20 ms·

The Problem with AMP

641 points by segf4ult 10y ago

cavemanmike 10y ago
Using https://encrypted.google.com/ https://encrypted.google.com/ to avoid AMP is a great tip. I'll be doing that, does anybody have more information on what that URL is for? Is it possible to set it as default on iOS/Android somehow? AMP really frustratingly breaks link sharing, and I'd like to totally avoid it.
- itcrowd 10y ago
  I'm not sure there is a more natural way, but if you install DuckDuckGo as default search engine, then searches which use their !bang syntax to redirect to a Google search are via encrypted.google.com. Example: !g search query Leads to https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=search%20query https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=search%20query Of course, this also works if you type this query in at duckduckgo.com Edit to add: I guess it is a matter of time before amp pages also appear on the encrypted subdomain; another incentive to switch to DDG now.
- Spivak 10y ago
  That's why I've never seen any AMP pages! I've been wondering about this forever -- I thought Google must have figured out I wouldn't want them somehow. But any Google searches I do are usually through DuckDuckGo which use the encrypted link.
- ivank 10y ago
  > does anybody have more information on what that URL is for? Many years ago, Google Search existed only on http:// http:// and schools used filters to block searches that they didn't like. Then Google shipped https:// https:// for search on www.google.com, upset the schools because they could no longer block just some searches, then moved encrypted search to encrypted.google.com so that the entire domain could be blocked: https://cloud.googleblog.com/2010/06/an-update-on-encrypted-web-search-in.html https://cloud.googleblog.com/2010/06/an-update-on-encrypted-...
  - astronautjones 10y ago
    this seems so dumb... is the difference between schools blocking and governments blocking negligible to them?
- duskwuff 10y ago
  > Does anybody have more information on what that URL is for? You used to have to use that domain to run searches over HTTPS. Google's enabled that for all users now, so it's kind of obsolete -- but apparently it still behaves a little bit differently?
- ayrx 10y ago
  This StackExchange answer[0] has a nice overview of what encrypted.google.com does. [0]: http://security.stackexchange.com/a/32374 http://security.stackexchange.com/a/32374
- kobayashi 10y ago
  It's from the era before which Google defaulted to TLS. Nowadays, the only known difference relates to clicking of links. Here's the info from SE[0]: >1. Clicking on an ad: > - https://google.com https://google.com : Google will take you to an HTTP redirection page where they'd append your search query to the referrer information. > - https://encrypted.google.com https://encrypted.google.com : If the advertiser uses HTTP, Google will not let the advertiser know about your query. If the advertiser uses HTTPS, they will receive the referrer information normally (including your search query). >2. Clicking on a normal search result: > - https://google.com https://google.com : If the website uses HTTP, Google will take you to an HTTP redirection page and will not append your search query to the referrer information. They'll only tell the website that you're coming from Google. If it uses HTTPS, it will receive referrer information normally. > - https://encrypted.google.com https://encrypted.google.com : If the website you click in the results uses HTTP, it will have no idea where you're coming from or what your search query is. If it uses HTTPS, it will receive referrer information normally. [0] http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/32367/what-is-the-difference-between-https-google-com-and-https-encrypted-google-c#32374 http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/32367/what-is-th...
- clydethefrog 10y ago
  Startpage is a search engine who displays Google's search results without all the tracking and AMP, as an alternative to using DDG and using !g.
BrandonM 10y ago
On my iPhone, I use DuckDuckGo mainly to avoid AMP. I use Google on my laptop.
- lightbulbjim 10y ago
  Ditto.
  - BrandonM 10y ago
    Apparently, 6 people (including you) agree with me.
symbolepro 10y ago
Sorry, this is a lame blog post. I did not feel any pain in using AMP powered pages.
- freyir 10y ago
  You must have not wanted access to the site's full set of features, not wanted to use a mobile ad blocker, now wanted access to comments, etc. That's fine, but for many, it's an annoyance.
  - aclsid 10y ago
    Comments are half the news anyways :)
    - sova 10y ago
      So true
freyir 10y ago
AMP is one of the most frustrating experiences I've had with Google. the fact that it's foisted on users, with no option to disable it, makes it borderline infuriating. If you're stuck on an AMP page in your mobile browser, you can click on the browser's "Request desktop site" option to load the full page.
- rashkov 10y ago
  I get the frustration, but mobile sites in general also have this problem. "Request desktop site" should be a more prominent feature, at least in safari which is what I'm familiar with. It's quite buried unfortunately and I think that more non-techies would benefit from knowing about it.
  - pryelluw 10y ago
    Firefox on Android does have this feature as well.
    - zem 10y ago
      as does chrome on android
  - ChrisClark 10y ago
    It's right on the main menu in Chrome on Android. A checkbox item on the menu, so you know you can turn it on and off. So at least it isn't that hidden, same level as the other main features.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - m-p-3 10y ago
    And websites should honor the "Request desktop version" at all time. It's frustrating when you enable the option and it still bring up the mobile version.
    - 10y ago
robryan 10y ago
AMP is okay for news, but terrible for other forms of content. The reddit implementation is way less usable on mobile than going to their actual site. It also results in lower quality news appearing at the top of searches in cases where they have implemented AMP and the better sources haven't.
- freehunter 10y ago
  Man trying to go back a page on Reddit then clicking a link on that page and seeing "there was an error, please reload the page" gets me out of there so damn fast.
- kristianp 10y ago
  Can you give an example of how to view reddit via AMP? If I just search for "reddit" on my Android phone for example, there are no AMP links to reddit, only Business Insider etc.
  - magicalist 10y ago
