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AMP for email is a terrible idea

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21–30 of 483 posts

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#21

Devin Coldewey against a bunch of Google employees, who will win? (sarcasm) On a more serious note, if the idea of AMP is so bad as many people attest. How is that the "bad idea" passed over so many people at a company that praises itself of hiring some of the most smartest people in the field? Hyperbole, the author of this article is just generalizing. Maybe AMP for email works for some people, making it a good idea…

Please consider what you're suggesting. Do you mean to say that Google cannot possibly do anything that isn't good? Really?

AMP is good for Google, and secondarily maybe also good for some subset of people who care more about short-term benefits on slow connections than the long-term damage to the open web.

AMP for email is good for Google alone.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#22

Devin Coldewey against a bunch of Google employees, who will win? (sarcasm) On a more serious note, if the idea of AMP is so bad as many people attest. How is that the "bad idea" passed over so many people at a company that praises itself of hiring some of the most smartest people in the field? Hyperbole, the author of this article is just generalizing. Maybe AMP for email works for some people, making it a good idea…

> How is that the "bad idea" passed over so many people at a company that praises itself of hiring some of the most smartest people in the field?

Maybe they don't actually hire the smartest people in the field, or maybe the smart people they hire do not have their users' best interests in mind.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#23

As heresey as it might be to HN I can't wait until everyone in the world onboards onto one unified communication platform. Once (and if) lte and unlimited data becomes ubiquitous I look forward to be able to make phone calls, email, messages, video messaging, blogging etc all from one username and account. I want to hand someone my username and be done with it. Facebook is trying, but it's execution leaves much to be…

I don't think this will ever happen. There are just far too many people, with far too many requirements.

For example, I would never use a centralized, proprietary platform for these services. Some folks don't care, but they may want it to work on . Even if it works on that device, it will likely need to comply with local regulations around the world, each with their own requirements.

If we (humans) can't even get a single, agree on unified service for something 'simple' like web search, what makes you think we'll ever converge on dozens of mediums/services/protocols?

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#24

As heresey as it might be to HN I can't wait until everyone in the world onboards onto one unified communication platform. Once (and if) lte and unlimited data becomes ubiquitous I look forward to be able to make phone calls, email, messages, video messaging, blogging etc all from one username and account. I want to hand someone my username and be done with it. Facebook is trying, but it's execution leaves much to be…

[deleted]

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#25
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free market? Is that what we call it when one member of the duopoly controlling most email clients decides to embrace and extend the standard? Also even if you believe in Santa Claus and free markets, people getting on their soapbox to say “this is a terrible idea” is part of the free market.

just a hypothetical, but if you were to assume that Google had no ill will here and was actually trying to make stuff better for users - what do you think the best way would be for people working at Google to do this? I.e. say you worked on the gmail team, you really cared about users, you thought amp for email would be good for users, how would you go about making this happen in the world? genuinely curious if its e…

just a hypothetical, but if you were to assume that Google had no ill will here and was actually trying to make stuff better for users

Hypothetically, you’d be making an assumption at odds with years of anti-consumer behavior.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#26
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free market? Is that what we call it when one member of the duopoly controlling most email clients decides to embrace and extend the standard? Also even if you believe in Santa Claus and free markets, people getting on their soapbox to say “this is a terrible idea” is part of the free market.

just a hypothetical, but if you were to assume that Google had no ill will here and was actually trying to make stuff better for users - what do you think the best way would be for people working at Google to do this? I.e. say you worked on the gmail team, you really cared about users, you thought amp for email would be good for users, how would you go about making this happen in the world? genuinely curious if its e…

If I cared about users primarily, I would hope I wouldn't jump ahead to "amp for email is good." Your requisites for this thought exercise are too broad.

If Google wants to improve email, I would start by emphatically recognizing why their previous attempt to supplant it with Wave failed, and stop trying to break email's openness,

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#27

  AMP is, to begin with, Google exerting its market power to extend its control over others’ content. Facebook is doing it, so Google has to.
As a consumer, I actually love AMP. Everytime I click a news link on mobile and am taken to AMP, I'm relieved to be free from the extremely distracting original websites.

Google has done a lot of exciting work on open standards like JSON-LD [0] and Microdata [1] to bring a better experience to both Google search results and Gmail. I love clicking the inline "Confirm subscription" button [2] instead of opening emails from Mailchimp and searching for a link. I'm not that scared of the future becoming locked into Google. I believe they'll improve upon and create better standards for emails. Most things aren't entirely altruistic, and that's OK. Gmail being an early adopter to these standards is a good enough reason for them.

[0]: https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/formats...

[1]: https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/formats...

[2]: https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/one-cli...

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#28
post #16
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be argued that e-mail spam made most self-hosted e-mail unusable.

That argument is not compelling, given the number of people and organizations that self-host email.

The problem is not that it's difficult to run an SMTP server - botnets run millions of them. The problem is that telling a legitimate one from one that sends spam is an arms race.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#29
Thank goodness that a bunch of clever kids are going to replace boring old SMTP n MTAs n MUAs and stuff with this bollocks: https://www.ampproject.org/ 8)

email works and doesn't need fixing. It (nearly) transports more messages every day than is countable and just works. SNR - now that needs fixing and a good start would be enforcing plain text.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#30
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free market? Is that what we call it when one member of the duopoly controlling most email clients decides to embrace and extend the standard? Also even if you believe in Santa Claus and free markets, people getting on their soapbox to say “this is a terrible idea” is part of the free market.

No - expressing an opinion is called "freedom of speech", which goes hand in hand with the free market. You'd be amazed at the number of initiatives launched by the supposed monopoly (Google) failing in the free market. Nacl lost out to wasm. Chrome OS never really took off. Despite people's gripes about AMP, consumers are clearly loving faster, more responsive websites and hence it's relevance. Let this play out and…

> No - expressing an opinion is called "freedom of speech"

imagine thinking this was a killer counterpoint

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