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You can't disable Google AMP

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Re: You can't disable Google AMP

#21

Post by mbenjaminsmith »

lovich wrote: post #10

Like the other commenters here, I really disliked amp for a variety of reason such as the bar on top and the inability to easily link the main version of the page. However, I'be come to feel that we've brought this on ourselves as Web developers by making every website incredibly bloated and only possible to use on high speed connections. I've spent the past month in thailand on a much slower connection and the only…

What part of Thailand is that? I get around ~50M/s on my phone. I haven't checked my home cable in a while but I stream HD video (Netflix / YouTube) to several computers / TVs at once w/o issue.

> The new preconnect API is used heavily to ensure HTTP requests are as fast as possible when they are made. With this, a page can be rendered before the user explicitly states they’d like to navigate to it; the page might already be available by the time the user actually selects it, leading to instant loading.

I get the impression AMP boils down to that. Google wants to present publisher content in "mobile app" form and has decided to push most of the cost onto publishers. I really wish they would have taken a different approach. They could have just slapped a stamp of approval on sites with good mobile layout and sub 1s load times. Let publishers make their own technology decisions about how to get there.

Also the Google News horizontal scrolling / AMP page scrolling / back button is a clusterfuck. More often than not I have to reload Google News from the address bar as an intermediate step in navigation. If you're going to wreck the web for better user experience then at least deliver better user experience.

Re: You can't disable Google AMP

#22

Post by bastawhiz »

Lazare wrote: post #12

As a user, I've found AMP results to be invariable an excellent user experience on mobile. I will always click an AMP link over a non-AMP link, when on mobile, because I know the AMP link will load quickly and be usable, and the odds are good the non-AMP link will not. Apparently this is a minority view around here. :)

I completely agree with you. There are so many things that infuriate me about regular sites:

- Images not having defined heights, leading to content jumping up as I'm reading

- Ads loading and unloading, leading to the page jittering up and down erratically, making the content unreadable

- Auto-playing videos: some start playing audio, some have the audio muted but still pause any music I have playing

- Those ads that scroll up across the page (which wouldn't be a problem, but they scroll at a third of the speed that I drag them up at)

- The "Read Full Story" buttons that animate the content downwards, freezing everything for a few seconds while the dumb animation plays

- Web fonts taking an eternity to load, leaving me with no content for ten, fifteen, or more seconds

- Web fonts loading unexpectedly and causing all the text to reflow, destroying my scroll position

There are so many more things.

But here's the thing: there are no ad-blockers for Chrome on Android. I can't turn this crap off. And overwhelmingly, I can't just pay someone money to make it stop. I would gladly hand over fifty bucks or more every month to read news in peace, but there's no centralized way to do that.

AMP, at the very least, gets rid of these problems for me. Top bar and URL issues aside, clicking an AMP link is infinitely less frustrating than clicking a non-AMP link.

Re: You can't disable Google AMP

#23

Post by clowd »

Lazare wrote: post #12

As a user, I've found AMP results to be invariable an excellent user experience on mobile. I will always click an AMP link over a non-AMP link, when on mobile, because I know the AMP link will load quickly and be usable, and the odds are good the non-AMP link will not. Apparently this is a minority view around here. :)

What I find annoying is that searching Google on a desktop or laptop still returns a lot of AMP results. They're supposed to be Accelerated Mobile Pages, it would be nice if they'd filter them out when searching from a standard PC.

Re: You can't disable Google AMP

#24

Post by QuercusMax »

bastawhiz wrote: post #22
Lazare wrote: post #12

As a user, I've found AMP results to be invariable an excellent user experience on mobile. I will always click an AMP link over a non-AMP link, when on mobile, because I know the AMP link will load quickly and be usable, and the odds are good the non-AMP link will not. Apparently this is a minority view around here. :)

I completely agree with you. There are so many things that infuriate me about regular sites: - Images not having defined heights, leading to content jumping up as I'm reading - Ads loading and unloading, leading to the page jittering up and down erratically, making the content unreadable - Auto-playing videos: some start playing audio, some have the audio muted but still pause any music I have playing - Those ads tha…

Even more annoying: when the entire article loads, I read the first couple paragraphs, THEN it hides everything behind the "Read Full Story" link! It's infuriating!

