very few) have markets where the standard device is what you describe or where everyone has blazing fast LTE available everywhere.

So Googles solution is to pull everyone down to the lowest common denominator, which is shit. Google basically re-invented WAP and is trying to set the web back 15 years.

Sure, not everyone has a fast connection and a high-end device, but they could have easily limited AMP to just those devices instead of forcing it down everyones throat.

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#283

Post by Aaargh20318 »

quadrangle wrote: post #248
tdicola wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick but your request is most likely not going to space. You're going to a cell tower that's at most a mile away from you, and that tower is probably linked with fiber and copper to all the routers on the net. Even if for some reason you go through a satellite link it's in earth orbit and not technically 'outer space'. It's still pretty magical but at the end of the day it's just a fancier wireless telegraph.

The person you're replying to just used the space quote as an example of saying "hey, this is frickin' amazing and you're complaining because it takes a second to load‽" And the space part is amazing when it's space and the non-space internet stuff in your pocket is amazing too, and let's not forget it.

> "hey, this is frickin' amazing and you're complaining because it takes a second to load‽

If it takes a second to load it's not amazing now is it.

Also, that "be happy with what you've got" attitude is not helpful. If everyone thought like that we'd still be living in caves. Don't focus on the good stuff, focus on what sucks, that's the stuff that needs fixing. The good stuff doesn't need our attention, it's already good.

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#284

Post by [deleted] »

fshaun wrote: post #208
ciconia wrote: post #194

At 43yo I probably belong to the older folks on HN, but those modern devices all of us carry in our pockets to me seem just absolutely incredible and magical. They probably can run around machines that took up whole rooms just a few decades ago. At the risk of sounding like an old fart (I probably do), I fail to understand this frustration of normal mobile users with the so-called slowness of their mobile experience.…

The issue is that the slowness is unnecessary. No, I cannot give it a second when it should only take 100ms. There is such a thing as pride in craft that seems sorely lacking today. I could not live with myself if I had build a quarter of the websites I deal with daily. I don't know all of the causes, but I certainly understand the frustration.

[deleted]

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#285

Post by epistasis »

imchillyb wrote: post #176
themodelplumber wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pag…

Bullshit, Google forced my top hits to be AMP instead of the the web. If I had a way to get the web, I would have continued to use Google. But as a user, Google decided that I should not have the choice to opt out of AMP.

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#286

Post by [deleted] »

imchillyb wrote: post #176
themodelplumber wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pag…

[deleted]

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#287

Post by BinaryIdiot »

Honestly AMP should have been a set of tools / a framework. Think about it.

Currently with AMP Google gets not only your traffic but they get your content on their own domains (which makes all content look like the same trustworthiness) and, at the same time, they mark sites that have AMP available in their search results thusly weighting those results differently because it can train users to click on those more.

Ultimately this is bad for everyone but Google.

However, if it was a framework / set of tools we could create our own AMP pages and simply put them on our own DNS. Google's cache is really the only unique thing going on here and we wouldn't have to worry about sharing trust.

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#288

Post by xiphias »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #278
whoami_nr wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I get the feeling it's aimed mainly at all the crappy bottom-of-the-barrel Android devices out there. As an iPhone user, why the hell would I care if a page is bit larger, I pull down over 500Mbit/s on wifi and over 100Mbit/s on LTE. The CPU in iPhone is so fast it's almost ridiculous. There is little difference in how fast AMP pages load compared to real web pages. Basically, Google re-invented WAP for exactly the s…

iPhone is no better...when I was developing a web site, I bought an iPhone 4 as a testing device, and it was quite painful to use compared to my Samsung S7 Edge (and quite slow).

I bought it because it was still used heavily in the user base.

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#289

Post by dingo_bat »

freehunter wrote: post #187
dingo_bat wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you're saying that Google's official browser is slow on their official web technology on their official mobile platform? And Samsung, who is well known for their software quality issues, is a better choice?

I thought this was common knowledge. Chrome is horrible on Android. If you look at benchmarks, the only browser/phone combination that is close to iPhone Safari performance is the latest galaxy flagship running Samsung Internet.

Re: Please Make Google AMP Optional

#290

Post by Aaargh20318 »

_wp3r wrote: post #43

Isn't AMP just an RSS reader for the entire internet? If they solved the URL issue somehow(even if faking the address bar), and had original and AMP links in search; it would probably reduce the antiAMP argument quite a bit. Which both seem to be just UI issues.

> Isn't AMP just an RSS reader for the entire internet?

No, AMP is basically WAP 3.0. A crippled, baby version of the internet invented because most Android devices are too slow to offer a decent browsing experience otherwise. Which is fine for the people who need it, but Google has to stop forcing it down everyone else's throat.

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