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Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

danielmiessler.com

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Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#71

Post by infogulch »

vorpalhex wrote: post #55
interfacesketch wrote: post #20

Do we really need Instant Articles (Facebook) and AMP (Google) when we can accomplish fast loading pages with plain, uncomplicated HTML and CSS? I feel that many web developers don't realise that simple HTML and CSS is often all you need to make clear, fast loading pages. No complicated tricks or techniques required. You can make the page reasonably pleasant in appearance too. Think of the sites you often visit: news…

I mean, really, that's most of AMP: a restriction on a bunch of elements that may slow things down and a bit of special mark up so things can be further accelerated. If most websites actually did load quickly, then I don't think AMP would have a reason to exist. But if most websites can't manage to slim down their bloat, then one potential answer may be to take away some of their toys (and I'm not saying it's the rig…

Ok, so the solution is to create a standard subset of elements and create an open tool to test your site against the standard. If your page meets the requirements it gets the pagerank boost. If it doesn't meet the requirements somewhere then it points out what you need to change. No need for AMP.

Why wouldn't this work?

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#72

Post by dragonwriter »

davydka wrote: post #59
wffurr wrote: post #48

I love AMP because I can easily tell which sites will actually load fast and give me the info I wanted directly from the search results page. Publishers are still able to track pageviews and serve ads, so I don't get what the hullaballoo is all about here. There's nothing in the AMP spec that stops links from working. I just searched for "Is Google AMP a good thing" on my mobile, and got the OP's post as the first re…

It's true that loading fast and giving you the info you wanted directly from the search results page is a good thing. It is also important to realize there's a trade off happening where you're further locked into Google and their ecosystem. It's a pretty dramatic change to the way search has worked up until now. It more mimics the way internal webviews work in Apps like Twitter and Facebook apps.

> It is also important to realize there's a trade off happening where you're further locked into Google and their ecosystem

How am I locked in? Google isn't the authoritative host of AMP content, nor are they the only party running an AMP cache, nor does the existence of an AMP copy of a page prevent me from accessing the regular web copy.

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#73

Post by elsewhen »

vorpalhex wrote: post #55
interfacesketch wrote: post #20

Do we really need Instant Articles (Facebook) and AMP (Google) when we can accomplish fast loading pages with plain, uncomplicated HTML and CSS? I feel that many web developers don't realise that simple HTML and CSS is often all you need to make clear, fast loading pages. No complicated tricks or techniques required. You can make the page reasonably pleasant in appearance too. Think of the sites you often visit: news…

I mean, really, that's most of AMP: a restriction on a bunch of elements that may slow things down and a bit of special mark up so things can be further accelerated. If most websites actually did load quickly, then I don't think AMP would have a reason to exist. But if most websites can't manage to slim down their bloat, then one potential answer may be to take away some of their toys (and I'm not saying it's the rig…

google could have opted to create a standard that matches the amp standard, but not host the pages, and not put a "X" bar at the top, and not create new urls. they could have put the lightning icon on the serps next to all pages that are fully compliant with the standard.

the difference in speed between google-hosted amp and what i suggest above would be minimal.

the reason google didnt do it this way is because amp is not about speed. speed is just the thing they pitch to you to get you to look past all the negative aspects of the system.

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#74

Post by greglindahl »

vorpalhex wrote: post #53
lox wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They penalize slow sites, its very different.

If all websites fall into one of two categories: fast or slow, and you penalize one, it's the same as helping the other and vice versa.

The world isn't that simple. Search engines know how fast their fetches are all of the time, but they only know how fast a javascript-heavy site is when the search engine crawls with javascript on -- which is rarely.

And by construction, AMP pages are easy to analyze without having to execute anything.

