The Bullshit Web

Specifically with this paragraph:

> It seems ridiculous to argue that AMP pages aren’t actually faster than their plain HTML counterparts because it’s so easy to see these pages are actually very fast. And there’s a good reason for that. It isn’t that there’s some sort of special sauce that is being done with the AMP format, or some brilliant piece of programmatic rearchitecting. No, it’s just because AMP restricts the kinds of elements that can be used on a page and severely limits the scripts that can be used. That means that webpages can’t be littered with arbitrary and numerous tracking and advertiser scripts, and that, of course, leads to a dramatically faster page.

> ...[supporting evidence]

> So: if you have a reasonably fast host and don’t litter your page with scripts, you, too, can have AMP-like results without creating a copy of your site dependent on Google and their slow crawl to gain control over the infrastructure of the web. But you can’t get into Google’s special promoted slots for AMP websites for reasons that are almost certainly driven by self-interest.

The point of AMP is exactly this restricted spec - it's so Google can statically verify that your site follows their performance guidelines. You can write a really fast website if you want, but unless you're willing to let Google make sure that you're actually doing so they're not going to take it on faith.

Professional newswebsites or alike don't work for free.

But the majority of people is not willing to pay.

So ads and tracking and more ads and more ads. As this is the default buisness for "free" services. You pay with your data and attention, nothing new.

I would like this to change to the way Wikipedia works for example. No ads. Voluntarily payment. No paywall, free for everyone, even though only some people pay.

But micropayment services are not good enough, nor widespread and the average mindset is not there either.

But it could go there slowly, once people realize the true cost of all those "free" sercices and that paywalls are not nice either.

And besides, even though I agree to the sentiment of the aeticle, the comparison of plain text to an styled article with pictures ... is not really valid. I like sometimes reading plain text, but I enjoy a well done website more. With nice fonts, styles and pictures fitting to the flow of information and not as a distraction. I just don't like advertisement in general, nor ads using my cpu to analyse me.

The bloat actually serves a lot of people, directly or indirectly. It is like packaging, everyone complains about packaging and plastic but when you are in the supermarket do you take that box that is already opened or that tin with the dent?

There are lots of stakeholders behind the bloat. Including the bullshit jobs people of the online world, e.g. the SEO people, the people in marketing and the programmers. In my opinion the cookie-cutter way of churning out websites is being done by a lot of people that are barking up the wrong tree on how to do it with knowledge of modern web technologies rarely gained. Buried in what you see is a bundle of reset scripts, IE6 polyfills and other stuff that nobody dares to touch as it has been there since 2009 and nobody knows what it does, within the company that wrote the CMS or in the agency that adds the 'theme'. It is worrying really with the best people can do is to add layers of ever more complex 'build' tools to mash this cruft into something they don't have to think about.

P.S. There is no way I would be in an econobox if travelling through the American West, give me one of your trucks, SUVs or even a sedan any day. In Europe though, tables are turned, a country lane or a city stranded in a U.S. vehicle would be a special kind of hell.

It's really the ultimate condemnation of modern web design that this feature is so useful.

Edit: won't help the data-consumption though, as I believe it can only be enabled after the page has loaded