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Google AMP Is a Threat to the Open Web

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Re: Google AMP Is a Threat to the Open Web

#51

Post by remir »

mrtksn wrote: post #5

I think it's very important to address the reason why AMP is possible in the first place: Websites are so extremely slow these days. From users perspective, when I see the lightning icon on my search results I feel happy because it means that the page will show me it's contents as soon as I click it. It means that the website is not going to show me white page for 15 seconds then start jumping around, changing shape…

I don't blame Google for AMP. The industry could have come together to offer a better experience and speedier page load, but of course they didn't and preferred having countless scripts and poorly optimized ads and that translated into a poor experience for users.

This created an opportunity for Google to come in and offer this solution and now we're stuck.

Re: Google AMP Is a Threat to the Open Web

#52

Post by sseth »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

I think a large portion of the tech industry understands Google AMP is an undeniable threat to the open web. The question is: Is there anything that can be done to stop it?

There are many threats to the open web. For example, governments building firewalls. Lot of content locked up in walled gardens. The death of net neutrality.

Definitely one of the threats to the open web would be the web platform falling behind "native" platforms such as mobile platforms. 10 years ago it seemed that native apps are dead, the web is going to win. And then the rise of smartphones has brought us back to a world where we are forever installing native applications. From what i can see, attempts to make the web faster (SPDY, AMP), safer (Certificate Transparency), more open (AV1) are all initiatives i can get behind. The question is : What are other companies doing to ensure the web retains its place as the premier open content / application development platform.

Re: Google AMP Is a Threat to the Open Web

#53

Post by r3bl »

underwater wrote: post #23
mrtksn wrote: post #5

I think it's very important to address the reason why AMP is possible in the first place: Websites are so extremely slow these days. From users perspective, when I see the lightning icon on my search results I feel happy because it means that the page will show me it's contents as soon as I click it. It means that the website is not going to show me white page for 15 seconds then start jumping around, changing shape…

I work for a publisher that zero ads. We have fast pages with minimal JS. We rolled out AMP purely for the SEO win and saw a huge uptick in traffic. If Google really cared about performance they’d reward publishers doing the right thing on their regular pages (which would benefit the web as a whole), not just those using AMP.

Yes, this is my exact same take on AMP.

I understand their problem, I understand their solution. I have nothing against their solution.

But I'm freaking out that there's absolutely no way for me to compete with websites that are trafficking everything through Google, even if I create a product that's speed-wise compatible with AMP pages.

Re: Google AMP Is a Threat to the Open Web

#54

Post by lucideer »

remir wrote: post #51
mrtksn wrote: post #5

I think it's very important to address the reason why AMP is possible in the first place: Websites are so extremely slow these days. From users perspective, when I see the lightning icon on my search results I feel happy because it means that the page will show me it's contents as soon as I click it. It means that the website is not going to show me white page for 15 seconds then start jumping around, changing shape…

I don't blame Google for AMP. The industry could have come together to offer a better experience and speedier page load, but of course they didn't and preferred having countless scripts and poorly optimized ads and that translated into a poor experience for users. This created an opportunity for Google to come in and offer this solution and now we're stuck.

To the contrary, one of the most frustrating things for me about AMP is Google's contributions to "the slow web".

They're not in any way the cause, not even a majority contributor, but look at Google's influence on frontend web development, from providing drop-in-with-zero-thought script CDN links, popularising the @font-face standard through their Web Fonts service to the point of its use being expected and non-optional in many web design teams, Google's terrible Page Speed tool favouring large complex pages over small simple ones, and the general cavalier "hey just paste this snippet of JS into your HTML, don't worry about what it does" attitude that things like GA have helped to make the norm.

Re: Google AMP Is a Threat to the Open Web

#55

Post by mrtksn »

mercer wrote: post #47
mrtksn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a hypothesis that assumes that the major websites will get motivated until the users get frustrated by the low quality of search results. With AMP it's cheap and quick to implement, how long will it take for the websites to re-implement their codebase and all the tooling to match the performance criteria? Anyway, you're missing the point that I'm trying to make here: It's about the user's experience, it's not…

It's more than a little cynical to assume that most of us only care because we want to make money or grow our business. The way I see it, as people who have more knowledge about this domain than the average user, it's actively our responsibility to act in the best interest of the user (our parents, friends, etc.), even if said user might not appreciate or understand the effort. In the same way that I appreciate, say,…

Good point, i’m also not THAT cynical but I don’t think that the web developers community as general has any integrity that resembles let’s say the medical community.

