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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

#301

Post by quadrangle »

abritinthebay wrote: post #276
RonanTheGrey wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a predominantly frontend developer, I sometimes (just for giggles) check to see the page load of pages I visit. It always dismays me to see a site's own resources only take 200-500kb of bandwidth... and then all the ads and associated requests take another 25MB. It's quite common and I keep thinking there must be a better way..

Well, there is - but consumers prefer free + ads to micro-payments or subscriptions. Granted there has been pushback recently but that's usually due to gross abuse of ads. The only realistic way that I see forward are the ad networks (and this includes Google) setting lower maximum payload sizes for ads. Obviously sites can push back on quality and size but it's a hard metric to track consistently given how ad networ…

~~consumers~~ (nay, citizens) prefer to have no ads or subscription costs etc.

The fact is: ad-based model just puts the burden on those most susceptible to advertising. It's similar enough to funding schools through state lotteries in that the money comes from somewhere or the results go underfunded, and if you accept state-run lotteries or anything that looks even slightly like today's ad-based internet, you are talking about a funding source that is deeply and fundamentally unethical.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#302

Post by quadrangle »

TekMol wrote: post #28

To me, AMP is the same wallet garden that Facebook is. Google and Facebook both say: "Give us your content. But without the crap. Just the content. Since we don't allow crap, users prefer the experience over here. So your content will have more readers then on your own domain.". And for some reason publishers are crazy enough to do that. Instead of removing the crap on their own domains in the first place.

That's is a good way to frame it. Facebook is a deep attack on a free and open internet and even a free society fundamentally. AMP is Google going in the direction of Facebook (i.e. going from bad to worse).

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#303

Post by virmundi »

abritinthebay wrote: post #276
RonanTheGrey wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a predominantly frontend developer, I sometimes (just for giggles) check to see the page load of pages I visit. It always dismays me to see a site's own resources only take 200-500kb of bandwidth... and then all the ads and associated requests take another 25MB. It's quite common and I keep thinking there must be a better way..

Well, there is - but consumers prefer free + ads to micro-payments or subscriptions. Granted there has been pushback recently but that's usually due to gross abuse of ads. The only realistic way that I see forward are the ad networks (and this includes Google) setting lower maximum payload sizes for ads. Obviously sites can push back on quality and size but it's a hard metric to track consistently given how ad networ…

There are no micro payments out there that would support the site. You'd need to charge something like 0.0005 cents per view. No currency exchange supports something small. In reality, it would make people money. The consumer could limit their account to $20/m.

On the other hand, micropayment would freeze out poor people.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#304

Post by w33ble »

mthoms wrote: post #270
mikewhy wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I would expect a close button to do, at all. It seems like you're expecting it to actually work like a forward button?

Every single site these days has a modal or overlay that obscures/distorts the content. People have learned that clicking that little X gets rid of the obstruction so they can view the page as it was intended. You probably dismiss hundreds of these EU cookie notices per week.

I hadn't realized it, but yes, this is exactly the experience I expect. The AMP page is like a modal I front of the actual site. Or that's how I think of it anyway.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#305

Post by SXX »

niutech wrote: post #219
landave wrote: post #140

I've read quite a lot about AMP, but I still don't really understand for what technical reason a new markup language (AMP HTML) and an additional javascript library is required to achieve the (claimed) effect. More specifically: Is there any evidence that AMP is able to provide a better result (at least in terms of performance) than just using a small subset of standard HTML, a little bit of CSS, getting rid of any j…

AMP JS library enables lazy loading of images/videos, so if you have a page with tens of them, you will notice the difference. > getting rid of any javascript Try to find a popular website without JS. Even HN uses it, so this is a moot point.

HN is fully functional without javascript.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#306

Post by nailer »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #230
boramalper wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, as a non-principled web consumer, I think AMP pages are 10x better than the ad-filled, slow as molasses, jump-around-as-JavaSript-loads, video autoplaying, 'stories you might like' suggested bullshit, auto-loading 20MB heaps of steaming garbage that current news sites are. You don't need AMP to get rid of them though. We can appreciate that Google encouraged developers to get rid of bloat AND to opt-in for…

We can appreciate that Google encouraged developers to get rid of bloat AND to opt-in for AMP, but that doesn't make AMP technically superior. Depends what you mean by technically superior. In terms of benchmarks, AMP pages are lightning fast. Isn't that the only metric that matters?

AMP pages hosted at a fast CDN under your own domain name would be technically as good as AMP pages hosted on Google's CDN

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#307

Post by Radio_Killer »

AMP also sucks for accessibility. Try this on Android's Chrome:

* Do a Google query containing an AMP result

* Zoom in the Google search (since it's not very accessible either)

* Open an AMP page

Result: You can't zoom out anymore and left-to-right scrolling is unavailable in this state. So you have to go back, zoom out and click the link again. After which you can sometimes zoom back in again.

This makes browsing a real hassle. I know Google doesn't care that much about accessibility, but boy this drives me crazy almost every day of the week.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#308

Post by nailer »

enos_feedler wrote: post #287
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but users don't care about the reasons why it's faster. They just know it's faster. Hence they use AMP, and AMP gains traction. We can say it's unfair, but that's life. If we want to defeat AMP, we have to beat it at its own game. That requires us to come up with an alternative that's equal or faster than AMP. And clearly we've failed as developers to push for non-bloated solutions. It might be possible to cre…

Isn't AMP itself just a standard way of stripping bloat from websites? You could take the AMP library, include it in your web page and do anything you want with it. What is the precise element of AMP you are trying to beat?

It's that and Google's CDN. If you hosted it yourself Google wouldn't include you in Search results carousel.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#309

Post by tdeck »

Radio_Killer wrote: post #307

AMP also sucks for accessibility. Try this on Android's Chrome: * Do a Google query containing an AMP result * Zoom in the Google search (since it's not very accessible either) * Open an AMP page Result: You can't zoom out anymore and left-to-right scrolling is unavailable in this state. So you have to go back, zoom out and click the link again. After which you can sometimes zoom back in again. This makes browsing a…

I have trouble reading small text and images, and I've experienced this as well. It's particularly bad when an article has an infographic that's clearly designed to be viewed on a desktop. Completely disregarding my "force enable zoom" browser setting, AMP won't let me make those images any bigger than the width of my phone. I always have to switch to the actual site, wasting my time loading two pages.

Re: I decided to disable AMP on my site

#310

Post by acdha »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #242
boramalper wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant that you could achieve the same by reducing the bloat, applying the best practises etc. To be fair, Google has been encouraging people to do so through the PageSpeed suite for quite a long time... What I found unfair about AMP is Google preloading your AMP-enabled webpage. So that even if your not-AMP-enabled page is equally efficient, an AMP-enabled page would feel faster because Google preloads it in the ba…

Right, but users don't care about the reasons why it's faster. They just know it's faster. Hence they use AMP, and AMP gains traction. We can say it's unfair, but that's life. If we want to defeat AMP, we have to beat it at its own game. That requires us to come up with an alternative that's equal or faster than AMP. And clearly we've failed as developers to push for non-bloated solutions. It might be possible to cre…

> If we want to defeat AMP, we have to beat it at its own game. That requires us to come up with an alternative that's equal or faster than AMP.

The technical work has been done for years. The problem is that currently the only decision which matters is Google's and they're treating performance concerns as a way to use other people's content to bolster their own brand. The only two ways that seems possible to change are either convincing Google to reverse that policy or getting more people to use non-Google search engines, which seems unlikely given the huge quality lead they have over Bing, DDG, etc.

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