8 ms·

So now if you buy more into Google's ecosystem (AMP) you get a special flag next to your content in search results? Interesting... You know I don't understand

So now if you buy more into Google's ecosystem (AMP) you get a special flag next to your content in search results? Interesting... You know I don't understand this whole AMP'd thing. It's possible to make something just as efficient if you don't ruin your mark-up to begin with. The big advantage with AMP, as far as I can tell, is the Google caching mechanism. There is no reason someone can't use actual standards to create the exact same results. It really bothers me that, to get preferential treatment, I have to now work with Google AMP and Facebook Instant Articles. If I don't the competition will. We originally had web standards for a reason, now we're doing this non-standard stuff.

kuschku 10y ago
> If I don't the competition will. We originally had web standards for a reason, now we're doing this non-standard stuff. I suggest you file a complaint here, if you believe you have to use AMP to not get a competitive disadvantage (because that would be unfair influence on the market by Google): http://ec.europa.eu/competition/contacts/electronic_documents_en.html http://ec.europa.eu/competition/contacts/electronic_document... EDIT: The parent comment complains that the market is unfairly influenced by two large almost-monopolies in their respective markets – so why do I get downvotes for linking the official reference for filing antitrust complaints?
cramforce 10y ago
Note, that this launch is explicitly not a ranking change. Your non-AMP result will continue to be displayed in the same spot. This is just a frontend change: If there is an AMP version of a URL, link there is instead.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  It shows a flag. This is an indication to the user to pick this site over others. Maybe not initially but unless someone proves to me, with data, that this won't affect what users click on I do not believe this won't affect user behavior. This is an indirect ranking.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > This is an indication to the user to pick this site over others. This is an indication to the user that the site has certain traits (particularly, the UX they experience with AMP sites), and that if they like those traits, they should pick the site over others, and conversely if they dislike those traits, they should favor sites without the indicator over those with it. > Maybe not initially but unless someone proves to me, with data, that this won't affect what users click on I do not believe this won't affect user behavior. Obviously it is going to affect user behavior. > This is an indirect ranking. No, its information (the same as providing, e.g., [PDF] notations), not "indirect ranking". How it affects behavior, like a file-format flag, is dependent on the value (positive or negative) the user ascribes to the trait it provides notice of.
    - johnward 10y ago
      Is that behavior not eventually used to influence ranking? If users continue to click AMP results more often than non-AMP I'm pretty sure the google algorithm will start favoring AMP.
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        > If users continue to click AMP results more often than non-AMP I'm pretty sure the google algorithm will start favoring AMP. Perhaps, but, by the same token then, if users find AMP UX to be a bad tradeoff, and tend to click AMP results less often than non-AMP, the algorithm will start to penalize AMP.
    - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
      > This is an indication to the user that the site has certain traits (particularly, the UX they experience with AMP sites), and that if they like those traits, they should pick the site over others, and conversely if they dislike those traits, they should favor sites without the indicator over those with it. You can make a website load like AMP without going through AMP. This is not an indication of a UX trait, this is an indication of using Google's technology and nothing more. If you have Website A using AMP and Website B not using AMP but able to load in the same way, the Google search is going to show a label next to Website A and not Website B. Do you feel that this is fair? Or another way to force operators to now generate an AMP version of their website? Because I see this as the latter. > No, its information (the same as providing, e.g., [PDF] notations), not "indirect ranking". How it affects behavior, like a file-format flag, is dependent on the value (positive or negative) the user ascribes to the trait it provides notice of. Ranking determines where a website shows up and affects user behavior by users choosing the higher ranked websites. This has the same behavior without reordering things. I would call that a form of ranking but this is just splitting hairs; we're saying the same things.
idlewords 10y ago
The reason for AMP is surveillance capitalism. If you absolutely, positively believe you have to track your users, writing simple web pages is not an option. Your choice is either the status quo (pull in lots of third-party cruft), or having a fast-loading page where Google runs the tracking and advertising infrastructure.
- hawkice 10y ago
  Wait, THAT'S why people want to use AMP? I set up AMP on my personal site for a couple weeks because I thought there was an SEO benefit (I didn't see any, so I removed it -- lowering page weight by something like 7x). I had no idea that the reason it seemed pointless was because it was for ad infrastructure.
  - kybernetyk 10y ago
