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Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

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Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can disable it for now, but there are already some companies building their entire websites in AMP like independent.co.uk. A better solution than AMP would be to only consider raw page speed, and then use a neutral schema markup for whatever extra features Google wants to display in Google Search.

What's wrong with AMP websites? AMP is a fast subset of HTML. That's different from using Google's AMP cache.

AMP is an unethical scheme by Google to appify and control of the Web. There are many articles about it.

Here are some other pages:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+amp&t=...

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signed exchanges are a terrible idea. They take control away from publishers and let large sites (AMP caches) control small sites. Google punishes web publishers with a traffic drop unless they allow Google to serve their websites from Google's servers and include Google's JavaScript. AMP, signed exchanges, and portals can't seriously be considered real standards.

Which publishers is the control taken away? You're claiming news outlets have to be super afraid of punishment if they don't do AMP. That's empirically false, many news outlets dominate (or share the dominance) markets without doing any AMP. I don't necessarily like AMP, but claiming it's the (paraphrased) "worst thing after the black plague" is also dishonest, working on alternative solutions would be the right thin…

You've hit upon the most absurd part of these complaints. There are so many people here complaining about AMP, and not one of them in the years of AMP threads on HN have ever offered an alternative design for instant loading web pages.

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit mobile is ridiculously slow in a browser. But they did it to themselves. i.reddit.com is fast as hell. m.reddit.com loads 100x the Javascript. Thus Amp fixes a probme they created bc reasons.

In almost all situations, I prefer the mobile web over apps. But reddit's mobile offerings are _so bad_ compared to Reddit Sync. I know at some point Reddit will pull the plug on third party apps, and that's when I stop using Reddit.

They made it bad intentionally so you'd install their app

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which publishers is the control taken away? You're claiming news outlets have to be super afraid of punishment if they don't do AMP. That's empirically false, many news outlets dominate (or share the dominance) markets without doing any AMP. I don't necessarily like AMP, but claiming it's the (paraphrased) "worst thing after the black plague" is also dishonest, working on alternative solutions would be the right thin…

You've hit upon the most absurd part of these complaints. There are so many people here complaining about AMP, and not one of them in the years of AMP threads on HN have ever offered an alternative design for instant loading web pages.

It's really easy to get a 100 score on page speed with tools like Gatsby (and similar). People would implement faster pages if they could get in the carousel from it. For custom display in the SERPs, a neutral schema could be used.

Publishers don't want to be forced into using "instant loading web pages" if it fundamentally breaks the nature of the WWW and takes control away from them and gives it to a few large companies (AMP caches).

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signed exchanges are a terrible idea. They take control away from publishers and let large sites (AMP caches) control small sites. Google punishes web publishers with a traffic drop unless they allow Google to serve their websites from Google's servers and include Google's JavaScript. AMP, signed exchanges, and portals can't seriously be considered real standards.

Which publishers is the control taken away? You're claiming news outlets have to be super afraid of punishment if they don't do AMP. That's empirically false, many news outlets dominate (or share the dominance) markets without doing any AMP. I don't necessarily like AMP, but claiming it's the (paraphrased) "worst thing after the black plague" is also dishonest, working on alternative solutions would be the right thin…

I'm not only referring to news outlets.

AMP takes control away from web publishers by forcing them to allow anyone to serve their content (signed exchanges). Publishers no longer have control over how their sites get served (for example, no more server-side logs, because Google has forced you to let them serve your site).

It allows large sites (like Google) to have more control over smaller sites by putting back buttons at the top of your website in order to take them back to Google Search. The related "portals" scheme is the new "can you open all external links in a frame?" and small sites are going to be hurt the most.

Hardly anyone would implement that garbage if they weren't being threatened by Google with a traffic drop. If the ultimatum were "just make your website fast and add some schema markup to get in the carousel" then that would be fine. Forcing the entire Web to change to a restrictive format and load JavaScript from Google's servers, and seizing control of how websites are hosted is terribly damaging to the Web itself.

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#236
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Google Search team is always ranking pages to get the best metric (ctr, time-spend-on-website), s.t. it indicates that users are happy with the result. If any feature/change introduces a regression, they will not ship it. (That kinda indicates that people outside of hn actually like amp) Keep in mind that: amp team != search team.

Time spent on website? Is that why answers are always buried in long articles or walls of text? Seems a horrible metric.

