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

tonsky.me

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

#211

Post by dmitriid »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #203
dmitriid wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it benefits Google and Google alone, why do Because publishers jumped on bandwagon and started deploying AMP pages en masse. Just because someone else besides Google implemented AMP pages doesn't mean that their intent and purpose is something else than what I wrote. > What part of AMP is invalid HTML? // is invalid // script attributes are invalid I once found more, I couldn't be bothered again.

> Because publishers jumped on bandwagon and started deploying AMP pages en masse. Your conspiracy theory might make sense if the other search engines and link aggregators didn't actively encourage their link targets to also implement AMP or if they tried to extend AMP for their own purposes and were blocked by Google. Neither is the case.

It's not a conspiracy theory. It's the sad reality of the web today. You would've known it if you took more than two seconds paying attention to how AMP was developed, has been developing and is still being developed. And also how Google often holds the web hostage because of it's sheer numbers (search near-monopoly, browser share etc.).

You can also read a bit about how "great" AMP is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18627692 I've already mentioned that it's not even valid HTML. There are so many more issues with it. I will not re-iterate, you can read for yourself: https://ferdychristant.com/amp-the-missing-controversy-3b424..., https://twitter.com/lukestevens/status/963905898895699968?re... (including effing AMP for email, https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/13/amp-for-email-is-a-terribl...)

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

#212

Post by jjulius »

ayoisaiah wrote: post #186
jjulius wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... but making sure that none of them are needlessly slow by imposing constraints. Anecdotally, AMP sites always load a bit slower for me. The page will sit blank for a few seconds before finally dumping all of the content at once, as opposed to loading text immediately while it takes a moment to load the rest of the content that has a higher file-size. Without AMP, I can start reading a page before it's done loadin…

AMP on the desktop? Don't think I've seen that before. I've only seen AMP links on mobile and I don't think it's returned in desktop search results

You're correct - Google search results don't return AMP links on desktops, but that doesn't stop me from stumbling upon them.

If you come across an article you want to share from your mobile device, and it's an AMP link, it's the AMP URL that gets shared if you post it on sites like HN, FB or Reddit. If I'm browsing those pages from my desktop, clicking that link almost never redirects me to the "original" page, but loads the AMP page in the desktop browser. Sometimes getting around that is as easy as cutting out "/amp/" from the URL, other times it's a totally different URL and I'm stuck staring at a blank page for 30 seconds before it either loads, I just give up or I Google the headline/title and try to find the original page.

Forced AMP results on mobile devices also make it difficult to get to certain pages when I want them. Take Eater's 38 lists[1] that they put together. If I'm on my phone and want to find a restaurant from that list in a particular location (say if I'm out of the house and want restaurants near me), then the AMP result returns a page that doesn't include the map, only a list, which isn't very helpful. In order to get to the map, I either need to go to Eater.com and manually find it, or use something like Bing to search for it. I know that the purpose of AMP is to not load the map in an effort to increase speed, but in that instance the map is exactly what I want and AMP makes it harder to get to.

I'm not saying AMP doesn't have its benefits, but its inconveniences have outweighed them, in my experience.

[1]https://sf.eater.com/maps/best-restaurants-san-francisco-38

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

#213

Post by lern_too_spel »

dmitriid wrote: post #211
lern_too_spel wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because publishers jumped on bandwagon and started deploying AMP pages en masse. Your conspiracy theory might make sense if the other search engines and link aggregators didn't actively encourage their link targets to also implement AMP or if they tried to extend AMP for their own purposes and were blocked by Google. Neither is the case.

It's not a conspiracy theory. It's the sad reality of the web today. You would've known it if you took more than two seconds paying attention to how AMP was developed, has been developing and is still being developed. And also how Google often holds the web hostage because of it's sheer numbers (search near-monopoly, browser share etc.). You can also read a bit about how "great" AMP is: https://news.ycombinator.com/i…

Your first link to a "criticism" of AMP makes the same mistake as the author of the article, which is the whole point of my thread. It doesn't matter how heavy an AMP page is if it prerenders everything above the fold. It will appear to load faster than your text-only static page every time -- instant instead of fast. The other criticisms are also from people who do not understand this.

Meanwhile, Google's competitors have willingly signed onto AMP without any criticism of the development of the standard. Your conspiracy theory doesn't hold water.

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

#214

Post by saagarjha »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #194
saagarjha wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the only available solution to a real problem. Don't shove JavaScript and random bloat into your website? That's what I do.

That doesn't result in instant, not merely fast, page loads. That's the same mistake the author made, as I pointed out in the GGGP post.

Calling AMP pages "instant" loads is disingenuous because Google preloads them before they are opened. Google is free to do this for my website too, but they don't.

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

#215

Post by lern_too_spel »

saagarjha wrote: post #214
lern_too_spel wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't result in instant, not merely fast, page loads. That's the same mistake the author made, as I pointed out in the GGGP post.

