AMP Has Irreparably Damaged Publishers’ Trust in Google-Led Initiatives • Hacker News Board

Re: AMP Has Irreparably Damaged Publishers’ Trust in Google-Led Initiatives

#51

Post by prox » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 10:16 AM UTC

benrapscallion wrote: post #39

ashtonkem wrote: post #30

Honestly at this point, if you trust google you’re a fool. It’s demonstrated itself to be unreliable, capricious, and absolutely willing to break the law if it thinks it can get away with it. Do business with them if you absolutely must, but under no circumstance should you actually trust them.

Seconded. As such, I’ve switched to Safari, DuckDuckGo, and Fastmail. But how does one escape their ubiquitous presence all over the web (Google analytics, ads)??? They’re like a creepy neighbor who keeps following you around.

On websites, drop GA for “simple” server stats. Or one of many options now available.

Re: AMP Has Irreparably Damaged Publishers’ Trust in Google-Led Initiatives

#52

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 10:19 AM UTC

throaway46546 wrote: post #48

vital_beach wrote: post #37

I remember EULALing my privacy away because Chrome was fast and freaking awesome. Now I have to block AMP links. I was once naive, now I'm more willing to deal with firefox

I swear google outright punishes you for using Firefox with any of their services. Major annoyance for me right now is paste is broken on their terminal emulator when connecting to a Compute Engine VM instance over SSH.

[deleted]

Re: AMP Has Irreparably Damaged Publishers’ Trust in Google-Led Initiatives

#53

Post by fiftyacorn » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 10:19 AM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #45

Animats wrote: post #22

It was clear that Google had turned to the dark side when Eric Schmidt first spoke at the Search Engine Strategies conference in 2006. Until then, SEO was the enemy. Google and Yahoo had previously sponsored a conference in 2005 on squashing search engine spam. What's new is that Google has now managed to alienate ad-supported publishers, their paying customers, as well.

Because they can. They have no competition. Like MS in the 90'. Don't worry, in 20 years, all their PR will say they are your best friend again. They will be the underdog for some unforseen reason, and will suddenly call for respecting your private life, encrypting everything and give power to the user. The way MS does it for open source today. It's the circle of life for corporations.

Yup like oil and car companies going "green(TM)"

Re: AMP Has Irreparably Damaged Publishers’ Trust in Google-Led Initiatives

#54

Post by iamacyborg » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 10:23 AM UTC

hayksaakian wrote: post #29

ctack wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they’re paying more per impression how is that shooting themselves in the foot?

advertisers pay more per impression when they can target better. Publishers show ads and get paid from advertisers. (simplified)

The problem is, the really big publishers have a cachet to the point where ad targeting works against them.

As an advertiser, why would I pay big money to target an ad to the affluent New Yorker reading audience when I can target those same people for pennies on the dollar on other websites?

Re: AMP Has Irreparably Damaged Publishers’ Trust in Google-Led Initiatives

#55

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 10:35 AM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #45

Animats wrote: post #22

It was clear that Google had turned to the dark side when Eric Schmidt first spoke at the Search Engine Strategies conference in 2006. Until then, SEO was the enemy. Google and Yahoo had previously sponsored a conference in 2005 on squashing search engine spam. What's new is that Google has now managed to alienate ad-supported publishers, their paying customers, as well.

Because they can. They have no competition. Like MS in the 90'. Don't worry, in 20 years, all their PR will say they are your best friend again. They will be the underdog for some unforseen reason, and will suddenly call for respecting your private life, encrypting everything and give power to the user. The way MS does it for open source today. It's the circle of life for corporations.

[deleted]

Re: AMP Has Irreparably Damaged Publishers’ Trust in Google-Led Initiatives

#56

Post by clusterfish » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 10:48 AM UTC

throaway46546 wrote: post #48

vital_beach wrote: post #37

I remember EULALing my privacy away because Chrome was fast and freaking awesome. Now I have to block AMP links. I was once naive, now I'm more willing to deal with firefox

I swear google outright punishes you for using Firefox with any of their services. Major annoyance for me right now is paste is broken on their terminal emulator when connecting to a Compute Engine VM instance over SSH.