Google uses that to a limited extent - if someone returns to the search results within a few second of clicking a link, the link wasn't what they wanted.

Publishers definitely use it more heavily.

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've hit upon the most absurd part of these complaints. There are so many people here complaining about AMP, and not one of them in the years of AMP threads on HN have ever offered an alternative design for instant loading web pages.

It's really easy to get a 100 score on page speed with tools like Gatsby (and similar). People would implement faster pages if they could get in the carousel from it. For custom display in the SERPs, a neutral schema could be used. Publishers don't want to be forced into using "instant loading web pages" if it fundamentally breaks the nature of the WWW and takes control away from them and gives it to a few large comp…

A 100 score is far from instant, which is what users want and what they get with non-open-web proprietary solutions like Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News.

Publishers have to meet users where the users want, and AMP is easily the best of the options because by implementing it once, publishers provide instant loading through multiple link aggregators. If I want to write my own link aggregator, I don't need the clout of a FAANG to get publishers to do a data integration for instant loading pages — I can just implement an AMP cache and use the AMP pages they have already published. AMP levels the playing field.

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really easy to get a 100 score on page speed with tools like Gatsby (and similar). People would implement faster pages if they could get in the carousel from it. For custom display in the SERPs, a neutral schema could be used. Publishers don't want to be forced into using "instant loading web pages" if it fundamentally breaks the nature of the WWW and takes control away from them and gives it to a few large comp…

A 100 score is far from instant, which is what users want and what they get with non-open-web proprietary solutions like Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. Publishers have to meet users where the users want, and AMP is easily the best of the options because by implementing it once, publishers provide instant loading through multiple link aggregators. If I want to write my own link aggregator, I don't need the…

Google AMP is not entirely non-proprietary. It requires for everyone to load JavaScript from Google's servers, and they punish users for blocking it with an 8-second loading delay. AMP is a serious abuse of the word "open".

Google doesn't have a right to damage/destroy the Web or take control away from publishers so that Google can compete with Facebook and Apple. That is not a reasonable argument.

Publishers don't want AMP and the project would fail (as it should) if Google weren't strong-arming everyone to use it with a threat of traffic loss.

The Web is not a Google product, but Google is treating it like one. The company has seriously lost its way.

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental change is that now the content comes from Google's servers. Google is hosting the Internet. Of course Google can't host illegal content on their service, right? And won't host content that goes against a future AMP user agreement... From there they can tighten the screws against competitors, or future attempts at privacy, or basically anything they get away with.

Do you also think that CDNs are bad, since you end up accessing content from the first parties?

With CDNs I can decide which to use for my site, if any. If AMP gets established as the "new HTML", the new way Internet content is provided, then it's under Google's control.

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 100 score is far from instant, which is what users want and what they get with non-open-web proprietary solutions like Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. Publishers have to meet users where the users want, and AMP is easily the best of the options because by implementing it once, publishers provide instant loading through multiple link aggregators. If I want to write my own link aggregator, I don't need the…

Google AMP is not entirely non-proprietary. It requires for everyone to load JavaScript from Google's servers, and they punish users for blocking it with an 8-second loading delay. AMP is a serious abuse of the word "open". Google doesn't have a right to damage/destroy the Web or take control away from publishers so that Google can compete with Facebook and Apple. That is not a reasonable argument. Publishers don't w…

> and they punish users for blocking it with an 8-second loading delay

Google and the other search engines don't show AMP links if you have JavaScript disabled because it is impossible to prerender them without JavaScript, so you shouldn't even see AMP links without JavaScript. This criticism is nonsensical.

> Google doesn't have a right to damage/destroy the Web or take control away from publishers so that Google can compete with Facebook and Apple

The publishers get to decide if they want to integrate with Facebook, Apple, and all the AMP caches. The former two they have less control over because they only go to one company and don't have open governance.

> Publishers don't want AMP

They want the first two even less, but I don't see anybody complaining about that. As I said earlier, the problem for publishers is that users demand instant loading. AMP at least lets the publishers control analytics, ads, A/B testing, etc.

But we've gotten way off track again. Users demand instant loading pages. How do you solve it? Would you rather have Google require the publishers directly integrate with them as Apple and Facebook have done and not allow other link aggregators to benefit? Users also like RSS, which takes even more control away from publishers, does not allow above-the-fold loading optimizations for users, and has a much less rich experience, but nobody here has ever complained about RSS.

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