AMP gives a great user experience on mobile, at least speed-wise. I haven't had any real complaints as a user. (Disclaimer: I work for a non-Google Alphabet company.)

Re: You can't disable Google AMP

#25

Post by jonathanyc »

bastawhiz wrote: post #22
Lazare wrote: post #12

As a user, I've found AMP results to be invariable an excellent user experience on mobile. I will always click an AMP link over a non-AMP link, when on mobile, because I know the AMP link will load quickly and be usable, and the odds are good the non-AMP link will not. Apparently this is a minority view around here. :)

I completely agree with you. There are so many things that infuriate me about regular sites: - Images not having defined heights, leading to content jumping up as I'm reading - Ads loading and unloading, leading to the page jittering up and down erratically, making the content unreadable - Auto-playing videos: some start playing audio, some have the audio muted but still pause any music I have playing - Those ads tha…

Firefox on Android has full support for extensions, including uBlock Origin. I was surprised and very happy to discover this. Unfortunately it is a little less integrated.

Re: You can't disable Google AMP

#26

Post by CaliforniaKarl »

Lazare wrote: post #12

As a user, I've found AMP results to be invariable an excellent user experience on mobile. I will always click an AMP link over a non-AMP link, when on mobile, because I know the AMP link will load quickly and be usable, and the odds are good the non-AMP link will not. Apparently this is a minority view around here. :)

I don't think it's a minority view. At least in my case, I'm fine with clicking on an AMP link, but I'm always aware of:

* How difficult it will be if I want to share the link with someone (because I don't want to share an AMP link).

* How difficult it is if I want to go exploring around the site that has the thing I am reading.

Re: You can't disable Google AMP

#27

Post by cramforce »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #26
Lazare wrote: post #12

As a user, I've found AMP results to be invariable an excellent user experience on mobile. I will always click an AMP link over a non-AMP link, when on mobile, because I know the AMP link will load quickly and be usable, and the odds are good the non-AMP link will not. Apparently this is a minority view around here. :)

I don't think it's a minority view. At least in my case, I'm fine with clicking on an AMP link, but I'm always aware of: * How difficult it will be if I want to share the link with someone (because I don't want to share an AMP link). * How difficult it is if I want to go exploring around the site that has the thing I am reading.

We are working on a direct path from AMP pages loaded from Google Search to the canonical to fix the link issue & sharing will use the canonical link where technically possible.

Re: You can't disable Google AMP

#28

Post by EpicEng »

lovich wrote: post #10

Like the other commenters here, I really disliked amp for a variety of reason such as the bar on top and the inability to easily link the main version of the page. However, I'be come to feel that we've brought this on ourselves as Web developers by making every website incredibly bloated and only possible to use on high speed connections. I've spent the past month in thailand on a much slower connection and the only…

Oh that damn bar on the top...

Re: You can't disable Google AMP

#29

Post by lovich »

flukus wrote: post #16
lovich wrote: post #10

Like the other commenters here, I really disliked amp for a variety of reason such as the bar on top and the inability to easily link the main version of the page. However, I'be come to feel that we've brought this on ourselves as Web developers by making every website incredibly bloated and only possible to use on high speed connections. I've spent the past month in thailand on a much slower connection and the only…

> I can have a site like reddit even take 30-40 seconds to load and more complicated sites like cnn will load part of the page and then silently fail on me. Isn't reddit pretty simple text? Are you running RES at all?

Reddit mobile site. It's some spa thing, but yea it should be mostly text

Re: You can't disable Google AMP

#30

Post by lovich »

vmarsy wrote: post #14
lovich wrote: post #10

Like the other commenters here, I really disliked amp for a variety of reason such as the bar on top and the inability to easily link the main version of the page. However, I'be come to feel that we've brought this on ourselves as Web developers by making every website incredibly bloated and only possible to use on high speed connections. I've spent the past month in thailand on a much slower connection and the only…

> the only sites I can reliably use currently are text sites like hacker news and amp pages. I can have a site like reddit even take 30-40 seconds to load. What about reddit's AMP pages [1]? [1] https://redditblog.com/2016/09/20/amp-and-reactredux/

It's sending me to the mobile site, didn't even know they had amp pages, I might be better served by requesting the desktop version but my point still stands about sites just not loading
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