Neither PWA nor AMP are needed to make a website load fast

I tried to look at an example AMP page here [1]. When loading with an empty cache, it loads 5.5 Mb of files. I don't see where are the optimizations.

It uses a custom font. Custom fonts are absolutely unnesessary for a news page; they only delay the moment when text becomes visible. Standard Windows fonts are of a good quality and don't need a replacement (which often renders very poorly on Windows XP).

It uses a lot of scripts. Script block some browsers while parsing and executing.

It has SVG images embedded into the page. If you want the page to load faster, you should move images into external files.

AMP is directly linked to Google and cannot be used without it. Please look at the requirements for AMP HTML documents: [2]

> AMP HTML documents MUST ... contain a " rel="nofollow">https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"> tag inside their head tag.

So every AMP document MUST load a Google-controlled script. And by the way, it contains 12 000 lines when beautified. It contains different Google URLs like 'https://ampcid.google.com/v1/publisher:getClientId?key=' or 'https://ampcid.google.com/v1/cache:getClientId?key=AIzaSyDKt... , references to Doubleclick and AdSense (but not other ad networks). Does every site need it?

It contains a lot of code not necessary for most websites. For example, a XHR interceptor for "some trusted AMP viewers" [3] is included into the script. Or a cryptographic library for calculating sha hashes [4].

You can use only JS components approved by Google; the spec says:

> Extended components

> The script URL must start with https://cdn.ampproject.org

So for example, Google might make a custom component for Facebook but not for QQ or Mixi. Google defines what widget can appear on an AMP page. If you are an ad network, you have to make negotiations with Google to be added (you have to negotiate with your competitor). If US government imposes sanctions on some foreign site, Google will have to comply.

It is clearly a technology made for integrating news articles into a Google page (and judging by limitations in the spec, Google might plan to make a non-vebview native renderer for AMP pages). Don't believe when they try to pretend that it can be used independently as a standard or made for accelerating the web.

[1] https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2016/feb/1...

[2] https://www.ampproject.org/docs/fundamentals/spec

[3] https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/11294

[4] https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/src/servic...

The biggest sites that are ad-dependent are in the digital media space, and they are undergoing a culling like never before. Mic.com and Mashable recently sold at distress sale prices, and Buzzfeed and Vice are also struggling to meet revenue targets.

> The truth probably is that most websites would fail if users had to pay for them.

I agree with you here, but the implication of this is that if the user isn't willing to pay for it, and ads aren't enough to sustain the business, maybe they should not be in that particular business.

Or, they could try to rise to the challenge and build a brand people are willing to pay for. The Guardian in the UK recently hit a million paying digital subscribers, so it's certainly not impossible. Most sites do not need a million subscribers to make payroll.

> The most important feature of AMP is that it makes it impossible to add the kind of bloated crap that causes poor performance on something like a large media company website.

When I load this AMP page [1] with an empty cache, Dev Tools show that 3.3 Mb of files are loaded [2]. Also, the page contains lots of errors [3]. This page contains ads, analytics and even a video that you have mentioned in your comment.

After loading, every 10 seconds a HTTP2 request to cloudapi.imrworldwide.com is sent even if the page is in the background.

AMP looks more like an internal Google standard for integrating websites into search results. The spec contains a lot of restrictions like these: you MUST include a 12 000-line JS script from Google ( https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js ) into every AMP page, you MAY use only components made by Google and even custom JS template engine made by Google. If you are an ad network then you have to make negiotiations with Google, your competitor, to be included into the whitelist. There are lot of whitelists: list of sites that can provide fonts, list of sites that can add widgets to AMP pages.

Here is one example of such conditions [4]:

> In order to qualify for inclusion, an extended component that integrates a third-party service must generally meet the notability requirements of the English Wikipedia, and is in common use in Internet publishing. As a rough rule of thumb, it should be used or requested by 5% of the top 10,000 websites as noted on builtwith.com, or already integrated into oEmbed.

If you are a small business, you are not welcome.

[1] https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2016/feb/1...

[2] https://imgur.com/RGYij9q

[3] https://imgur.com/j1IYaMW

[4] https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/3p/README....

Caching helps if you visit several pages on the same site. But AMP might be optimized for scenario when you scroll through several AMP pages from different sites in the search results. Using an external stylesheet would only make loading slower in this case. Another problem is that on an unreliable connection external CSS can fail to load.

AMP is unnecessary. All it would take is making site speed as a major factor in rankings and sites would get faster overnight.

We work with 1000s of publishers. Decisions about websites come from business and marketing, not from the dev team. Performance is a low priority unless it is critical.