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I decided to disable AMP on my site

alexkras.com

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Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#71

Post by josteink »

AznHisoka wrote: post #13
chris__butters wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree, while technically AMP is suitable but it creates a walled garden by using Google - who actually boost page rankings if you use it, so they have publishers by the balls "forcing" them to use AMP to get higher in their rankings.

AMP does not seem like a walled garden tech. any crawler can find and use the AMP version of a page through this tag: " rel="nofollow">https://www.example.com/url/to/amp/document.html"> Thus all google is doing is rewarding sites that have implemented this and as a result load fast, no? imo, its drastically different to Instant Articles because you can never ever find the Instant Articles version of a web page. its p…

> AMP does not seem like a walled garden tech. any crawler can find and use the AMP version of a page through this tag

So "any crawler" who is willing to slavishly follow whatever Google is currently doing, and currently doing in the open (who knows how long that will last), can technically get access to the same content so it's not a "walled garden".

To me it sounds like Google doing yet another non-standard thing without asking the rest of the web-community for input, and using their weight as a way to push this through in their usual, hostile manner.

And here on HN people are defending it as perfectly reasonable. The mob clearly has something to learn from these guys.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#72

Post by dayjah »

There's a deep irony in AMP also, purely anecdotally it doesn't seem to help with slow connections. I'm traveling and as such my US carrier restricts me to 2G speeds while roaming somehow, which is resulting in me seeing a lot of butchered pages. As the author mentions:

> AMP tries to load an image only when it becomes visible to the user, rendering a white square instead of the image. In my experience I’ve seen it fail fairly regularly, leaving the article with an empty white square instead of the image.

Text content is very fast, but images either don't load or partially load making the reading experience pretty poor.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#73

Post by pokermike »

The author is dead-on. I wish more publishers would resist and stop supporting AMP. As an end-user I dislike its UX and how it obfuscates the actual source in links I send and receive. Its man-in-the-middle approach is also highly undesirable.

I've found one way to mostly work around it while still using Google as my default search engine and that is to use encrypted.google.com. Obviously this doesn't remove AMP from links sent to me but it's something.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Google closes that loophole.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#74

Post by bartl »

xbmcuser wrote: post #7

Amp was the reply to Facebook articles the problem was because Facebook pages loaded faster more people were posting and sharing Facebook pages which is worse than Google Amp.

I think people share Facebook pages because they found the content on Facebook. Speed has nothing to do with it.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#75

Post by cdnsteve »

Since your site is actually going through Google's cache, they could add any additional tracking, etc they like, I'm sure they're already doing this. If you don't run Adsense or Google Analytics or anything else Google JS already on your site this gives them a new opportunity to further track users behaviour with a seemingly "friendly" mobile method. It's all about tracking users and selling more ads while keeping eyeballs on Google. You're giving up control of your own site and brand, at a great expense, for their benefit.

No thanks.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#76

Post by jononor »

jacquesm wrote: post #55

Why would anybody enable it to begin with? There is absolutely no reason for sites such as the one linked here to have AMP enabled. It's a pox on the web and Google has enough power as it is. The sooner AMP dies the better. If you want your site to load faster get rid of the cruft .

Because Google promises you higher ranking in search results...

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#78

Post by AznHisoka »

kuschku wrote: post #64
matt4077 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The feature that defines a walled garden is the wall. AMP doesn't have that wall: it is perfectly usable by any other search engine/spider to replicate the experience. The website itself can link to the AMP version if that makes sense for users. Mobile browsers, or web servers, could check for and redirect to the AMP version. There's a slightly-higher wall for advertisers, I believe. But Google is rightfully afraid o…

AMP has the wall. Can I get the same display in the Google Search with or without AMP? No. That’s the wall.

Can you elaborate? sites that dont implement AMP still appear in google news and even above AMP results as far as I can tell

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#79

Post by zaphar »

p49k wrote: post #35
Iv wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see what, in AMP, makes the web less free or open. I am usually among the first on the stockade on invasive tech, but I have a hard time to understand the fuss around AMP. Yes, the cache is problematic, as it may allow Google, in a possible future, to filter some content, censor some other or not refresh often some pages. The thing is, if it does that, people will start using Google's caching, that's as sim…

In my opinion, the reason it makes the web less free and open is because Google has a de-facto monopoly on search and they're abusing it to force you host your content on their domain and to use proprietary technology in order to receive fair placement in their results. In the past, Google said "we will prioritize search results by load speed." That's completely fair and a move I can applaud – it points out a serious…

As I understand it Google has stated it does not penalize or boost AMP pages. Do you have evidence to support this accusation?

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#80

Post by ClassyJacket »

javindo wrote: post #53

I have a visual impairment and one of the things I love about Chrome on Android is the ability to override sites blocking pinch to zoom (i.e. "force enable pinch to zoom"). AMP, also made by Google, seems to somehow get around this browser setting, making AMP sites unreadable and therefore completely useless to me. Why does Google have these obvious discrepancies between their own products?

Google's approach to design has always seemed to be to wall off a bunch of teams in separate soundproof rooms with no communication with each other, meetings, or contact with the outside world. Also they're only allowed to use iPhones.

This is the only way I can imagine we ended up with 437 different messaging apps and counting, and the problem you described.

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