Maybe the developers themselves are more idealistic but the web based businesses themselves more often than not are quite exploitative towards the users and that’s we have this sorry state of the web in general.

Re: Google AMP Is a Threat to the Open Web

#56

Post by r3bl »

sseth wrote: post #52
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

I think a large portion of the tech industry understands Google AMP is an undeniable threat to the open web. The question is: Is there anything that can be done to stop it?

There are many threats to the open web. For example, governments building firewalls. Lot of content locked up in walled gardens. The death of net neutrality. Definitely one of the threats to the open web would be the web platform falling behind "native" platforms such as mobile platforms. 10 years ago it seemed that native apps are dead, the web is going to win. And then the rise of smartphones has brought us back to…

Aren't all of the companies that we are usually associating with doing bad things for the web (Microsoft, Google, Apple) now also pushing PWAs on their platforms? Google seemed far ahead of the push, Microsoft and Apple are currently on the run to bring them to Edge and Safari, and Mozilla introduced them to mobile Firefox less than a month ago.

And isn't there more of an incentive towards structuring the web coming from these big players as well? Google and Microsoft (and Yandex) created Schema.org, and are all giving them a priority in this switch from search results to instant answers.

I guess my point is to say that the companies that are locking the web are somewhat playing on both fields and giving webmasters products that are truly improving the web as well. It's far from being a one-sided battle.

Re: Google AMP Is a Threat to the Open Web

#57

Post by dx034 »

dmitriid wrote: post #49
tanilama wrote: post #7

The title and article feels like hyperbole: As user, I love AMP. It is much faster and lighter. God knows what javascript is running behind those websites that drives my CPU usage to 100%.

As a user, I hate AMP: it breaks links, it breaks browser behaviour on mobile

But to be fair, many pages break links and browser behaviour without AMP as well.

Re: Google AMP Is a Threat to the Open Web

#58

Post by LocutusOfBorges »

dmitriid wrote: post #49
tanilama wrote: post #7

The title and article feels like hyperbole: As user, I love AMP. It is much faster and lighter. God knows what javascript is running behind those websites that drives my CPU usage to 100%.

As a user, I hate AMP: it breaks links, it breaks browser behaviour on mobile

This is particularly noticable on iOS- AMP pages break iOS' standard page scrolling ballistics, for some reason. It makes them feel non-native in a particularly egregious way.

Re: Google AMP Is a Threat to the Open Web

#59

Post by dx034 »

Kiro wrote: post #6

How can I see that someone visited my site if it's served by Google's cache?

If you use AMP, you can use amp-pixel for tracking. If you have content that automatically reloads (e.g. amp-live-list), this will also show up in your server logs.

I don't find user behaviour on amp harder to track than for non-amp pages. At least if you keep tracking to a reasonable level.

Re: Google AMP Is a Threat to the Open Web

#60

Post by sseth »

r3bl wrote: post #56
sseth wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many threats to the open web. For example, governments building firewalls. Lot of content locked up in walled gardens. The death of net neutrality. Definitely one of the threats to the open web would be the web platform falling behind "native" platforms such as mobile platforms. 10 years ago it seemed that native apps are dead, the web is going to win. And then the rise of smartphones has brought us back to…

Aren't all of the companies that we are usually associating with doing bad things for the web (Microsoft, Google, Apple) now also pushing PWAs on their platforms? Google seemed far ahead of the push, Microsoft and Apple are currently on the run to bring them to Edge and Safari, and Mozilla introduced them to mobile Firefox less than a month ago. And isn't there more of an incentive towards structuring the web coming…

Of the IT giants, Google has the most to lose from a closed web. The rise of mobile apps and walled gardens is a direct threat to their search business model. So the argument that Google would threaten the open web seems strange, on purely selfish grounds.

AMP seems to be an attempt to keep the web relevant. In countries like India (where i live), most new users access the web via the mobile, and the experience can be far worse than in the west, and absent of initiatives such as AMP you will see a fall off in web usage in general. I am not sure how that helps the open web.

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