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AMP for email is a terrible idea

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Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#41

Post by guessmyname »

pwinnski wrote: post #21
guessmyname wrote: post #4

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.

> Do you mean to say that Google cannot possibly do anything that isn't good? Really?

No, that's not what I am saying, please don't put words in my mouth.

My comment is divided in three parts: 1) sarcasm 2) question and 3) counter argument.

The sarcasm is already labelled.

The question is what you assumed was an affirmation.

The counter argument is, "AMP works for some people", you said "AMP for email is good for Google alone" which proves that my counter argument is true. AMP, bad or not, works for some people (in your comment, Google employees), which is what I originally wrote in my parent comment. I don't see what do I need to reconsider from this. There is also comments in this thread from people who say they like AMP, probing my statement even more: "it works for some people".

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#42

Post by guessmyname »

jakebasile wrote: post #22
guessmyname wrote: post #4

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.

> […] maybe the smart people they hire do not have their users' best interests in mind

This is probably the answer to my question.

I don't know why people got — kind of — "angry" for going against an article that goes against a project.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#43

Post by geofft »

guessmyname wrote: post #4

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?

The fact that Google produced AMP played a nontrivial part in me rejecting their job offer - I didn't want my work to be judged by the engineering standards of an organization that continues to staff and promote AMP.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#44

Post by FridgeSeal »

colordrops wrote: post #36
FridgeSeal wrote: post #13

" “modernize” email, allowing “engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences.” " Whenever a service or company purports to make something "engaging" and "interactive" you just know that useability and actual, tangible usefulness are going to go out the window in favour of marketer-driven choices. We don't 'engage more' with your software/service because you changed everything to optimise for engagement and…

You are making a mistake in thinking you are the customer. You are the product.

Right, but I think it's fatalistic to just write off any attempt to come up with better solutions: nothing will change if we don't at least start thinking about, proposing and testing other ideas.

I think it's a reasonable assumption that most people here are devs or interested in software/programming/etc. Marketers aren't going to be the ones who are actually interested in making better products, they're practically premature-optimisation-in-user-hostile-directions personified, so someone else has to at least propose these ideas.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#45

Post by FridgeSeal »

Someone wrote: post #40

Everybody had a computer that could run any program, but used only their web browser, so they made the web browser pretend to be any program, but then everybody had a web browser that could run any program, but used only webmail, so they made webmail pretend to be any program? Where does that end? Or are these ”engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences.” more limited than the current web applications? I…

It's inner-platform effects all the way down!

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#46

Post by randomString1 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #35
alooPotato wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a pretty packed question, there's a lot of factors. The size of Google, and the fact that they own several complimentary monopolies makes it very hard for them to do anything without providing a new conflict of interest. Take Chrome's ad blocking... there's no way this can be ethically done by Google, even if blocking annoying ads definitively improves user experience. If Chrome was not owned by Google, it wo…

I was typing a long, long reply too but I just realized I wouldn't even use my own suggestions because I don't trust Google anymore, specially to do the right thing in the long run.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#47

Post by mikeytown2 »

makecheck wrote: post #31

Nothing says “we’re listening to your concerns about AMP” like rolling it out further to interfere with a function that is even less suited for AMP. Also, technology companies have a real problem assigning appropriate value to maintenance tasks that just keep things stable and usable. I’ve had infrastructure responsibilities over the years and the hardest thing about it was that nobody really knows or cares how much…

I'm waiting for AMP chat; I hear it's fast. /s

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#48

Post by bdhess »

tejasmanohar wrote: post #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…

We have the exact opposite opinion then. I moved to DuckDuckGo on iOS because I thought the AMP formatted Google search results were so user-hostile.

Maybe they’ve fixed the bizarre scrolling and overly sensitive links by now, but I see no reason to find out, because I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.

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