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Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

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Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#61

Post by freedomben »

zzleeper wrote: post #7
Filligree wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's wonderful when browsing. Pages load in less than half a minute, unlike nearly the entire rest of the internet. Hacker News doesn't need it, but they're nearly unique in having written a good website.

I abhor it on mobile. I can't navigate away from it easily, it's hard to copy paste annurl to share with others, etc. I wish Chrome had the option to disable it, but of course they don't.

I'm agnostic on AMP, but I very much agree with you that they should add the option to disable. Android is all about choice and user empowerment! That's why I love it

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#62

Post by tylerl »

setquk wrote: post #3
emayljames wrote: post #2

Hopefully this one-sided, web damaging framework will die a death like IE finally did, with its awful standards.

Definitely. I can’t understand why the hell anyone would want to use it anyway. The experience is terrible.

But not QUITE as terrible as the UX of news sites without AMP. Which I suppose was the point.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#63

Post by freedomben »

AnssiH wrote: post #32
madeofpalk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't navigate away from it easily eh? You can't hit 'back'?

They might also mean "go to the non-AMP version", which is my main issue with AMP. I'd like to get the non-AMP page to e.g. see user comments (if any) which are often omitted from the AMP version, or for posting the non-AMP URL to friends or social media. Sometimes there is an easy way to go to non-AMP page, depending on how you got there, but most of the time for me there is not. For example, this article just appea…

I couldn't agree more. The problem with AMP is that it isn't possible to disable it. Other than that, I appreciate what Google is trying to do, even if their implementation has a few flaws.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#64

Post by yorwba »

AnssiH wrote: post #32
madeofpalk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't navigate away from it easily eh? You can't hit 'back'?

They might also mean "go to the non-AMP version", which is my main issue with AMP. I'd like to get the non-AMP page to e.g. see user comments (if any) which are often omitted from the AMP version, or for posting the non-AMP URL to friends or social media. Sometimes there is an easy way to go to non-AMP page, depending on how you got there, but most of the time for me there is not. For example, this article just appea…

How to disable AMP permanently on your phone:

- stop using Google feed. I can't recommend a one-stop replacement, since I use RSS to follow sites I trust to produce high-quality content and HN to discover new stuff.

- stop using other Google products that link to AMP pages. DuckDuckGo is good enough these days.

- use Firefox. That in itself might prevent Google search from showing AMP results, if you can't bear to use DDG. At least someone said so two years ago in this thread on Google's product forums https://productforums.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=t...

- install https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/ in Firefox. It still needs to load the AMP page to grab the canonical URL, but then it redirects to the non-AMP version. You can also add an adblocker like uBlock Origin while you're at it. The ability to install addons is what makes Firefox the best mobile browser in my opinion.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#66

Post by freedomben »

hnuser355 wrote: post #52
untog wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha what? You absolutely do not need to understand how a CPU works to make a fast site. 90% of the job is getting rid of shitty third party ad and tracking code, something most front engineers don't control. Beyond that most is just sensible practices. In depth knowledge of the DOM would serve you a lot better than knowing about CPUs. What triggers a repaint, how you can avoid it, and so on.

We were looking for someone to do basic web dev for us, but when our leading candidate failed to even derive KKT conditions from scratch in our interview we simply had to eject him from the candidate pool

Did you find someone? "basic web dev" and "derive KKT conditions from scratch" do not sound like combinations that I would expect to find often, but it's always interesting to hear about different industries/expectations out there.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#67

Post by NiceGuy_Ty »

freditup wrote: post #58
lol768 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Taboola news carousals at the bottom of most slow loading actual news sites are filled with total junk. This, a thousands times. For both Taboola and Outbrain it's clickbaity trash - usually misleading and low quality content. They're designed to "disrupt" so that people click on them and have in the past featured on blatantly false news stories. I'd honestly be ashamed to work at one of these sort of organisat…

It's interesting that so many people would enjoy AMP, because on my Android, viewing AMP sites in Google's main app often feels much slower than regular web browsing in Firefox for Android. The difference? I have an ad-blocker in Firefox, but not in Google's app. So Ad-blocking > AMP > Regular (as far as user-experience from a speed perspective). Obviously Google has a lot of incentive to make sure people don't go th…

Firefox Focus is the fastest android browser experience. I use that as my default browser, and only swap to normal Firefox when using a site I need to login to

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#68

Post by jaredcwhite »

Over and over again I'll click a link from Twitter or elsewhere, and in mere moments I'm thinking to myself…waaait a sec, is this another crappy AMP page?

It never looks right. It's always "off" in some weird (and sometimes very obvious) way. Nearly every time I go to the real page on the real website, it looks better and functions better. Since I use an ad blocker, it's never a problem for me that the real site might want to load heavier ads on mobile.

AMP is a plague on the open web. It's offensive, I never request it, and it never solves any problem for me. I'm glad I use DuckDuckGo as my search engine so I never get kicked to AMP pages from search. As a web developer, I've vowed never to implement AMP on any of my client sites and will explain to my clients why if asked (and so far I've never been asked).

Just say no to AMP.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#69

Post by Rjevski »

I don’t like AMP, but I am so happy to see when websites complain that “leads dropped by 59%” because of it.

For “leads” to drop that much it must mean they weren’t legitimate, happy leads in the first place. I bet those “leads” came from a shit letter popup or other similar dark pattern, in which case AMP works as designed and benefits the user by shielding them from such garbage.

AMP is bad for the web in the long term. But it is a decent stop-gap solution given that nobody is willing to make their websites bearable without Google’s pressure.

EDIT: I just tried their website again without an ad blocker and sure enough, I was asked to subscribe to their shitletter.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#70

Post by codazoda »

Rjevski wrote: post #69

I don’t like AMP, but I am so happy to see when websites complain that “leads dropped by 59%” because of it. For “leads” to drop that much it must mean they weren’t legitimate, happy leads in the first place. I bet those “leads” came from a shit letter popup or other similar dark pattern, in which case AMP works as designed and benefits the user by shielding them from such garbage. AMP is bad for the web in the long…

I'm also an Amp hater and welcomed this news. Then, I went to the site. Because I really hate AMP I dismissed all three of their mobile pop ups; one after another. After reading the article I tried to use the back button to go back to hacker news; took three clicks (maybe one for each popup)? I'm guessing you are correct and they need to take another look for causation.
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