Yep. Running into issues all the time in YouTube, Gmail, gdrive. Lasts for months at a time. In my case almost all related to blocking third party cookies and such, not Firefox per se. Just makes me use Google services less.

Re: AMP Has Irreparably Damaged Publishers’ Trust in Google-Led Initiatives

#57

Post by d3nj4l » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 10:50 AM UTC

throaway46546 wrote: post #48

vital_beach wrote: post #37

I remember EULALing my privacy away because Chrome was fast and freaking awesome. Now I have to block AMP links. I was once naive, now I'm more willing to deal with firefox

I swear google outright punishes you for using Firefox with any of their services. Major annoyance for me right now is paste is broken on their terminal emulator when connecting to a Compute Engine VM instance over SSH.

Oh, they won't do it blatantly, but every thing will be broken in small, barely noticeable ways - just one feature here that uses a chrome-only non standard API, just one invisible div here that destroys performance on Firefox but not on Chrome - that add up to be annoying. I clearly remember when I had to use Google Sheets heavily for work, a bunch of small yet grating bugs pushed me over the edge into using Chrome just for it. These are widely documented issues, and every time they draw scrutiny someone at Google will say "oh no it's just a bug, we'll fix it asap", and then they'll break something else. Again, and again, and again. To the point where one of the most popular extensions FF mobile just changes your user agent to Chrome's to get a flat out better search experience.

And it works, because now even large companies like Slack just don't care enough about Firefox to support major features on it.

Re: AMP Has Irreparably Damaged Publishers’ Trust in Google-Led Initiatives

#58

Post by petee » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 10:56 AM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #14

If they are really displeased with Google, and I'm sure they are, they should run a campaign to invite users of their sites to install a browser different than Chrome. If they manage to destroy Google's quasi monopoly on the browser they'll make Google less powerful overall.

Maybe developers could stop designing websites that only work on Chrome too?

I'm tired of seeing "your browser is unsupported" and denied access while using a chromium based alternative. Or broken features because someone had to have their bells and whistles

Re: AMP Has Irreparably Damaged Publishers’ Trust in Google-Led Initiatives

#59

Post by nyxaiur » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 10:57 AM UTC

Our leadership went all in and even created a special AMP agency. After cutting the losses and the promotion of endless google shills we are left with nothing except defunct code and some junior and mid level devs that are basically useless for the rest of the operation.

Re: AMP Has Irreparably Damaged Publishers’ Trust in Google-Led Initiatives

#60

Post by jefftk » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:02 AM UTC

lrem wrote: post #40

ctack wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they’re paying more per impression how is that shooting themselves in the foot?

I'm a Googler, not working on ads. The idea is that the advertiser ultimately wants to buy a certain amount of conversions. With their ad budget being roughly constant, better targeting means that you need to show fewer ads of that advertiser to get to that point. So, you're decreasing the denominator, increasing cost per impression. This is obviously oversimplified, because actual payment happens at the intermediate…

> the advertiser ultimately wants to buy a certain amount of conversions

That's not right at all for a large segment of advertising: the cheaper conversions are, the more most advertisers are willing to spend.

Imagine I currently earn a marginal profit of $10 on each conversion (widget sold etc): this means roughly I'm willing to pay up to $10 for a conversion that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Conversions that cost more than $10 are definitely not worth it to me. I have some appetite for conversions that cost close to $10, but at some point I run into (likely temporary) capacity constraints and my marginal profitability decreases. The cheaper conversions are, the more I can continue to increase volume, and so the more I'll spend.

Additionally, internet advertising is competing with other forms of advertising, and advertisers want the most cost effective medium. Increase the cost of a conversion, and the marginal advertiser shifts away from online ads.

One way to see this is to imagine that instead of talking about online ads we are talking about any other product. Raise the price (cost per conversion) and people will decrease the amount they buy.

(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)