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Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

shkspr.mobi

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Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#31

Post by tehwebguy »

sintaxi wrote: post #12

I can't help but feel AMP is a step in the wrong direction and was quite possibly a disingenuous play from Google from the get-go. URL highjacking is harmful for the web and I can't for the life of me understand how this project could get past the initial stages without that drawback being understood.

Yeah if I wanted to use some crappy reader I would have installed it. It's not just a website issue, it's a pain for users too!

Can Google just give me an option to say "I'm a big boy and I can use the internet right"?

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#32

Post by jc4p »

@edent - what web server are you using? I wouldn't bother with any Wordpress plugins, but if you're using Apache or something you should be able to `mod_rewrite` pages ending in `/amp` to the same page minus the `/amp`, which _should_ work right? Hopefully then Google will notice the 301s and catch up.

Posting this here because in the comments on the blog post he asked for any code that might help with that, I think something like:

`RewriteRule (.+)/amp/$ $1`

might work

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#33

Post by tinodotim »

EricBurnett wrote: post #11

This post seems to conflate two ideas (1) AMP being an insufficient implementation (update-ping not working, and that being an awkward pattern anyways) and (2) AMP being actively harmful to the web ecosystem in principle. (1) Comments on the implementation I don't know nearly enough to contest. It's a new technology, and will take a lot of changes in and out of Google to get right. It's also early days - continue rai…

>I used to be in Ads, though not on AMP.

Maybe I misread that, but for me it sums AMP up in quite a good way: It's not really about making the web better, it's about more admoney for Google, if a former ads guy has to point out he didn't work on the AMP project there ;)

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#34

Post by edent »

hannob wrote: post #30

AMP is the result of webmasters being unable to provide any kind of reasonable site performance. Which isn't hard. Don't include content from dozens or hundreds of thirdparty hosts. Don't do crazy amounts of super slow javascript. If people would do that there would be no need for AMP. The whole concept is mostly "Google tells people their webpages suck and puts them into a cage where they can guarantee that they don…

(I'm the author of the blog post)

I agree with you. My site was already fairly lightweight, but I wanted to see if AMP improved things and made a better user experience.

It made it slightly faster, but other than that, didn't create a big enough impact for me to notice.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#35

Post by PaulHoule »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #23
PaulHoule wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serving everything from one hostname means (i) you don't get 20 DNS lookups to serve a page, one of which might hang up for 5 seconds; (ii) you can use a protocol like http/2 to avoid TCP and SSL renegotiations; (iii) you can stop people from loading up pages with 20MB of Javascript. There is no doubt that AMP is fast. The other angle is how it reinforces Google's position for advertising, analytics, search, video an…

I guess my question then becomes "why does this require AMP?". I mean, I can build a site using standard technologies that doesn't perform 20 DNS lookups or require 20MB of javascript to display. I can do it with 0B Javascript if you really want. Is AMP really about encouraging best practises rather than introducing some new revolutionary technology?

It is a syndication format.

If you wanted to build a mobile directory or search engine you could make your own AMP server and do something like what Google does.

Google gets more gain out of it than anybody else because of their dominance of that space, having proven monetization methods in place, etc. If the shared Google result is displayed on the Google network they can reuse the same TCP connection, which gives them an edge.

You are free to build fast pages with web technology, in fact that is what I do. Most people seem to have a hard time with it, particularly because they include a huge amount of stuff using Javascript inclusions from third party sites and this is a critical technology since this is where the money comes from.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#36

Post by EricBurnett »

tinodotim wrote: post #33
EricBurnett wrote: post #11

This post seems to conflate two ideas (1) AMP being an insufficient implementation (update-ping not working, and that being an awkward pattern anyways) and (2) AMP being actively harmful to the web ecosystem in principle. (1) Comments on the implementation I don't know nearly enough to contest. It's a new technology, and will take a lot of changes in and out of Google to get right. It's also early days - continue rai…

>I used to be in Ads, though not on AMP. Maybe I misread that, but for me it sums AMP up in quite a good way: It's not really about making the web better, it's about more admoney for Google, if a former ads guy has to point out he didn't work on the AMP project there ;)

You read correctly, but it also doesn't tell the full story. I've edited to be "not related to AMP" to try to convey this better.

In short: AMP itself is not part of Ads, but there is a group within Ads focussing on AMP - because one of the biggest blockers to AMP adoption is (was?) getting ads supported within the model.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#37

Post by ominous »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #23
PaulHoule wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serving everything from one hostname means (i) you don't get 20 DNS lookups to serve a page, one of which might hang up for 5 seconds; (ii) you can use a protocol like http/2 to avoid TCP and SSL renegotiations; (iii) you can stop people from loading up pages with 20MB of Javascript. There is no doubt that AMP is fast. The other angle is how it reinforces Google's position for advertising, analytics, search, video an…

I guess my question then becomes "why does this require AMP?". I mean, I can build a site using standard technologies that doesn't perform 20 DNS lookups or require 20MB of javascript to display. I can do it with 0B Javascript if you really want. Is AMP really about encouraging best practises rather than introducing some new revolutionary technology?

Encouraging? No. Enforcing.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#38

Post by invisible »

EricBurnett wrote: post #11

This post seems to conflate two ideas (1) AMP being an insufficient implementation (update-ping not working, and that being an awkward pattern anyways) and (2) AMP being actively harmful to the web ecosystem in principle. (1) Comments on the implementation I don't know nearly enough to contest. It's a new technology, and will take a lot of changes in and out of Google to get right. It's also early days - continue rai…

Although in theory AMP makes sense, I think the issue is actually more broad than just mobile. On desktop, lots of people rely on an ad blocker to make sites usable again. That mobile doesn't have a way to block ads is probably a failure of Google, Apple and other players to allow extensions.

Google has a majority share of the first impression for ads so it's hard for me to really understand how they can't just strong arm other advertisers and other networks into having better ads. Maybe that's the AMP play but it's a pretty weak appeal to consumers and (as evident from this thread) publishers. Ad blockers proliferating are a response to this inaction in my mind.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#39

Post by revelation »

tlrobinson wrote: post #27

AMP should be an optimization for browsers that support it, that way: 1. They don't have to hijack the URL. I understand the technical reasons for this, but it's unforgivable. 2. Browsers can provide an easy way to view the original/full content. 3. Users can easily disable AMP in their browser if they want.

It's not like Google particularly cares for 1. I still get a ridiculous Google-redirector URL when copying a link from the search results that has enough entropy to uniquely identify every single atom in the universe 2^128 times over.

Despite showing the correct link in the status bar. It's a scummy dark pattern that needs to die.

Re: Google’s AMP is a gilded cage

#40

Post by jamies888888 »

jc4p wrote: post #32

@edent - what web server are you using? I wouldn't bother with any Wordpress plugins, but if you're using Apache or something you should be able to `mod_rewrite` pages ending in `/amp` to the same page minus the `/amp`, which _should_ work right? Hopefully then Google will notice the 301s and catch up. Posting this here because in the comments on the blog post he asked for any code that might help with that, I think…

Yep, I just posted almost exactly this on the blog.
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