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

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

#201

Post by rising-sky »

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…

For those concerned about switching from Google to DuckDuckGo, maybe this article might aid in convincing you

I ditched Google for DuckDuckGo. Here's why you should too https://www.wired.co.uk/article/duckduckgo-google-alternativ...

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

#202

Post by wizzwizz4 »

behringer wrote: post #112
Karunamon wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen Firefox north of 20gb on my 32gb desktop more than once, and tab crashes are a daily annoyance. Worse, it doesn’t seem appreciably faster on machines with less memory. I wish there was some config flag I could set that would put it on a diet...

Stop hoarding tabs. Anyway I think those are arguments in the past anyway.

Firefox can cope with tab hoarding pretty well, so long as they're not all pinned or anything and you restart your browser every so often.

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

#203

Post by v7p1Qbt1im »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #172
iudqnolq wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG is essentially Bing made more private, with a little Yandex. I use it, because I like the privacy, but I don't think they deserve the credit for search result quality.

Neither does google anymore though. Their search quality has gone hill dramatically in the last 4-5 years. It basically correlates with wikipedia no longer being the first result of most searches; it was largely replaced with commercialized garbage. Getting the highest quality, unbiased information you asked for isn't really their first priority anymore and it shows. I tried DDG when it first came out and found it un…

The reason Google, or search engines in general, seem to be getting worse in the eyes of some users, is not the result of the functioning of the engine necessarily, but rather of the content of the web itself.

The whole web is organized and optimized more and more for clicks and watch time. It would only make sense that the results seem to be correspondingly worse.

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

#204

Post by bassman9000 »

mrtksn wrote: post #50
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,…

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…

AMP is Youtube for written content. A strealined conent delivery platform prioritizing UX that the publishers failed to create themselves all these years.

Do you pay for youtube? Because the vanilla youtube experience is an ad-ridden UX nightmare.

If AMP is YouTube, AMP sucks.

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

#205

Post by wizzwizz4 »

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #53
bvda wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except if that add on blocks Google's precious ads

Ublock/adblock/abp/etc all still works in chrome

And yet only a feature-restricted version of AdBlock will continue to function when they cripple the APIs it relies on: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#iss...

They claim to be doing this for speed purposes, but it'll actually slow down the vast majority of Chrome profiles running ad blockers.

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

#206

Post by buboard »

Kiro wrote: post #169
buboard wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You clearly don't speak for the users in the developing world with bad connections. Speed is anything but irrelevant.

slow users everywhere are better served with the simple amphtml page without any of google's scripts

The major problem is the download size anyway, and most of it is google-served ads and trackers. Amp is making this asynchronous, but afaik it doesn’t get rid of the ads

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

#207

Post by KirinDave »

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…

The real challenge here is that for the most part, AMP gives a better experience to users than publishers are willing to provide. As such, Users click on AMP links and expect good things to happen. Your pitch is, "stop using Chrome so that publishers have more options for making the web slower and instrumented because it's morally right."

That is a tough sell. Users do not really care (nor should they) what publishers want to do to make sites profitable. That space is so fraught with abuse that it's not going to get any sympathy from the user side, anyways.

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

#208

Post by rossdavidh »

macinjosh wrote: post #171

I don't understand how Google's AMP business strategies are dissimilar to what Microsoft got in trouble for with Internet Explorer. Would be interested in what someone who is knowledgeable on that topic has to say.

One could argue, that it never really got Microsoft in _that_ much trouble. They retained Internet Explorer, and really all the requirements put on them by the U.S. and EU combined didn't amount to much.

Not saying it _shouldn't_ have gotten Microsoft into that much trouble, just that it did not.

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

#209

Post by mrtksn »

bassman9000 wrote: post #204
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…

AMP is Youtube for written content. A strealined conent delivery platform prioritizing UX that the publishers failed to create themselves all these years. Do you pay for youtube? Because the vanilla youtube experience is an ad-ridden UX nightmare. If AMP is YouTube, AMP sucks.

I use adblocking on Safari(mobile and desktop), so the web experience for me is very good. On the iPhone App, the ads are annoying but I do understand that this is how the content is paid for, so I am O.K. with it.

The main difference is that with many websites things jump around when on Youtube the design is clearly defined. There's no cognitive load in trying to find the content between those "subscribe" popups and menus etc.

They clearly designed their experience with the understanding that you are there to watch a video.

Actually, YouTube's website is so good that the first thing that appears on the page is the video and it starts playing when the rest of the page(like, subscribe buttons suggested videos etc.) is still loading and not rendered.

Most websites on the other hand act as if the content was the bite to lure you there and try to make you subscribe/create an account/ allow notifications/show you ads and it's their failure if you actually happen to consume the content that was promised to you from the link you clicked.

Completely different experiences.

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

#210

Post by rland »

Imagine if Cox or Comcast came up with AMP. Same technology, same idea.

If websites use the Comcast AMP framework, Comcast will cache their sites and make them faster for users. See, it's about the users! Because the Comcast AMP framework is open, and has nothing to do with the business interests of Comcast. Comcast will give a bit to open source and have a few conferences per year to make sure developers know that it's not all about the company.

I believe the fight against AMP will not be won by users or individual action -- it will be won with legislation. What are users going to do? Plain HTML pages are on the 10,000th page, below a hundred thousand AMP tracker loaded piles of shit. It is a de-facto content restriction.

Even if I use an alternate search engine -- it's results are polluted by those of Google, because 90% of search is Google. We do not have a choice.

I'm sure a Google lawyer will successfully argue that I can recieve IP addresses in the mail via U.S. post for any odd, esoteric plain text HTML pages I'd like to visit, though.

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