    Funnily enough the AMP version of my page is larger and takes longer to load than the non-amp version. And ironically I don't even get that little "amp" bolt symbol because it's a software product page and not a recipe, news post or blog post (there's only a handful of categories that are amp enabled). I think I'm going to remove the AMP page, too. It offers nothing to me and is actually worse for my visitors than the normal responsive page.
    - hawkice 10y ago
      Same here. My blog is (unsurprisingly) text-based, so the 40-50kb JS file was almost all of the page weight.
      - lucb1e 10y ago
        Hold on, "accelerated" pages mean "add 45KB of data"?
        luctus 10y ago
        You need to add [this js file](https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js) that is near to 45KB. I have just uploaded an AMP version for my site and it felt a little bit ridiculous... I made a simpler version (with no js and limited css), changed `<img>` for `<amp-img>` and added this js. It would load even faster without this js!!
nostromo 10y ago
> We originally had web standards for a reason, now we're doing this non-standard stuff. Web standards have always been a mishmash of competing standards. Eventually one spec will win out and that will be the next standard.
- gm-conspiracy 10y ago
  Can you cite some specific examples? Do you mean gopher, nntp?
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    XHTML vs HTML?
  - nostromo 10y ago
    JavaScript is a good example. It wasn't the only web scripting language available, there was JScript and Java Applets and VBScript. JavaScript won and now it's ubiquitous.
    - gm-conspiracy 10y ago
      I agree with your JScript and VBScript answers, but not Java applets.
    - gmazza 10y ago
      And for an example of co-existence of competing languages, see javascript triggering flash/actionscript (e.g. for clipboard access) and vice-versa (e.g. for DOM access). Both are somewhat dated examples, that is pre-HTML5.
    - ygra 10y ago
      JScript is simply Microsoft's name for its JavaScript implementation. Presumably to avoid Sun's ire.
  - yarrel 10y ago
    The entire history of HTML up to and including HTML5. :-)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
liquidise 10y ago
While i understand the philosophical grievance, will the AMP tag matter? Personally, when i search without an ad blocker i categorically ignore any 'Ad' result on Google. But will the typical user value AMP pages more heavily? Time will tell, i suppose, but i would be surprised to see a measurable impact on a top 1-3 search result.
- venning 10y ago
  AMP is of most use on mobile (possibly the only place it works?) where ad blockers don't normally exist. So, they will likely have an impact there. I know that I have personally opened search results to AMP pages that I would not normally have opened because I knew the price of doing so would be small. But, then again, I know what the AMP symbol means. How this affects normal users remains to be seen. For some sites, I seek out the AMP URL explicitly. For example, adding "/amp" to the end of TechCrunch URLs change them from frustrating to usable.
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    > where ad blockers don't normally exist curious as to what you mean by that. I definitely have an ad-blocker running on my phone (android)
    - athrun 10y ago
      and iOS provides an official API for adblocking since version 9. IMHO adblocking is even more relevant on mobile because of latency & data caps.
shawkinaw 10y ago
I'm as skeptical of Google and any of their initiatives as the next guy, but I'll tell you what, I clicked the AMP link for a WSJ article (from HN web link, obviously), and it displayed instantly. Very un-modern web.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Fine. But the point is the WSJ should be looking at improving their site instead of using google's offering here. It's laziness otherwise.
  - wetmore 10y ago
    AMP gives WSJ an incentive to serve a faster version. Why would they spend money improving their site - especially a big name like WSJ? Plus, from what I've heard from developers working at new sites, "our pages are faster and use less data" is a hard sell to the people in charge, who are more interested in integrating yet another ad platform.
    - yincrash 10y ago
      Exactly this. the AMP badge is a visual indicator that says "we're not going to waste time your time with a slow loading webpage, so click this link over one that doesn't have the AMP badge", which incentivizes faster webpages in a way that wasn't available previously.
      - bryanrasmussen 10y ago
        most clicks go to sites that are on the top of the search results, therefore prioritizing placement due to pageloading speed should be enough of an incentive to most sites. The AMP badge pretends to be an incentive in this way, but the purpose is to extend google lock in.
    - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      "Why would they spend money improving their site - especially a big name like WSJ?" Wait, what!? They have EVERY incentive to make sure they provide a quality product.
swalsh 10y ago
Is the origin of this any worse than the origin of the blink tag? http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag
dragonwriter 10y ago
> We originally had web standards for a reason, now we're doing this non-standard stuff. Standards today represent the successful non-standard stuff of yesterday.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  "Standards today represent the successful non-standard stuff of yesterday." Nice way of describing almost every, current standard I can think of. I might quote you on that.
kowdermeister 10y ago
