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Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse

theregister.com

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Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse

#41

Post by tyingq »

BrianOnHN wrote: post #15
ehsankia wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is also surprised that people are still using AMP now that it's no longer required, because in the author's mind, AMP is so god dang awful that when given the chance, everyone would immediately want to get rid of it. Some people are so deeply lost in their hatred of AMP that they cannot even consider for a moment that maybe, just maybe, AMP actually does work well for some people. I'm glad it's no longer…

My opinion is regularly "unpopular" here on HN, but I happen to love AMP. Sometimes constraints can be a blessing. Don't want to over engineer? Use AMP. Of course you can over engineer anything, but why would you when [almost] everything you need is easy to grab a la carte.

To me, nobody would willingly give up the most important part of their page's real estate (the top X pixels) and the branding value of what it says in the url bar...unless there was a tradeoff that made it worth it. As far as I can tell, carousel placement was that tradeoff. Until recently, you weren't allowed in unless you were on AMP.

Also, I'm not sure this is well known, but if you navigate to a web page from the carousel, Google traps the left and right swipe events on YOUR page. Either sends to user to a competitor. That's a pretty big compromise you would only make because the traffic boost from the carousel was worth it.

Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse

#42

Post by bruce343434 »

wyager wrote: post #28
BrianOnHN wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope not. Regional based internet could become the next major factor when it comes to inequality. For example, don't hire people from Region A because they can't access the best resources located in Region B.

This is the future the EU chose when they started imposing EU law on foreign internet companies.

If you serve something in another country, you abide by their rules. Be it a physical product or a virtual one, which includes a website or webservice.

Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse

#43

Post by justinph »

Fun think about core web vitals and amp: AMP pages will _always_ win core web vitals, because they're measured from google's CDN, where they can be pre-rendered. Unless the page is motherfuckingwebsite.com, the AMP version is going to score better in every metric than a non-AMP version. Core Web Vitals just cements AMP as a shortcut to performance.

Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse

#44

Post by ehnto »

blowski wrote: post #36
jsnell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose they source that data from other browsers? Do you e.g. think Apple and Mozilla would provide them with a suitable feed, at a high enough granularity to be useful? And if they did, what do you think the public reaction would be to such data sharing?

That's phrasing the problem in a format where the only solution is Google. Re-phrasing it as "What else can a search engine do to stop being gamed?" opens up a lot more options. The real problem here is not 'gamed search engines' but too much centralisation, with Google owning the search engine, the browser, and the ad platform. This solution makes that problem worse, not better.

The entire premise of the speed metrics influencing search results is to make sure Google search is a fast experience. A decade ago, it seemed at first that the point was a benevolent attempt to make the web a better place using their influence, but I can't accept that anymore.

Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse

#45

Post by mikro2nd »

ehsankia wrote: post #14
judge2020 wrote: post #7

In case you're trying to find what the replacement is: > Unfortunately, there are problems with AMP's replacement as well. And those problems go right back to what was wrong with AMP in the first place: Google is in charge of it. So the problem isn't core web vitals nor AMP itself, but the fact that everyone uses Google and they control the results on google.com. We can now go back to our regularly scheduled discussi…

The article is also surprised that people are still using AMP now that it's no longer required, because in the author's mind, AMP is so god dang awful that when given the chance, everyone would immediately want to get rid of it. Some people are so deeply lost in their hatred of AMP that they cannot even consider for a moment that maybe, just maybe, AMP actually does work well for some people. I'm glad it's no longer…

> "because in the author's mind, AMP is so god dang awful that when given the chance, everyone would immediately want to get rid of it"

You must be a mind reader, then, because nowhere in the article does the author state or imply that. Indeed, they go out of their way to point out why it's unlikely in the extreme that any publisher will bother, and points out why that's essentially a victory for Google -- indeed this might be the essential point that the author is making in this article.

Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse

#46

Post by Spivak »

blacktriangle wrote: post #8
cunthorpe wrote: post #3

So the problem is that “Google is in charge.” Sorry but I don’t think that’s “worse” than AMP at all. Google was in charge of that and it hijacked URLs. Clickbait.

It's not just Google, it doesn't matter if the company in change is all sunshine and rainbows today, who knows what they will do tomorrow (looking at you freenode). Centralized level of control like this is anathama to the whole future of the web.

I feel like you picked a bad example because while Freenode is a centralized service the community immediately routed around the crazy in the span of like two weeks. Centralization isn't really that big of a problem in practice, it's lock-in.

Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse

#47

Post by Spivak »

BigBalli wrote: post #29

"some arbitrary set of performance standards"? Less than 3s load time, reasonable DOM size, and low FID are all widely accepted as a "good UX". Just another veiled article criticizing Google's dominance rather than a technical one.

Look, you're right that this is essentially Google making everyone eat their vegetables but isn't it a little wild that this single company has so much control over the internet that they can basically make sweeping decrees like this?

Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse

#48

Post by jeffbee »

tyingq wrote: post #41
BrianOnHN wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion is regularly "unpopular" here on HN, but I happen to love AMP. Sometimes constraints can be a blessing. Don't want to over engineer? Use AMP. Of course you can over engineer anything, but why would you when [almost] everything you need is easy to grab a la carte.

To me, nobody would willingly give up the most important part of their page's real estate (the top X pixels) and the branding value of what it says in the url bar...unless there was a tradeoff that made it worth it. As far as I can tell, carousel placement was that tradeoff. Until recently, you weren't allowed in unless you were on AMP. Also, I'm not sure this is well known, but if you navigate to a web page from the…

There's nothing about AMP that requires anyone to give up any part of their page. The presentation you are talking about is a feature of only certain AMP hosting services. A lot of organizations host their own AMP sites, like Conde Nast magazines. Example:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/qualcomms-new-snapdr...

Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse

#49

Post by [deleted] »

tyingq wrote: post #6

I vehemently disagree that "Core Web Vitals" would be worse. I'm as wary of Google as the author, but Google's page performance tools have a reasonably good history of staying in their lane of just measuring performance. Having "page performance" as a non-trivial weighted factor in how pages are ranked just makes sense to me. Even if CWV is somewhat flawed, I'd much rather optimize for that than give control of my pa…

[deleted]

Re: Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse

#50

Post by topicseed »

AMP was great for those with very low speed internet. The philosophy and implementation of AMP can be questioned (URL masking, content stored away from the origin) but it did show that users really wanted to click on pages that loaded fast.

Core Web Vitals, as a publisher myself, are a nightmare. But at least we know what goes wrong as it's clearly laid right in front of the developer's eyes. So we go and fix thing after thing. And some pages just won't get fixed because of some ads.

The point is CWV do make the web better. Those vital metrics are actually making sense (CLS, LCP).

I understand the reticence and reserve at who is behind both these efforts that AMP and CWV are, but they forced me to make my websites faster, cleaner.

Was it a panicky few months trying to get this sorted? Yes. Did we have to speak to ad networks so they fix up some ad delivery? Yes. Will Google really rank us better thanks to that? Maybe. Couldn't we have done it from our own accord? The incentive wasn't big enough I guess.

But today, the fact is, the experience on all of our websites is very much clearly improved.

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