Calling AMP pages "instant" loads is disingenuous because Google preloads them before they are opened. Google is free to do this for my website too, but they don't.

> Google is free to do this for my website too, but they don't.

As my GGGGGP post said, that is the entire point of AMP. It can be validated safe to preload, which is not possible for HTML pages in general. So no, Google, Bing, Pinterest, Baidu, LinkedIn, and other sites that preload AMP pages are not free to do this for your website unless it is written in AMP.

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

#216

Post by dmitriid »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #213
dmitriid wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a conspiracy theory. It's the sad reality of the web today. You would've known it if you took more than two seconds paying attention to how AMP was developed, has been developing and is still being developed. And also how Google often holds the web hostage because of it's sheer numbers (search near-monopoly, browser share etc.). You can also read a bit about how "great" AMP is: https://news.ycombinator.com/i…

Your first link to a "criticism" of AMP makes the same mistake as the author of the article, which is the whole point of my thread. It doesn't matter how heavy an AMP page is if it prerenders everything above the fold. It will appear to load faster than your text-only static page every time -- instant instead of fast. The other criticisms are also from people who do not understand this. Meanwhile, Google's competitor…

You keep willingly not knowing what AMP is and how it works. This conversation becomes moot. I do hope you may find two seconds and educate yourself. Perhaps read the other links, which you clearly didn't.

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

#217

Post by saagarjha »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #215
saagarjha wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling AMP pages "instant" loads is disingenuous because Google preloads them before they are opened. Google is free to do this for my website too, but they don't.

> Google is free to do this for my website too, but they don't. As my GGGGGP post said, that is the entire point of AMP. It can be validated safe to preload, which is not possible for HTML pages in general. So no, Google, Bing, Pinterest, Baidu, LinkedIn, and other sites that preload AMP pages are not free to do this for your website unless it is written in AMP.

> It can be validated safe to preload, which is not possible for HTML pages in general.

What does this even mean? My browser already preloads websites in the background, AMP or not. So assuming I don't go through Google, you could call going to my website via the address bar "instant" as well.

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

#218

Post by lern_too_spel »

saagarjha wrote: post #217
lern_too_spel wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google is free to do this for my website too, but they don't. As my GGGGGP post said, that is the entire point of AMP. It can be validated safe to preload, which is not possible for HTML pages in general. So no, Google, Bing, Pinterest, Baidu, LinkedIn, and other sites that preload AMP pages are not free to do this for your website unless it is written in AMP.

> It can be validated safe to preload, which is not possible for HTML pages in general. What does this even mean? My browser already preloads websites in the background, AMP or not. So assuming I don't go through Google, you could call going to my website via the address bar "instant" as well.

Copying my cousin commemt:

> User isn't deanonymized to the publisher, publisher analytics and ads don't register page views, page can be trivially transformed to lazy load below the fold, etc.

This is all explained in the AMP documentation itself. There was even an article about it on HN not too long ago (https://medium.com/@pbakaus/why-amp-caches-exist-cd7938da245...). People like the author who criticize AMP without knowing what problem it solves are willfully ignorant.

This all works on the open web without signing an agreement with the traffic source, unlike Facebook's and Apple's proprietary instant article solutions. That's why it has been adopted by so many other search engines and link aggregators.

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

#219

Post by lern_too_spel »

dmitriid wrote: post #216
lern_too_spel wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first link to a "criticism" of AMP makes the same mistake as the author of the article, which is the whole point of my thread. It doesn't matter how heavy an AMP page is if it prerenders everything above the fold. It will appear to load faster than your text-only static page every time -- instant instead of fast. The other criticisms are also from people who do not understand this. Meanwhile, Google's competitor…

You keep willingly not knowing what AMP is and how it works. This conversation becomes moot. I do hope you may find two seconds and educate yourself. Perhaps read the other links, which you clearly didn't.

You're the one who doesn't know the problem it solves, as many times as I've explained it. It loads pages instantly, not merely quickly. That's the whole point of the technology and the whole reason so many link aggregators use it.

I showed you that your first link didn't understand this either. Your last link isn't even about the same technology. I didn't bother clicking the other because that would surely also be a waste of time.

I have patiently explained this to you over and over because I can't stand people spreading conspiracy theories. That's how the US ended up in the mess it's in.

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

#220

Post by dmitriid »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #219
dmitriid wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep willingly not knowing what AMP is and how it works. This conversation becomes moot. I do hope you may find two seconds and educate yourself. Perhaps read the other links, which you clearly didn't.

You're the one who doesn't know the problem it solves, as many times as I've explained it. It loads pages instantly, not merely quickly. That's the whole point of the technology and the whole reason so many link aggregators use it. I showed you that your first link didn't understand this either. Your last link isn't even about the same technology. I didn't bother clicking the other because that would surely also be a…

> I didn't bother clicking the other because that would surely also be a waste of time.

Yup. That sums up your attitude perfectly.

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