What you wrote is technically true. We could build crazy fast pages without any AMP-ing. However high profiles sites don't do that and there's a reason for it. I think when revenue is considered, there's a lot more department at at news companies involved: There's the Ad people ( add 2-3 external services ) there's the online marketing team ( add 10 more tracking tools ) then the UX guys have 2-3 tools to play with... The list is probably a lot longer. That's why sites like Mashable used to load 30+ external services (now 13). It all adds extra markup (static and generated), DOM manipulation, network traffic and all sorts of crap that slows pages down. AMP-ing means saying no to all this by design. I'm not saying this is 'the' perfect solution, but this is a solution to an existing problem. And the problem is not that we somehow forgot how to build fast and light pages.
- kowdermeister 10y ago
  Actually, it's a result of startupifying every problem we see out there. Oh, AB testing is hard, let's make it easy just by inserting a line of JS to the page. It'll cost $99/month and the clients won't have to develop it themselves. This is a side effect of the abundance of cheap and easy to use tools. Probably somebody is already working on how to extract more data from AMP pages :D
- enos_feedler 10y ago
  This is exactly it. The problem has just got out of control and this is _one_ solution. It is also something that could be experimented with. Just AMP a few things and see how it goes.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  You are correct, but the logic here is clearly geared towards pushing sites to rely more on google's standards, rather than actual industry standards. The problem: We have too much cruft on sites. The solution: Lets add another layer of cruft! Ranking smaller/faster sites higher is a better solution, but it doesn't give google that sweet lock-in that they want.
  - xbmcuser 10y ago
aleem 10y ago
Something like this had been on Google's wishlist for a long time. Google news stirred up the news industry way back and Rupert Murdoch took a big stake in fighting against it, rallying other publishers. Google also bought the wire licenses so it was free to display a lot of the breaking news directly but had to play a balancing act to avoid irking the publishers. When FB moved to instant articles, Google moved to amp. It was the opening they had been waiting for, for a long time. AMP was an opportunistic play--a damn good one for Google. It sucks for publishers but they are forced to play along because of you are always at the mercy of your dumbest competitor. Users may win but this isn't something publishers want or desire. Building faster pages is easier now than ever. Not as fast as AMP or Facebook Instant but still. Over time this will lead to commodification because of lack of standards. Bing and others will further lose their lead to AMP. Users will like the new UX. Publishers are confused.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Bing and others will further lose their lead to AMP. What's stopping Bing (and others) from using AMP and Microsoft (and others) from building their own AMP caches?
  - zukee 10y ago
    Nothing. Bing has already started using AMP in their results.
  - aleem 10y ago
    There are many downsides when you don't control the standard. Microsoft is not in the meetings when Google PMs decide the roadmap nor will they have any clout in directing its future or adding its own features. It's merely a consumer. The main thing about AMP is that it gives consent to the search engines which is why Microsoft is happy to use it. The consent allows search engines to display content without directing users to the publisher platform. And therein lies the rub.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
aleem 10y ago
Something like this had been on Google's wishlist for a long time. Google news stirred up the news industry way back and Rupert Murdoch took a big stake in fighting against it, rallying other publishers. Google also bought the wire licenses so it was free to display a lot of the breaking news directly but had to play a balancing act to avoid irking the publishers. When FB moved to instant articles, Google moved to amp. It was the opening they had been waiting for, for a long time. AMP was an opportunistic play--a damn good one for Google. It sucks for publishers but they are forced to play along because of you are always at the mercy of your dumbest competitor. Users may win but this isn't something publishers want or desire. Building faster pages is easier now than ever. Not as fast as AMP or Facebook Instant but still. Over time this will lead to commodification because of lack of standards. Bing and others will further lose their lead to AMP. Users will like the new UX. Publishers are confused.
themacguffinman 10y ago
It's a very open and transparent standard that doesn't stop others from adopting or caching it as well. It just so happens that the nature of caching favours big players like Google, but Cloudflare or Bing could offer a cache as well. I fail to see it as some sort of Google ecosystem lock-in. AMP is also compliant with web standards. It just uses Custom Elements which is a fairly new standard.
shostack 10y ago
There's also the consideration from the ad network side of things. This gives Google a lot more power in the ecosystem than they had before in theory if lots of people switch to it (which they will, because they don't have much of a choice). Similarly with Instant Articles--the big players own the ecosystem and can enforce whatever constraints they want if they have enough leverage. In this case, it happens to provide a sizable benefit to end users so publishers and ad networks are really the only ones feeling the pain.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

