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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%

#71

Post by cronix »

freedomben wrote: post #61
zzleeper wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Android is all about choice and user empowerment!

I disagree, strongly. I believe Android is really more about keeping you in the Google ecosystem. So is AMP, so is Chrome. I'm an Android user, but let's not pretend they are really about "choice and user empowerment." That's just the sales pitch. Every single thing Google creates is to collect information on/from us, because that's their revenue model. Selling our data. If you disagree, compare the ad revenue from all of them. Who's is miles ahead? Why? How? You're giving them your data. A LOT of it.

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

#72

Post by cronix »

notatoad wrote: post #42
setquk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So you prefer when pages take >10s to load, have interstitial ads covering the content, and have ads that load in while you scroll, causing the content to jump around on you? I'm pretty happy with amp as an alternative to newspapers' awful websites.

Reader view in firefox makes it very fast. Like how the web used to be. It just displays the images/text of the actual content and strips everything else out. I immediately hit that button on most sites now, and they load in under 1s (usually way under). It even has a dark mode! No videos playing, no ads changing in sidebars distracting your eyes, no popups making your click through. Just the content you wanted to see. I just wish you could make it the default mode.

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

#74

Post by scarface74 »

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…

Google AMP on iOS is also much worse than Safari + adBlocker. AMP also leaves out relevant content.

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

#75

Post by tyingq »

privateSFacct wrote: post #41

Here's the reality. The Taboola news carousals at the bottom of most slow loading actual news sites are filled with total junk. One page per image websites, super slow, adblock goes crazy. I've literally NEVER had a good experience with these "Stories you may like" Google does something with a news carousel that loads fast and the content isn't crap. I get why publishers running things like taboola think it's terribl…

I assume you're free to implement taboola like widgets on an AMP page that link out to garbage.

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

#76

Post by freedomben »

cronix wrote: post #71
freedomben wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Android is all about choice and user empowerment! I disagree, strongly. I believe Android is really more about keeping you in the Google ecosystem. So is AMP, so is Chrome. I'm an Android user, but let's not pretend they are really about "choice and user empowerment." That's just the sales pitch. Every single thing Google creates is to collect information on/from us, because that's their revenue model. Selling our…

Agreed regarding ulterior motives (keeping you in their ecosystem). In the excellent book "In The Plex" by Steven Levy, he talks about Google's motivation of essentially building a browser, mobile OS, etc just to ensure that some other party (like Apple) doesn't cut them out and reduce their search/ad domination. I believe protecting search/ads is at the base of their motives (as is, undeniably, vacuuming up tons of data and mining it for ML purposes).

But that said, why do so much for open source? Why not keep big things proprietary? Why sell Chromebooks that can be unlocked, put in dev mode, and flashed with FOSS BIOS implementations? Why allow unlocking the bootloader on Nexus and Pixel phones? There's lots of things they do that clearly aren't for the bottom line or just to trap you in their ecosystem (they do offer versions of basically everything for iOS as well, which makes it easier to switch to iPhone even if you are deep in the Google ecosystem).

Some of my argument is emotionally based tho, I will admit. After being trapped in Apple's very proprietary, anti-competitive, you-dont-own-it-we-do system, I find the ability to reclaim some freedom (tho not all, they could do better) very nice.

So I think our only real disagreement is likely regarding motives.

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

#77

Post by zapzupnz »

scarface74 wrote: post #74
freditup wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google AMP on iOS is also much worse than Safari + adBlocker. AMP also leaves out relevant content.

My beef is that it used to jack the scrolling. I don't know if it still does.

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

#78

Post by hitsthings »

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

I am praying this is a joke.

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

#79

Post by ljm »

scarface74 wrote: post #74
freditup wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google AMP on iOS is also much worse than Safari + adBlocker. AMP also leaves out relevant content.

A huge pet peeve of mine was that I'd google for something I once saw on Reddit, or maybe I just wanted to see a certain discussion. Google would identify the correct post, but then I'd either get it in AMP or new-redesign format, both of which present a terrible loss in readability (for the most part).

With AMP in particular, there was no obvious link back towards Reddit itself. And with the redesign, the actual discussion was interrupted with sections showing what other posts you could read on the subreddit. Similarly, both lost the essential hierarchy and it was really hard to follow the threads of discussion.

The whole thing was dreadful compared to using the decade old Reddit design. The modern stuff is crap.

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

#80

Post by cpburns2009 »

walshemj wrote: post #48
mort96 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to know enough to understand and implement all the details from server to network to browser, you just need to know enough to remove the tags related to ad networks and tracking to see huge load time and ux improvements. It's not really the web developers who are the issue; they just implement what the people above them in the org chart wants. You could argue that the web developers should push back on…

From experience its not the tracking code that's the big slowdown, its poor page design, bloated implementation no you do not need custom fonts. The worst culprit is not knowing how to use photoshop to optimise images properly.

Shouldn't you be using one of the command line image optimizers?
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