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#76

Post by kyrra »

djrogers wrote: post #37
mark242 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay but let's be realistic-- you are not a major publisher trying to make money off these pages. You can say "yes my page loads in 100k and 300ms until DOMContentLoaded" all you want, that doesn't change the fact that when you slap a couple of pieces of advertising on there, it's going to slow down. To give you an idea-- the New York Times page without any advertising on it is 2MB and has a DOMContentLoaded event at…

> you are not a major publisher trying to make money off these pages. Hate to break it to you, but major publishers aren't making any money of the AMP'd version of their pages - most of the monetization is stripped out, and readers aren't even actually on their site so they won't stay and click around.

The spec for amp specifically has an "amp-ad" tag for displaying ads. There are multiple ways they can be shown in an AMP page. The nice thing about AMP ads is they will not cause the page to change layout/flow as they load. I believe a size must be declared for ads to prevent bad behavior.

https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-ad

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#77

Post by macandcheese »

wffurr wrote: post #48

I love AMP because I can easily tell which sites will actually load fast and give me the info I wanted directly from the search results page. Publishers are still able to track pageviews and serve ads, so I don't get what the hullaballoo is all about here. There's nothing in the AMP spec that stops links from working. I just searched for "Is Google AMP a good thing" on my mobile, and got the OP's post as the first re…

But, you don't actually get to their page. Once you click on an AMP link on Google's SERP, I've found it impossible to actually "open full site" as you might expect to be able to do. It's also annoying to try and share a search result link only to have it be an AMP redirect.

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#78

Post by 27182818284 »

There is a lot of hostility lately toward AMP it seems like. I personally really enjoy it and have found myself now choosing AMP articles over non-article because I know the mobile experience won't suck.

One thing I noticed in the author's post: The author mentions that "The content loads off of Google’s own server, not from the website itself." I don't think that is correct unless you use choose to use the AMP-cache. For example, if you

    curl https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/23/donald-trump-first-orders-trans-pacific-partnership-tpp
You get back the content such as "Nancy Pelosi, Democratic..."

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#79

Post by valarauca1 »

mark242 wrote: post #34
interfacesketch wrote: post #20

Do we really need Instant Articles (Facebook) and AMP (Google) when we can accomplish fast loading pages with plain, uncomplicated HTML and CSS? I feel that many web developers don't realise that simple HTML and CSS is often all you need to make clear, fast loading pages. No complicated tricks or techniques required. You can make the page reasonably pleasant in appearance too. Think of the sites you often visit: news…

Okay but let's be realistic-- you are not a major publisher trying to make money off these pages. You can say "yes my page loads in 100k and 300ms until DOMContentLoaded" all you want, that doesn't change the fact that when you slap a couple of pieces of advertising on there, it's going to slow down. To give you an idea-- the New York Times page without any advertising on it is 2MB and has a DOMContentLoaded event at…

    page without any advertising on it is 2MB and has a 
    DOMContentLoaded event at 1.29s

    With advertising, it is 3.9MB and 1.82s
This does not support your core argument about ads being the issue.

The ads load in 602ms.

The page loads in 1290ms

The ads are 1.9MB of data

The page is 2MB

Yes the ads are very heavy. But how are the ads slowing the page down exactly? The page is already INCREDIBLY slow without them.

Only ~30% of load time is spent with displaying the ads. The other ~60% is what ever brain damage the NYT web team cooked up. If anything you are enforcing parent poster's point.

Re: Google AMP Is Not a Good Thing

#80

Post by matchu »

Be sure to read Paul Bakaus's response, "Why AMP caches exist", to hear both sides of the issue. https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2017/01/13/why-amp-caches-exis...

(Though, actually, it's only a response in spirit; Bakaus's article was posted about a week earlier than Miessler's.)

I think the problem with the AMP cache model is that, because you need to link directly to the cached URL, you commit to exactly one cache provider. If Bing were to also implement their own validated AMP cache for Bing search results, you can't have one link point to both; you're either AMPed in Google results or in Bing results, and, by being marginally bigger, Google wins all of the pie. That's no good.

How might we change the AMP standard, or the trust model around AMP caches, to get the same performance wins while still enabling competition?

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