kuschku 10y ago

> If I don't the competition will. We originally had web standards for a reason, now we're doing this non-standard stuff. I suggest you file a complaint here, if you believe you have to use AMP to not get a competitive disadvantage (because that would be unfair influence on the market by Google): http://ec.europa.eu/competition/contacts/electronic_documents_en.html http://ec.europa.eu/competition/contacts/electronic_document... EDIT: The parent comment complains that the market is unfairly influenced by two large almost-monopolies in their respective markets – so why do I get downvotes for linking the official reference for filing antitrust complaints?

cramforce 10y ago

Note, that this launch is explicitly not a ranking change. Your non-AMP result will continue to be displayed in the same spot. This is just a frontend change: If there is an AMP version of a URL, link there is instead.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago
It shows a flag. This is an indication to the user to pick this site over others. Maybe not initially but unless someone proves to me, with data, that this won't affect what users click on I do not believe this won't affect user behavior. This is an indirect ranking.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > This is an indication to the user to pick this site over others. This is an indication to the user that the site has certain traits (particularly, the UX they experience with AMP sites), and that if they like those traits, they should pick the site over others, and conversely if they dislike those traits, they should favor sites without the indicator over those with it. > Maybe not initially but unless someone proves to me, with data, that this won't affect what users click on I do not believe this won't affect user behavior. Obviously it is going to affect user behavior. > This is an indirect ranking. No, its information (the same as providing, e.g., [PDF] notations), not "indirect ranking". How it affects behavior, like a file-format flag, is dependent on the value (positive or negative) the user ascribes to the trait it provides notice of.
  - johnward 10y ago
    Is that behavior not eventually used to influence ranking? If users continue to click AMP results more often than non-AMP I'm pretty sure the google algorithm will start favoring AMP.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > If users continue to click AMP results more often than non-AMP I'm pretty sure the google algorithm will start favoring AMP. Perhaps, but, by the same token then, if users find AMP UX to be a bad tradeoff, and tend to click AMP results less often than non-AMP, the algorithm will start to penalize AMP.
  - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    > This is an indication to the user that the site has certain traits (particularly, the UX they experience with AMP sites), and that if they like those traits, they should pick the site over others, and conversely if they dislike those traits, they should favor sites without the indicator over those with it. You can make a website load like AMP without going through AMP. This is not an indication of a UX trait, this is an indication of using Google's technology and nothing more. If you have Website A using AMP and Website B not using AMP but able to load in the same way, the Google search is going to show a label next to Website A and not Website B. Do you feel that this is fair? Or another way to force operators to now generate an AMP version of their website? Because I see this as the latter. > No, its information (the same as providing, e.g., [PDF] notations), not "indirect ranking". How it affects behavior, like a file-format flag, is dependent on the value (positive or negative) the user ascribes to the trait it provides notice of. Ranking determines where a website shows up and affects user behavior by users choosing the higher ranked websites. This has the same behavior without reordering things. I would call that a form of ranking but this is just splitting hairs; we're saying the same things.

idlewords 10y ago

The reason for AMP is surveillance capitalism. If you absolutely, positively believe you have to track your users, writing simple web pages is not an option. Your choice is either the status quo (pull in lots of third-party cruft), or having a fast-loading page where Google runs the tracking and advertising infrastructure.

