Where Am I? NYTimes or Google? • Hacker News Board

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#71

Post by gregable » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 4:23 AM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #60

Spivak wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really think Google’s plan is that weird. And it would be amazing for decentralized networks, archiving, and offline web apps. Google can’t just serve nyt.com — they can serve a specific bundle of resources published and signed by nyt.com verified by your browser to be authentic and unmodified.

The plan is bad because google currently tracks all of your activities inside AMP hosted pages site in their support article. Google controls the AMP project and the AMP library. They can start rewriting all links in AMP containers to Google’s AMP cache and track you across the entire internet, even when you are 50 clicks away from google.com.

While that's theoretically possible, the library can be inspected and does not do these things.

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#72

Post by didip » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 4:24 AM UTC

I remembered long time ago when Digg tried to do this and the internet revolted.

I guess times have changed.

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#73

Post by pwdisswordfish2 » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 4:29 AM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #5

superasn wrote: post #2

Yes this has been a big issue for a very long time now. Google wants to push a release where it will display the hostname of the amp site even if the content is being served from google.com[1]. Mozilla (and Apple) are strictly against it and thank god for Mozilla. If Google had a bigger market share this would already be something we would have been living with. I'm sure there are better sources for this, but here is…

I don’t really think Google’s plan is that weird. And it would be amazing for decentralized networks, archiving, and offline web apps. Google can’t just serve nyt.com — they can serve a specific bundle of resources published and signed by nyt.com verified by your browser to be authentic and unmodified.

In what ways is this different/similar from "content centric networking"?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gqGEMQveoqg

(Google Tech Talk from Van Jacobsen on CCN many years ago)

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#74

Post by rtsil » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 4:30 AM UTC

quadrifoliate wrote: post #41

IMO the core point of the article is false. > To be blunt, this is a really dangerous pattern: Google serves NYTimes’ controlled content on a Google domain. No, "Google serves NYTimes' controlled content" is an oxymoron. Google controls the content that is served, and that's all your browser is verifying. Google could very well make the NYTimes content on there display something else and your browser wouldn't show a…

The pattern is dangerous because it trains the user to dissociate URL and legitimate content, and the best tool at our disposal against phishing is still the ability to use the URL to ascertain the legitimacy of a content.

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#75

Post by SquareWheel » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 4:30 AM UTC

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #46

I think the main issue is limited AMPCache providers and inability for the publisher to choose their own AMPCache providers. Which is being exploited the two search engines. AMP project by itself is open-source and it explicitly states 'Other companies may build their own AMP cache as well'.[1] There are only 2 AMP Cache providers - Google, Bing. Further, 'As a publisher, you don't choose an AMP Cache, it's actually…

Did Cloudflare end their Amp Cache? They hosted one previously.

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#76

Post by IncRnd » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 4:31 AM UTC

wmf wrote: post #67

IncRnd wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. For a CDN to work, the DNS is repointed towards the CDN's servers. In this case, Google is trying to cover-up that Google and not NYTimes is serving the page.

Is NYTimes's use of Fastly also a cover-up?

Google by definition wants to cover-up the domain name that serves amp web pages. Over half of the article discusses that.

For your question about fastly, I already answered that in the comment you replied. The fastly CDN requires that the DNS is configured to point at fastly servers. Take a look at https://docs.fastly.com/en/guides/sign-up-and-create-your-fi... under "Start serving traffic through Fastly".

  Once you’re ready, all you need to do to complete your service
  setup and start serving traffic through Fastly is set your domain's
  CNAME DNS record to point to Fastly. For more information, see
  the instructions in our Adding CNAME records guide."

A CNAME record is a dns mechanism that aliases an alternate domain for a canonical domain.

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#77

Post by ridiculous_fish » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 4:32 AM UTC

It's wrong to trust the URL bar. For example, this search [1] has as top link an ad that boasts "google.com", and it really is! And if you click on it, you'll end up on a google.com site, which nominally helps with printers, but in reality it's a tech support scam.

So much of the distrust here is that google wants to be everything: to host their content and publisher content and user content; to broker ads and recommend links; to run their software on your computer and phone, to store your data on their servers. They serve too many masters.

1: https://i.imgur.com/HalErpIr.png

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#78

Post by smabie » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 4:32 AM UTC

bobbydroptables wrote: post #49

AMP seems like a solution in search of a problem. Are people really having trouble with loading speed in 2020? I travel to remote areas in third world countries regularly for work and still don't really have problems loading pages with mobile data. Even if it didn't have all of the problems associated with it I just don't get the point. I don't need Google to repackage a website with less useability. It's frequently…

I lived in Africa and the only internet I had was cellular and by the gb. Amp is a massive improvement over the extremely large web pages we now have to endure.

It's also much faster to render, which makes a huge difference on the crappy Android phones that are everywhere. Hell, I'm using a $200 Android phone right now because my iPhone broke and browsing the web is painful on it. And with the terrible hauwei $40 phones that have taken over Africa, most of the web is unusable.

I don't like Google's control of Amp, but it exists because of the original sin of html and js. Everything about html is terrible: bloated, pointlessly verbose, etc.

I have a dream that we all just start using Gopher and dump the www, but it's never going to happen. Maybe even browser vendors could get to together and design a super light weight markup based on S-exps or something, but that's probably not going to happen either. Amp is the best we got and it solves a real problem. And it solves the problem well.

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#79

Post by Abishek_Muthian » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 4:35 AM UTC

SquareWheel wrote: post #75

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #46

I think the main issue is limited AMPCache providers and inability for the publisher to choose their own AMPCache providers. Which is being exploited the two search engines. AMP project by itself is open-source and it explicitly states 'Other companies may build their own AMP cache as well'.[1] There are only 2 AMP Cache providers - Google, Bing. Further, 'As a publisher, you don't choose an AMP Cache, it's actually…

Did Cloudflare end their Amp Cache? They hosted one previously.

I didn't know about it, AMP site lists only Google, Bing. But I know for a fact that cloudflare has no issues caching AMP sites like any other sites though.

Re: Where Am I? NYTimes or Google?

#80

Post by MereInterest » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 4:36 AM UTC

smabie wrote: post #70

jeffbee wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always. Main reason I cut something is I want to paste the hostname into a terminal so it can be an argument of whois or dig or traceroute or whatever, in no case have I ever been glad of the scheme prefix.

Isn't more common to paste to a utility that uses the prefix like curl or wget? Or pasting into a chat? Besides all of those tools could just strip out the prefix, while there's no way to add the protocol to a domain name. More information is strictly superior.

More information is better, so the URL shown in the browser should include the protocol. Consistent behavior is better, so copy/paste should only include text that is actually highlighted.