How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer • Hacker News Board

Re: How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer

#131

Post by mrtksn » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #115

mrtksn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: what else those websites are supposed to do (that AMP does not provide) with all those megabytes of scripts? Newspapers display a text and an image and very rarely an interactive content(Election day maps and charts, mostly). Is there a reason FROM USERS PERSPECTIVE to have different website codebase for each publisher? For years the Web community kept creating new JavaScript libraries every day and…

from USERS PERSPECTIVE, amp is meh. yes it's faster, does it really matter if you re getting an article in 1 second when you -obviously- plan to spend 2 minutes reading it? i dont know anyone who thinks so, perhaps your USERS do > A strealined conent delivery platform prioritizing UX that the publishers failed to create what you re implying is, Google failed to improve their algorithms to bypass obvious SEOs, so they…

Actually, it's a pretty well-known fact that users leave websites if they are not loading fast.

People don't go with reading plans to websites, the titles are optimized to bring you there and you don't know what's in the article. More often than not, the text on the website is not what the title made you believe it is. You can't plan ahead, you want to quickly find out what is this all about.

The article themselves are usually garbage optimized for SEO, long paragraphs of sentences that say the same thing but with different keywords. If that's not enough, they try to sway attention with ads and popups. Even if you had a plan about reading an article, the publisher's plan about you is different(tip: it's not about letting you read in peace).

The Web is horrible, it's even more horrible on mobile. AMP is an improvement.

Re: How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer

#132

Post by ldavison » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

I have been using the "Redirect AMP to HTML" extension:

https://www.daniel.priv.no/web-extensions/amp2html.html

Re: How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer

#133

Post by vb6sp6 » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

behringer wrote: post #110

Scarbutt wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but Mozilla is lazy, badly managed and dumb. They were too late on mobile, and if it weren't for Chrome, Firefox today would need 64GB of RAM to run.

considering ram has always been the cheapest part of any computer for the last 2 or 3 decades, this argument is really lame. Oh no your computer needs ram? So go buy some...

lots of ram is soldered on making cheap upgrades impossible

Re: How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer

#134

Post by Kaiyou » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

nvrspyx wrote: post #123

DCKing wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> STOP USING google SEARCH! USE DUCKDUCKGO! I want to stop using Google, but please realize that DuckDuckGo is only competitive with Google if English is your only language (maybe even only if you're American?). There are loads and loads of people on HN for whom DDG is a poor experience. In my experience DDG is extremely poor for localized results, especially those in other languages than English. Previously I recomm…

____ I have no recommendation anymore ____ Maybe searx.me is an option. Although, you’re out of luck for Safari on iOS.

Searx.me doesn't output any search more than half the time and gives you "google (unexpected crash: CAPTCHA required)" instead.

Re: How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer

#135

Post by tyingq » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #118

soyyo wrote: post #30

I worked on amp for a leading newspaper, and everyone who says that amp is about "making the web faster on mobile" is either very naive or doing marketing for google. For publishers, amp is about trying to top the results on google search and capture traffic, it's their only motivation to publish their content using amp, and the only metric they look in order to evaluate the results. Once they have their amp content,…

AMP is fast because it prerenders. That is the main point of AMP, and you seemingly don't understand it after working on it. It amazes me how little developers understand their platforms these days.

You may consider that we do understand pre-render, but don't like the trade-off involved.

A full on AOL style walled garden could be even faster. It could mandate brotli, force a common css base, only offer one kind of ad platform, etc. Should we go there?

Re: How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer

#136

Post by chetanbhasin » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

idoubtit wrote: post #125

brianzelip wrote: post #23

Here's one great takeaway: > Treat the cause: Third-party requests slow down the web > ... > - Google owns 7 of the top 10 most popular third-party calls > ... > So you can see why there must be some kind of internal struggle at Google. They understand the value of a faster web but they also cannot go after the main cause of the slow web. And this is how technology such as AMP gets invented and makes things worse. It…

> Stop using chrome. Honestly, wtf?! Firefox is awesome. I do not use Chrome, but I don't think Firefox is awesome. While I use FF, partly for moral reasons, my experience is average and I saw many flaws and bugs. I prefer the features of Vivaldi, which is based on Chromium, but does not phone home to Google. > STOP USING google SEARCH! While my default search engine is Duck Duck Go, I don't recommend it to friends a…

Have you considered using StartPage? I have recently switched and been preaching it among friends and HN since then. It promises DDG like privacy, but search results so far have been substantially better than DDG.

Re: How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer

#137

Post by lern_too_spel » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #135

lern_too_spel wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMP is fast because it prerenders. That is the main point of AMP, and you seemingly don't understand it after working on it. It amazes me how little developers understand their platforms these days.

You may consider that we do understand pre-render, but don't like the trade-off involved. A full on AOL style walled garden could be even faster. It could mandate brotli, force a common css base, only offer one kind of ad platform, etc. Should we go there?

The person I was responding to said that AMP was fast for a reason other than prerendering. That's wrong. Prerendering is the main point of AMP, which is what I pointed out in my comment.

A full AOL style walled garden is what Apple News and Facebook Instant Articles are. AMP enables the same speed in a way that any link aggregator can take advantage of without having to strike deals with individual publishers.

Re: How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer

#138

Post by ljcn » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

DCKing wrote: post #107

brianzelip wrote: post #23

Here's one great takeaway: > Treat the cause: Third-party requests slow down the web > ... > - Google owns 7 of the top 10 most popular third-party calls > ... > So you can see why there must be some kind of internal struggle at Google. They understand the value of a faster web but they also cannot go after the main cause of the slow web. And this is how technology such as AMP gets invented and makes things worse. It…

> STOP USING google SEARCH! USE DUCKDUCKGO! I want to stop using Google, but please realize that DuckDuckGo is only competitive with Google if English is your only language (maybe even only if you're American?). There are loads and loads of people on HN for whom DDG is a poor experience. In my experience DDG is extremely poor for localized results, especially those in other languages than English. Previously I recomm…

> maybe even only if you're American?

Works fine in UK English too, although the "r:uk" modifier is often needed.

Re: How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer

#139

Post by Kaiyou » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

brianzelip wrote: post #23

Here's one great takeaway: > Treat the cause: Third-party requests slow down the web > ... > - Google owns 7 of the top 10 most popular third-party calls > ... > So you can see why there must be some kind of internal struggle at Google. They understand the value of a faster web but they also cannot go after the main cause of the slow web. And this is how technology such as AMP gets invented and makes things worse. It…

What's the point of switching to DDG, though? Under the hood it's just a combination of Google and Bing, isn't it?

Re: How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer

#140

Post by middus » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

DCKing wrote: post #107

brianzelip wrote: post #23

Here's one great takeaway: > Treat the cause: Third-party requests slow down the web > ... > - Google owns 7 of the top 10 most popular third-party calls > ... > So you can see why there must be some kind of internal struggle at Google. They understand the value of a faster web but they also cannot go after the main cause of the slow web. And this is how technology such as AMP gets invented and makes things worse. It…

> STOP USING google SEARCH! USE DUCKDUCKGO! I want to stop using Google, but please realize that DuckDuckGo is only competitive with Google if English is your only language (maybe even only if you're American?). There are loads and loads of people on HN for whom DDG is a poor experience. In my experience DDG is extremely poor for localized results, especially those in other languages than English. Previously I recomm…

Maybe ecosia?