hawkice 10y ago
Wait, THAT'S why people want to use AMP? I set up AMP on my personal site for a couple weeks because I thought there was an SEO benefit (I didn't see any, so I removed it -- lowering page weight by something like 7x). I had no idea that the reason it seemed pointless was because it was for ad infrastructure.
- kybernetyk 10y ago
  Funnily enough the AMP version of my page is larger and takes longer to load than the non-amp version. And ironically I don't even get that little "amp" bolt symbol because it's a software product page and not a recipe, news post or blog post (there's only a handful of categories that are amp enabled). I think I'm going to remove the AMP page, too. It offers nothing to me and is actually worse for my visitors than the normal responsive page.
  - hawkice 10y ago
    Same here. My blog is (unsurprisingly) text-based, so the 40-50kb JS file was almost all of the page weight.
    - lucb1e 10y ago
      Hold on, "accelerated" pages mean "add 45KB of data"?
      - luctus 10y ago
        You need to add [this js file](https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js) that is near to 45KB. I have just uploaded an AMP version for my site and it felt a little bit ridiculous... I made a simpler version (with no js and limited css), changed `<img>` for `<amp-img>` and added this js. It would load even faster without this js!!

nostromo 10y ago

> We originally had web standards for a reason, now we're doing this non-standard stuff. Web standards have always been a mishmash of competing standards. Eventually one spec will win out and that will be the next standard.

gm-conspiracy 10y ago
Can you cite some specific examples? Do you mean gopher, nntp?
- DannyBee 10y ago
  XHTML vs HTML?
- nostromo 10y ago
  JavaScript is a good example. It wasn't the only web scripting language available, there was JScript and Java Applets and VBScript. JavaScript won and now it's ubiquitous.
  - gm-conspiracy 10y ago
    I agree with your JScript and VBScript answers, but not Java applets.
  - gmazza 10y ago
    And for an example of co-existence of competing languages, see javascript triggering flash/actionscript (e.g. for clipboard access) and vice-versa (e.g. for DOM access). Both are somewhat dated examples, that is pre-HTML5.
  - ygra 10y ago
    JScript is simply Microsoft's name for its JavaScript implementation. Presumably to avoid Sun's ire.
- yarrel 10y ago
  The entire history of HTML up to and including HTML5. :-)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

liquidise 10y ago

While i understand the philosophical grievance, will the AMP tag matter? Personally, when i search without an ad blocker i categorically ignore any 'Ad' result on Google. But will the typical user value AMP pages more heavily? Time will tell, i suppose, but i would be surprised to see a measurable impact on a top 1-3 search result.

venning 10y ago
AMP is of most use on mobile (possibly the only place it works?) where ad blockers don't normally exist. So, they will likely have an impact there. I know that I have personally opened search results to AMP pages that I would not normally have opened because I knew the price of doing so would be small. But, then again, I know what the AMP symbol means. How this affects normal users remains to be seen. For some sites, I seek out the AMP URL explicitly. For example, adding "/amp" to the end of TechCrunch URLs change them from frustrating to usable.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  > where ad blockers don't normally exist curious as to what you mean by that. I definitely have an ad-blocker running on my phone (android)
  - athrun 10y ago
    and iOS provides an official API for adblocking since version 9. IMHO adblocking is even more relevant on mobile because of latency & data caps.

shawkinaw 10y ago

I'm as skeptical of Google and any of their initiatives as the next guy, but I'll tell you what, I clicked the AMP link for a WSJ article (from HN web link, obviously), and it displayed instantly. Very un-modern web.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Fine. But the point is the WSJ should be looking at improving their site instead of using google's offering here. It's laziness otherwise.
- wetmore 10y ago
  AMP gives WSJ an incentive to serve a faster version. Why would they spend money improving their site - especially a big name like WSJ? Plus, from what I've heard from developers working at new sites, "our pages are faster and use less data" is a hard sell to the people in charge, who are more interested in integrating yet another ad platform.
  - yincrash 10y ago
    Exactly this. the AMP badge is a visual indicator that says "we're not going to waste time your time with a slow loading webpage, so click this link over one that doesn't have the AMP badge", which incentivizes faster webpages in a way that wasn't available previously.
    - bryanrasmussen 10y ago
      most clicks go to sites that are on the top of the search results, therefore prioritizing placement due to pageloading speed should be enough of an incentive to most sites. The AMP badge pretends to be an incentive in this way, but the purpose is to extend google lock in.
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    "Why would they spend money improving their site - especially a big name like WSJ?" Wait, what!? They have EVERY incentive to make sure they provide a quality product.

