I thought a link tag sends a request to get the contents of the href attribute, and then the server sends back the file or a 304 header, if it's cached. That se

I thought a link tag sends a request to get the contents of the href attribute, and then the server sends back the file or a 304 header, if it's cached. That seems to indicate that the server is getting a request from the browser. Also, isn't Google caching AMP pages on their own domains? I've read that Google doesn't send people to your site, but just to a copy on their own site. When I try the demo for the NY Times, I see a banner there that takes me back to the search results. Did NY Times decide that they want to use that above-the-fold real estate to send people back to Google.com? What specific code enables or disables this giant back button on an AMP webpage: http://imgur.com/GpBqgnx http://imgur.com/GpBqgnx AMP is a somewhat-forced restriction on what people can publish on their sites. Providing guidelines on how to make mobile pages faster would be a more reasonable solution. One could argue that no one is "forced" to use AMP, but if AMP pages appear at the top of the SERPs then that is a form of coercion, since fewer people will scroll beneath the fold.