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Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

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Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#111

Post by throwbsidbdk »

cdata wrote: post #109
throwbsidbdk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that for amp pages to work with Google search, which everyone uses, it needs to use Google's flavor. Google should just stop pretending that AMP is any different than fb instant articles. Yeah it gives you more syntactical freedom and you can run some scripts in iframes, the lock in factor is the same. Not sure why it matters that the scripts are hosted by Google, you can easily add hashes to external…

That's all totally fair. But in my original comment, I tried to center my observation on how Facebook has threatened the openness of the web with a proprietary alternative. Is it even possible for Google to deliver the same features without drawing a line around something? If so, how does that hypothetical thing differ from AMP?

Probably not. It's just the marketing that gets me. Google should say "use AMP, a Google alternative to fb instant articles!" Not "use amp it will make your site faster!" Which isn't true.

Worse is that users will start associating the amp icon with fast sites, forcing everyone to start using amp or suffer lower conversions even if their normal site is just as fast or faster. This is because google forces amp sites to be fast, but doesn't punish slow sites in their other search results. Suddenly this amp thing starts to look less innocent.

There is absolutely nothing stopping google from putting an icon next to fast sites that don't use amp. They used slow sites as an artificial crisis to market a fence they're building around the open web.

Pretty dark for the "don't be evil" google. Facebook isn't doing anything better but at least their platform doesn't pollute search engine results

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#112

Post by [deleted] »

cdata wrote: post #109
throwbsidbdk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that for amp pages to work with Google search, which everyone uses, it needs to use Google's flavor. Google should just stop pretending that AMP is any different than fb instant articles. Yeah it gives you more syntactical freedom and you can run some scripts in iframes, the lock in factor is the same. Not sure why it matters that the scripts are hosted by Google, you can easily add hashes to external…

That's all totally fair. But in my original comment, I tried to center my observation on how Facebook has threatened the openness of the web with a proprietary alternative. Is it even possible for Google to deliver the same features without drawing a line around something? If so, how does that hypothetical thing differ from AMP?

[deleted]

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#113

Post by shostack »

EricBurnett wrote: post #11

This post seems to conflate two ideas (1) AMP being an insufficient implementation (update-ping not working, and that being an awkward pattern anyways) and (2) AMP being actively harmful to the web ecosystem in principle. (1) Comments on the implementation I don't know nearly enough to contest. It's a new technology, and will take a lot of changes in and out of Google to get right. It's also early days - continue rai…

What is your view on the control Google is exerting over the ad ecosystem here? It is pretty noticeable how the Facebook Audience Network is not an approved network. What about all of the third party analytics providers? Seems a bit lopsided if Google gets all that data and nobody else does, no?

As a buy side guy, I'm worried that this is venturing into anti-competitive monopolistic territory if left unchecked. what are the alternatives for publishers? Don't use AMP and go out of business as your mobile traffic is slowly choked off?

Don't get me wrong, I think publishers dug their own grave here, but this is not the internet I want as a user and as an advertiser. No one company should be able to exert that much control.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#114

Post by flukus »

robertelder wrote: post #14

I did a technical review of what I felt were the major pros/cons of implementing AMP pages: http://blog.robertelder.org/adding-support-for-amp-pages/ Edit: To save you a click, here are some of the key points: - You can't use Javascript on AMP pages, but you can put Javascript in iframes or substitute the javascript feature for an existing amp-component. - AMP pages require that Javascript is enabled. - In order for…

So have we gone full circle on turned html into a basic document structure? I thought the next cycle would have been in json.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#115

Post by rml »

dangoldin wrote: post #54

Earlier this year I spent some time moving my blog to AMP and so far I'm pretty happy with the move. It's hosted on GitHub pages and I made the decision to go full AMP (including Desktop so I never went the /amp/ subfolder route) and allowed me to convert every existing page to AMP without having to have a new set of URLs. It's noticeably faster but there are a few hiccups I had to deal with - JS needs to be in isola…

Wow, the pages on your site load so quickly they're finished rendering before I even start reading the article. Thanks for sharing this. Very cool.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#116

Post by xg15 »

The criticism on AMP is imo absolutely justified, but for the current case: Couldn't you at least solve the broken link by redirecting the AMP url to your actual page?

Taking this a step further, you could serve a minimal AMP page that contains just a link back to your original page.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#117

Post by quelltext »

madeofpalk wrote: post #83
robertelder wrote: post #14

I did a technical review of what I felt were the major pros/cons of implementing AMP pages: http://blog.robertelder.org/adding-support-for-amp-pages/ Edit: To save you a click, here are some of the key points: - You can't use Javascript on AMP pages, but you can put Javascript in iframes or substitute the javascript feature for an existing amp-component. - AMP pages require that Javascript is enabled. - In order for…

Have you looked at and 'reviewed' alternatives, such as Facebook Instant Articles or Apple News Format? Why is passing validation an important thing for AMP? The main complaint I hear about it is the AMP CDN, where Google caches and hosts your page for you. If you're failing validation then they wouldn't do this, right? So you get the advantages of a fast page without the disadvantage of Google reposting your content…

I have implemented both AMP and Instant Article "views" for a website and boy is the latter a bigger pain in the ass. The format is way more restrictive than AMP. Whereas the latter allows for nested lists, columns, or nested pictures Instant Articles require almost everything to be linearly placed on the top level. So unless your source format has a similarly simple structure you will have to think about ways to transform it down to that. Then, documentation is missing all the crucial details, so I ended up sifting through FB's SDK internals, which still ended up not covering all the issues reported by the web editor. Also, the only way to visually test the output is via the Page Manager app.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#118

Post by quelltext »

majewsky wrote: post #101
dangoldin wrote: post #54

Earlier this year I spent some time moving my blog to AMP and so far I'm pretty happy with the move. It's hosted on GitHub pages and I made the decision to go full AMP (including Desktop so I never went the /amp/ subfolder route) and allowed me to convert every existing page to AMP without having to have a new set of URLs. It's noticeably faster but there are a few hiccups I had to deal with - JS needs to be in isola…

I don't know what you did there, but it takes about 8 seconds on my desktop before it displays anything . Talk about "accelerated". Edit: I checked with the Developer Tools, but I have no idea what is going on there. Assets are fully loaded within 500 ms, and then it just sits there for another 7.5 s before rendering anything at all. (I will note that cdn.ampproject.org is blocked by default in my uMatrix.)

Does it get faster when you don't block it?

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#119

Post by majewsky »

quelltext wrote: post #118
majewsky wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you did there, but it takes about 8 seconds on my desktop before it displays anything . Talk about "accelerated". Edit: I checked with the Developer Tools, but I have no idea what is going on there. Assets are fully loaded within 500 ms, and then it just sits there for another 7.5 s before rendering anything at all. (I will note that cdn.ampproject.org is blocked by default in my uMatrix.)

Does it get faster when you don't block it?

Apparently yes. (Not on the same machine, but I just checked on my work notebook where I have uBlock rather than uMatrix, and cdn.ampproject.org is let through.)

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#120

Post by acdha »

snappy173 wrote: post #94
acdha wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any use of AMP which isn't driven by Google? I've never seen it referenced except in Google search results.

Well, you can access the AMP version of the page from anywhere, not just Google search results. I could see apps that use an in-app browser serving the AMP version of a page, instead of the full version, for instance. I guess we'll see?

I'm aware that it's technically possible but was realizing that, as a fairly active mobile web user, I had never noticed AMP in use except for Google search results.
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