swalsh 10y ago

Is the origin of this any worse than the origin of the blink tag? http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag

dragonwriter 10y ago

> We originally had web standards for a reason, now we're doing this non-standard stuff. Standards today represent the successful non-standard stuff of yesterday.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
"Standards today represent the successful non-standard stuff of yesterday." Nice way of describing almost every, current standard I can think of. I might quote you on that.

kowdermeister 10y ago

What you wrote is technically true. We could build crazy fast pages without any AMP-ing. However high profiles sites don't do that and there's a reason for it. I think when revenue is considered, there's a lot more department at at news companies involved: There's the Ad people ( add 2-3 external services ) there's the online marketing team ( add 10 more tracking tools ) then the UX guys have 2-3 tools to play with... The list is probably a lot longer. That's why sites like Mashable used to load 30+ external services (now 13). It all adds extra markup (static and generated), DOM manipulation, network traffic and all sorts of crap that slows pages down. AMP-ing means saying no to all this by design. I'm not saying this is 'the' perfect solution, but this is a solution to an existing problem. And the problem is not that we somehow forgot how to build fast and light pages.

kowdermeister 10y ago
Actually, it's a result of startupifying every problem we see out there. Oh, AB testing is hard, let's make it easy just by inserting a line of JS to the page. It'll cost $99/month and the clients won't have to develop it themselves. This is a side effect of the abundance of cheap and easy to use tools. Probably somebody is already working on how to extract more data from AMP pages :D
enos_feedler 10y ago
This is exactly it. The problem has just got out of control and this is _one_ solution. It is also something that could be experimented with. Just AMP a few things and see how it goes.
CaptSpify 10y ago
You are correct, but the logic here is clearly geared towards pushing sites to rely more on google's standards, rather than actual industry standards. The problem: We have too much cruft on sites. The solution: Lets add another layer of cruft! Ranking smaller/faster sites higher is a better solution, but it doesn't give google that sweet lock-in that they want.
- xbmcuser 10y ago

aleem 10y ago

Something like this had been on Google's wishlist for a long time. Google news stirred up the news industry way back and Rupert Murdoch took a big stake in fighting against it, rallying other publishers. Google also bought the wire licenses so it was free to display a lot of the breaking news directly but had to play a balancing act to avoid irking the publishers. When FB moved to instant articles, Google moved to amp. It was the opening they had been waiting for, for a long time. AMP was an opportunistic play--a damn good one for Google. It sucks for publishers but they are forced to play along because of you are always at the mercy of your dumbest competitor. Users may win but this isn't something publishers want or desire. Building faster pages is easier now than ever. Not as fast as AMP or Facebook Instant but still. Over time this will lead to commodification because of lack of standards. Bing and others will further lose their lead to AMP. Users will like the new UX. Publishers are confused.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Bing and others will further lose their lead to AMP. What's stopping Bing (and others) from using AMP and Microsoft (and others) from building their own AMP caches?
- zukee 10y ago
  Nothing. Bing has already started using AMP in their results.
- aleem 10y ago
  There are many downsides when you don't control the standard. Microsoft is not in the meetings when Google PMs decide the roadmap nor will they have any clout in directing its future or adding its own features. It's merely a consumer. The main thing about AMP is that it gives consent to the search engines which is why Microsoft is happy to use it. The consent allows search engines to display content without directing users to the publisher platform. And therein lies the rub.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago

aleem 10y ago

themacguffinman 10y ago

It's a very open and transparent standard that doesn't stop others from adopting or caching it as well. It just so happens that the nature of caching favours big players like Google, but Cloudflare or Bing could offer a cache as well. I fail to see it as some sort of Google ecosystem lock-in. AMP is also compliant with web standards. It just uses Custom Elements which is a fairly new standard.

shostack 10y ago

There's also the consideration from the ad network side of things. This gives Google a lot more power in the ecosystem than they had before in theory if lots of people switch to it (which they will, because they don't have much of a choice). Similarly with Instant Articles--the big players own the ecosystem and can enforce whatever constraints they want if they have enough leverage. In this case, it happens to provide a sizable benefit to end users so publishers and ad networks are really the only ones feeling the pain.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]