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Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

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Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#141

Post by mulmen »

Spivak wrote: post #5
superasn wrote: post #2

Yes this has been a big issue for a very long time now. Google wants to push a release where it will display the hostname of the amp site even if the content is being served from google.com[1]. Mozilla (and Apple) are strictly against it and thank god for Mozilla. If Google had a bigger market share this would already be something we would have been living with. I'm sure there are better sources for this, but here is…

I don’t really think Google’s plan is that weird. And it would be amazing for decentralized networks, archiving, and offline web apps. Google can’t just serve nyt.com — they can serve a specific bundle of resources published and signed by nyt.com verified by your browser to be authentic and unmodified.

How does centralizing content on Google from multiple sources improve decentralization? The web is already decentralized. That's why it is a web.

AMP is a scourge. It's a bad idea being pushed by bad actors.

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#142

Post by reaperducer »

People have been railing against Google's Amp on HN for years, and I think I finally figured out what it's for.

It's Google way of combatting phone apps.

If all of the world's information — especially current news and similar information — moves from the open web into apps, then Google can no longer crawl, index, or scrape that information for its own use. The rise of the mobile phone app is a threat to Google on so many levels from ad revenue to data for training its AIs.

So Google comes up with Amp to convince publishers to keep their content on the open web, where it can be collated, indexed, and otherwise used by Google for Google's services like search and those search result cards that keep people from visiting the content creators.

Google's explicit carrot in all this is the user benefit of page loading speed. Google's implicit carrot in all of this is page rank. But Google's real motivation is to have all of that information available to itself.

Can you imagine what would happen if content from even one of the big providers was no longer visible to Google? New York Times, WaPo, or even Medium? It would create a huge hole in a number of Google products and services, make its search results look even weaker than they already are, and cause people to look for search alternatives.

That's my theory, anyway.

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#143

Post by [deleted] »

satyrnein wrote: post #93

Does it actually matter where you are, or is that just an implementation detail? One interpretation is that Google is changing the URL bar from "where" to "who", which may be the more relevant information for most users. Signed exchanges are an interesting way to achieve that.

[deleted]

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#144

Post by eternalban »

mulmen wrote: post #141
Spivak wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really think Google’s plan is that weird. And it would be amazing for decentralized networks, archiving, and offline web apps. Google can’t just serve nyt.com — they can serve a specific bundle of resources published and signed by nyt.com verified by your browser to be authentic and unmodified.

How does centralizing content on Google from multiple sources improve decentralization? The web is already decentralized. That's why it is a web. AMP is a scourge. It's a bad idea being pushed by bad actors.

> How does centralizing content on Google from multiple sources improve decentralization?

It actually makes perfect sense in Doublespeak. /s

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#146

Post by [deleted] »

gpm wrote: post #68
skybrian wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like there is a risk that an old version of a bundle will get served instead of a new one by an arbitrary host? Maybe the bundle should have a list of trusted mirrors?

Alternatively super short expiry times. It doesn't seem like it would be that concerning to have another site serving a bundle that was 5 minutes out of date. It doesn't seem like it should be too much load to be caching content every 5 minutes.

[deleted]

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#147

Post by pdkl95 »

gregable wrote: post #71
dannyw wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plan is bad because google currently tracks all of your activities inside AMP hosted pages site in their support article. Google controls the AMP project and the AMP library. They can start rewriting all links in AMP containers to Google’s AMP cache and track you across the entire internet, even when you are 50 clicks away from google.com.

While that's theoretically possible, the library can be inspected and does not do these things.

> the library can be inspected

Really? Could you publish how you are inspecting an unknown program to determine if it exhibits a specific behavior? There are a lot of computer scientists interested in your solution to the halting problem.

Joking aside, we already know from the halting problem[1] that it you cannot determine if a program will execute the simplest behavior: halting. Inspecting a program for more complex behaviors is almost always undecidable[2].

In this particular situation where Google is serving an unknown Javascript program, a look at the company's history and business model suggests that the probability they are using that Javascript to track use behavior is very high.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undecidable_problem

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#148

Post by tgv »

gregable wrote: post #71
dannyw wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plan is bad because google currently tracks all of your activities inside AMP hosted pages site in their support article. Google controls the AMP project and the AMP library. They can start rewriting all links in AMP containers to Google’s AMP cache and track you across the entire internet, even when you are 50 clicks away from google.com.

While that's theoretically possible, the library can be inspected and does not do these things.

They have the log files.

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#149

Post by tgv »

remexre wrote: post #138
nxnews wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be amazing for decentralized networks and offline web apps?

If I publish mycoolthing.com/thing, it could be mirrored over a P2P network as peer1.com/rehosted/mycoolthing.com/thing, peer2.com/rehosted/mycoolthing.com/thing, etc., in a way that would make it evident to end-users not familiar with the protocol that the content is from mycoolthing.com.

AMP is of course not P2P.
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