The power of the web lies in its decentralisation,
it lies with its messiness, it lies with its edge
nodes – that is, with you and me.
Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse
101–110 of 238 posts
Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
This concept is a recent legal development. It’s not obviously correct. Whether or not you think it’s correct, the obvious and inevitable conclusion is that the web will be siloed off and cease to be a global network.
True, and we could already see this with the great firewall of China and the intranet of North Korea. And today, there's many American sites which serve me a 451 unavailable due to legal reasons, or just a permanent redirect to some "we care about our European visitors" weasel words.
Gambling sites and cryptocurrency exchanges come to mind as region locked services.
Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you serve something in another country, you abide by their rules. Be it a physical product or a virtual one, which includes a website or webservice.
This concept is a recent legal development. It’s not obviously correct. Whether or not you think it’s correct, the obvious and inevitable conclusion is that the web will be siloed off and cease to be a global network.
It’s really not. The concept of “your house, your rules” can be found in ancient Roman texts. Being a foreigner didn’t suddenly exempt you from the laws of the land.
Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse
#104> The logic behind AMP goes like this: web developers suck at making fast websites, let's strip out all the stuff people don't need and cache it on our super-fast servers. Web developers don't suck at making fast websites. Publishers demand tons of ads and tracking scripts. If the person signing the paychecks wants the page to have 15MB of sketchy third-party JS, then the page will have 15MB of sketchy third-party JS…
> If the person signing the paychecks wants the page to have 15MB of sketchy third-party JS, then the page will have 15MB of sketchy third-party JS. I was asked by management to add Google Tag Manager to the company site. When I saw that GTM included 15-20 tracking scripts I told them that unfortunately we can't include it until we have ensured that all of them act in accordance with GDPR. Legal was involved and agre…
> You're technically correct, but people who write pay checks often can be argued with.
That's true, but the proliferation of ad tech junk is strong evidence that this is the exception rather than the rule. Capital will persuade labor to do its bidding far more often than not.
Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
My opinion is regularly "unpopular" here on HN, but I happen to love AMP. Sometimes constraints can be a blessing. Don't want to over engineer? Use AMP. Of course you can over engineer anything, but why would you when [almost] everything you need is easy to grab a la carte.
How is having to use “amp” attributes and loading a script from ampproject dot org simpler than just not doing that and everything works with every browser and without JavaScript and you don’t have any dependencies on Google servers? AMP as a subset of existing HTML is fine, but at that point it’s just a style guide. AMP as the existing invasive species it is just adds more complexity to an already complex web “ecosy…
Google's amp cache presumably enforces the "you can only use these specific html tags and this limited subset of javascript" (or whatever the requirements are). That's valuable.
Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about testing sites themselves with those browsers and benchmarking that?
Ok. So the first problem is that people would end up optimizing for entirely the wrong thing. Rather than optimize for the machines and networks that are actually in use, you'd optimize for high CPU Linux servers with no GPU connected over high bandwidth and low latency networking. Not low CPU mobile phones over LTE or dodgy WiFi. Second, you wouldn't complain that it's an unfair advantage to pages in the Google AMP…
Then don’t go with the stupidest most naive way of benchmarking, and actually try to replicate some real-world scenarios? This would be utterly trivial for Google.
Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Foreign internet companies aren’t obligated to operate in the EU. If they don’t like the rules they can choose not to participate.
If you choose to conflate “sending packets to the EU” with “operating in the EU”, you are choosing a future where the internet is siloed off and the web ceases to be a global network. I am not passing judgment - merely stating a fact.
Do the restrictions govern how packets may be sent? Or do they deal with taxes, handling user information, etc?
Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If the person signing the paychecks wants the page to have 15MB of sketchy third-party JS, then the page will have 15MB of sketchy third-party JS. I was asked by management to add Google Tag Manager to the company site. When I saw that GTM included 15-20 tracking scripts I told them that unfortunately we can't include it until we have ensured that all of them act in accordance with GDPR. Legal was involved and agre…
> You're technically correct, but people who write pay checks often can be argued with. That's true, but the proliferation of ad tech junk is strong evidence that this is the exception rather than the rule. Capital will persuade labor to do its bidding far more often than not.
What's the solution?
If anything, the proliferation of ad tech junk and 15MB of various ad-related things is probably better than just that 1MB of only Google Ads scripts, no?
Or are we going to talk about how online advertising has been the economic backbone of the web? Not that I'm advocating for it, by hiding the true cost of things, publishers have brought this onto themselves really.
So no more ads? That's probably going to kill a lot of sites, whether they are contributing anything to mankind or not.
Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's phrasing the problem in a format where the only solution is Google. Re-phrasing it as "What else can a search engine do to stop being gamed?" opens up a lot more options. The real problem here is not 'gamed search engines' but too much centralisation, with Google owning the search engine, the browser, and the ad platform. This solution makes that problem worse, not better.
Sorry, no. You're moving the goalposts. The criticism from eli was not e.g. that using page speed as a ranking criteria is intrinsically bad. It was that the data was sourced only from Chrome (including the italics). It's like I've fallen into a crazy parallel dimension. For more than *five years* HN commenters have been ranting about how AMP is not needed, and all that's needed is using page speed as the signal. And…
I remember that. Every other post on HN used to be how bad AMP is for the future of human civilization and how Google should have used page performance in their ranking instead. Well, Google did just that and now eli et al. moved the goal post.
The morale of the story is it's impossible to make everyone happy.
Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
lol. google is sweeping the entire internet not catering to chrome users under the rug and you're concerned with popups on the top 10 bigger sites
Cookie laws have destroyed my web browsing experience much more than amp ever has.
If you think about the GDPR, it's not about cookies at all but consent for tracking.
Many websites prefer to destroy their usability to get your consent in various deceptive ways. You can definitely have technical cookies and no cookies banner.