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

markosaric.com

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

#361

Post by criddell »

cletus wrote: post #356
criddell wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Use Google search without being logged in if you really care. AFAIK, the search is still tailored to some degree. Log out and search for "plumber" and I bet you get local results.

Is that bad? It seems obvious to me that some contextual information will lead to better search results. Chances are if someone searches for "plumber" they're more likely to want one in their local area and not, say, in Armenia. So the only issue is how much contextual information you want to give Google when you search for something.

I don't think it's bad. I was just pointing out that there may not be any such thing as a raw / non-personalized google search.

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

#362

Post by earthboundkid »

privateSFacct wrote: post #315
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,…

If you work for a media org - than you KNOW that on the non-amp pages the synchronous java script from a hundred tracking / ad platforms (why can't these sites just use ONE tracking library) CRUSH the page load times. Despite your (false) claim that google support sync javascript ad libraries "just as they do in their regular sites" this is 100% false. The amp javascript components have DOM interaction restrictions,…

> "No ad network-provided JavaScript is allowed to run inside the AMP document. Instead, the AMP runtime loads an iframe from a different origin (via iframe sandbox) as the AMP document and executes the ad network’s JS inside that iframe sandbox."

GOOGLE CONTROLS THE AD ECOSYSTEM. If they think that's a good idea, do it on regular webpages. Literally, AMP is only faster because Google provided ads are so slow that any more sane architecture can easily run circles around them.

How Google could speed up the web 5000%:

"Starting next month, all ads must be a collection of static assets with no JavaScript outside of this toolbox. We will host the ads and ensure no other JavaScript is executed."

Done.

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

#363

Post by markosaric »

sm4rk0 wrote: post #323

Marko, bravo for making that clean and readable site (and having 0 trackers, as reported by Firefox Klar)! There's one issue I noticed when clicking the links to page sections (#anchors). Those lazy-loaded images make the page scroll away from the section title I jumped to. Is it possible to fix that by having images replaced by placeholders of the same size?

Thanks for the kind words and yeah no trackers/third-party calls/cookies etc. Have tested on regular Firefox for mobile and on Firefox Preview too (you should try it if you like Klar) and it works fine on both. I'll see if I can add placeholders when all this traffic slows down. Don't dare to touch much at this time.

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

#364

Post by kingo55 »

deminature wrote: post #297
millstone wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used AMP reddit?

Yes, it's substandard, but you can easily get to the main site. Also if you're googling for an answer from Reddit, I've found the answer is often in the first few posts anyway. Reddit is probably the only case I can think of where the AMP user experience is not ideal.

Clicking through to the hamstrung Reddit on AMP and then clicking through to the actually functional site makes for an artificially high load time.

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

#365

Post by earthboundkid »

bytematic wrote: post #60
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,…

Exactly, use google amp and get higher rankings and it can increase your traffic by hundreds to thousands to millions. I hate it but its how it works

Huh, weird, it's almost like they're abusing their search monopoly to push a technology that everyone hates and is only fast when compared to their ad monopoly.

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

#366

Post by mrtksn »

arthurcolle wrote: post #353
mrtksn wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave it a try. So I searched for "Trump" in Safari mobile, the result page loaded 2.5mb. It loaded a bit more when I clicked on an AMP article and kept loading more as I jump from article to article. It did not load any data without me switching to the next article. After 10 articles, the transferred data was 28MB. I visited the Guardian's own website and it fetched 3MB. So, It looks like Google does not preload a…

How are you able to look at how much data was transferred on Safari mobile? As far as I know you can't access dev tools on mobile. Did you just change the User Agent on your computer to simulate?

You can! You can use the desktop Safari to connect to your iPhone's Safari and access full developer tools.

Just connect your iPhone to a Mac, open Safari desktop and in the Develop menu, you will see your mobile phone. When you open a page on mobile Safari, you will be able to see it from the Develop menu and when you click on it, the full Safari developer tools will open in a new window. Works just like the regular developer tools.

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

#367

Post by joshuamorton »

RonanTheGrey wrote: post #319
joshuamorton wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does amp strengthen a monopoly position?

"Use AMP or your site will not be present in mobile search results" doesn't seem like monopolistic practices to you?

A priori not anymore so than otherwise downranking slow sites. The missing piece here is how using amp is beneficial to Google or harmful to consumers/other search engines to make it anticompetative.

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

#368

Post by buboard »

gregable wrote: post #352
reaperducer wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it's a pretty well-known fact that users leave websites if they are not loading fast. Is it? The only place I've ever seen push that view is Google. I've never seen any non-Google information reflecting that.

A few references listed in this article: https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/performance/why-site-spe... - Mobify found that decreasing their homepage's load time by 100 milliseconds resulted in a 1.11% uptick in session-based conversion - Retailer AutoAnything experienced a 12-13% increase in sales after cutting page load time in half - Walmart discovered that improving page load time by one second increased convers…

those statements sound like incredible cherrypicking

does 1.11% sound a lot an is it statistically significant?

cut page in half from what to what? from 30 to 15 seconds? or from 2 to 1?

improving one second like how? from 12 to 11 or from 2 to 1? and is 2% really substantial?

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

#370

Post by earthboundkid »

deminature wrote: post #286
shadowgovt wrote: post #22

"How to make your sites faster than AMP without using AMP" leaves out "locally cache a copy of your site in a CDN that is geographically close to your users." Which is the actual mechanical part of AMP that makes it technologically interesting / valuable to content providers and countries distant from the creation of most content.

This technology has been available to anyone via Akamai, CloudFront and other edge caching networks for years. It shouldn't require Google threatening AMP to get content publishers to adopt it.

I work in the news industry and have literally never published anything to the public without a CDN. It's basic, easy, and cheap. AMP is a scam.
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