How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by brianzelip » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #36

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…

> Stop using chrome. Honestly, wtf?! Firefox is awesome. I think plenty of people have found Mozilla to have made some poor decisions over the years. It feels as though you have to choose between two options that aren't great, so is there a point in switching? Take the add ons situation. At least on Chrome I can run my own add ons.

Yes there is a point to switching. Mozilla is 10000000x more on our side.

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

#42

Post by mellavora » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

maxaf wrote: post #7

> Don't use Google search. This is easier said than done, as the other search engines are still not as good as Google, even though Google's results have been getting worse. This may be a controversial opinion, but it's not what my comment is about. I'm going to make a more scandalous suggestion. Don't use search engines at all. The idea that a centralized one-size-fits-all search engine is necessary is preposterous.…

And as far as the "little guy" goes, there is plenty of research on network science which shows that the (original) Page Rank algorithm does not provide meaningful rankings for anything except big guys. The algo accurately scores/ranks the most connected web pages, but scores for the "long tails" which make up 95% of the web are pretty close to random.

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

#43

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

ilikehurdles wrote: post #37

nailer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stop using chrome. FF is great, but it's also worth pointing out that Edge has all the Google adware removed and better privacy. There was a post from Eric Lawrence detailing all the Google stuff they removed a little while back, it was about 25 separate components. There's telemetry though so make your own mind if you're cool with that.

Call me when Edge is on OS X or Linux (and ideally open-source, like Firefox). I imagine a lot of the hn userbase, myself included, doesn't rely on Windows for their day-to-day work.

[deleted]

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

#44

Post by 40four » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

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…

Preach brother preach!

I made this move myself many months ago & never looked back. There is basically nothing I miss about dropping chrome/ google search. My web experience is indiscernible using Firefox & DDG.

One of the only minor things I've had to adjust to is prefixing searches with my local city & state when I'm searching for things in my hometown (Imagine that! My search engine website isn't tracking my physical location!). A small price to pay for a HUGE gain in privacy & peace of mind, knowing I'm no longer being exploited and rolled up into a package, sold to advertisers.

I got so sick of seeing targeted ads in EVERY website I visit. Something I searched the day before. Maybe a website I visited a few days ago. Then I have to look at ads for those things for the next week straight!? No thanks.

After making two super easy changes, Chrome -> Firefox & Google search -> DDG, I almost NEVER see creepy, annoying targeted ads anymore. It's amazing!

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

#45

Post by illnewsthat » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 3:42 PM UTC

fouc wrote: post #33

Another way to fight back against Google in general is to stop using Chrome and stop using google search. Also stop using auto-update. Promote a diversity of browsers and browser versions.

I don't think recommending people to stop using automatic updates is a good thing because it likely means users will not receive security updates.

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

#46

Post by minikites » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 3:43 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #36

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…

> Stop using chrome. Honestly, wtf?! Firefox is awesome. I think plenty of people have found Mozilla to have made some poor decisions over the years. It feels as though you have to choose between two options that aren't great, so is there a point in switching? Take the add ons situation. At least on Chrome I can run my own add ons.

>I think plenty of people have found Mozilla to have made some poor decisions over the years.

And Google hasn't?

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

#47

Post by bvda » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 3:44 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #36

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…

> Stop using chrome. Honestly, wtf?! Firefox is awesome. I think plenty of people have found Mozilla to have made some poor decisions over the years. It feels as though you have to choose between two options that aren't great, so is there a point in switching? Take the add ons situation. At least on Chrome I can run my own add ons.

Except if that add on blocks Google's precious ads

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

#48

Post by LoSboccacc » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

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…

> Firefox is awesome.

it is doing great now, but lost a great deal of marketshare precisely because it was a slow, bloated mess

> FF dev tools are awesome.

debatable. chrome hot code replace in debug is a great asset. mounting a local workspace to synchronize changes is situational, but when you can leverage it it's great. firefox code view's "find in files" only search linked javascript, chrome search everywhere so it can catches references in inlined javascript

I work with both regularly, for personal usage I prefer firefox, for the obvious implications, but I find a lot less friction in developing using chrome.

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

#49

Post by AdmiralAsshat » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #36

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…

> Stop using chrome. Honestly, wtf?! Firefox is awesome. I think plenty of people have found Mozilla to have made some poor decisions over the years. It feels as though you have to choose between two options that aren't great, so is there a point in switching? Take the add ons situation. At least on Chrome I can run my own add ons.

I suppose my feeling is that this is the same kind of reductive reasoning behind the "same thing, both sides" mentality of American politics.

Candidate A: Multiple accusations of bribery, frequently posts racist/sexist/Anti-Semitic/Islamophobic memes on his Twitter account, and sponsored multiple pieces of reprehensible legislation during his tenure in office.

Candidate B: Refuses to tip more than 10%, ever.

One seems objectively worse than the other, and yet the average voter gets to say, "Oh, well since they're both bad in some way, I can vote for Candidate A with a clear conscience because I like his views on X."

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

#50

Post by mrtksn » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

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 all these web libraries were about providing a different way to do the same thing. No one ever created anything for the users, in fact, AMP is the first web technology that improves the user experience. It's loading fast and not too much stuff happens to display a text and an image.

Web people are mad at Google and I think they should be but all this happens because the web publishers refuse to compete on User Experience. They all optimize for the clickbitiest title or controversial topic and Google came and steamrolled their publishing tech.

I can't really blame Google for this one, you can check it out - I am critical of Google but I am more critical of the news business or the web tech community that optimized for very bad KPI that destroyed democracy, made web unpleasant and are now crying because of someone demolished their low-quality business.

From USERS PERSPECTIVE, AMP is a godsend. You can quickly view and skim low-quality content. The alternative is slowly viewing and skimming low-quality content.

It seems like the web technologists are unaware that they are dealing with real human beings, optimizing blindly for page views and CPMs.

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