    On my phone (chrome on android), basically any google search result from reddit goes to the amp version of the page. (with all five visible comments, and since the full comments are almost certainly what I was searching for, I end up having to click through to the full page anyway every time)
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - fortytw2 10y ago
      For me, on iOS, I've _never_ had a Reddit AMP page actually finish loading / rendering. Broken since the start
      - ryao 10y ago
        There is an incompatibility between the Reddit app and Reddit amp links. If the Reddit app is not installed, they load just fine. Reddit likely could fix that if they were told about it. I have no idea how to tell them though.
djsumdog 10y ago
I've had many of these concerns about AMP myself and have seen other posts on this before. I tend to agree with their points. If you want to optimize your mobile view, than you can do that without a Google pseudo-standard. When someone clicks on a link to your site, they should go to your site. This wouldn't be that big a deal if Google didn't emphasize the rank of AMP pages. There aren't a lot of alternatives out there to search, and Google dominates the market in much of the world.
deminature 10y ago
I agree with some missing content and linking issues with reddit, however the improvement in loading time is probably 10x. I'd be interested in seeing this quantified - I didn't appreciate just how slowly reddit loaded until loading the amp version, followed by the real version. Loading the amp version on a less-than-stellar mobile connection is much preferable to the real version.
tschellenbach 10y ago
It's actually a pretty nifty feature when you're browsing the web from a plane's slow wifi.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  But the people who designed the page in the first place should be able to make it just as fast without using AMP.
  - magicalist 10y ago
    > But the people who designed the page in the first place should be able to make it just as fast without using AMP. ...but they don't, which is the point. I'll throw my hat in on being a fan of reading news on AMP pages as well (though reddit amp does seem completely broken). I wouldn't care in the least if news site x instead wrote a fast site, I'd happily use that instead. But until they do, yeah, as a user I'll click on the amp link first.
    - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      And I'm the opposite. I do my best to NOT use AMP pages. If a site can't be bothered to optimize it's own pages, then they don't get my attention/money/whatever. I can do without. Let the best developed sites win.
    - swiley 10y ago
      It would be a lot better if instead they just ranked pages with slow load times and JavaScript lower, oh wait, that makes it harder for ads...
  - ec109685 10y ago
    No, only amp pages can be preloaded by google's SERP, so that is large reason it is so fast to render.
- jimueller 10y ago
  I actually like the AMP pages. Aside from public radio sites and a handful of other sites, news pages are so full of ads and slow loading, especially on mobile, that they're unreadable. With AMP I can actually read articles from my local newspaper or TV station. I guess in this case, I see it as a win for fast loading pages with just the article I'm looking for. Using AMP is my way of fighting back against autoplaying video ads and click bait links mixed in with news.
jey 10y ago
There's definitely something wrong with Reddit's AMP implementation.
65827 10y ago
It's so strange to see Google repeating all the same mistakes AOL did so many years ago. No I don't want your fucking garden, I want the network. If you get in the way of that I'm done with you.
- space_fountain 10y ago
  Everything seems to be moving towards gardens right now. Certainly not just Google. It's one of the things that depresses me most about tech right now.
  - swiley 10y ago
    They where when AOL was big too.
  - flukus 10y ago
    The most depressing part of it is that the HN community don't seem to care and will actively cheer it in many cases (walled garden IRC and cloud in general). The only reason we have an open internet at all is because techies cared back in the day.
    - ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
      Internet is a co-operative anarchy: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1726#page-5 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1726#page-5
    - jdironman 10y ago
      I feel like this is only partially true. The majority of the articles, excluding those from large name corps, are simple loading pages. Using primarily the basic HTML and inline CSS. You do have the occasional blog page with some fancy touches, but the majority of the links that I click on while browsing HN has me questioning why, on sub par satellite internet, that HN and a majority of it's submitted posts work when Facebook, Google, Bing, etc.. does not. I feel it can. Everything just feels so bloated.
- twsted 10y ago
mrfusion 10y ago
Do the amp links from google results to Reddit seem broken to anyone else? Edit: sorry that was actually in the article.
- freyir 10y ago
  Yes. I disabled my mobile ad blocker, and then the Redit AMP pages started working for me.
abusque 10y ago
Possibly off-topic, but the article isn't displaying[0] for me on Chromium 55.0.2883.87 (64-bit), running on Arch Linux, unless I go in the dev tools and manually remove "Fira Sans" from the font-family list in .container[1]. Not sure whether the problem is with me or the site, I'm surprised it doesn't fall-back to sans-serif before I override manually. [0] http://i.imgur.com/qJKSvMC.png http://i.imgur.com/qJKSvMC.png [1] http://i.imgur.com/zYDZrtr.png http://i.imgur.com/zYDZrtr.png
- segf4ult 10y ago
  That's weird. I'll look into a fix. Edit: I couldn't reproduce this with Chromium on Ubuntu 16.10. I might set up an Arch Linux box to see if that makes a difference.
  - krzyk 10y ago
    It happens on my Firefox 52 on Debian. I also have ublock origin installed. Maybe you use some strange fonts?
- glandium 10y ago
  Same here with Firefox.
conductr 10y ago
On AMP page, clicking the X on the header box should load the HTML page. Instead it kicks you back to the search results. I think I would be okay if they fixed that one thing.
- jedmeyers 10y ago
  That's my main pet peeve with AMP as well. In my mind the [x] in the top bar is almost exclusively associated with 'remove the bar' behavior in Safari on iOS.
  - theWatcher37 10y ago
    Google: "let's completely reinvent our core product in terms of user experience... and mess it up" Google is search, everything else is secondary. 20 people in a room testing this should have been all the red flags they needed to fix it before launch.
  - akras14 10y ago
    They viewed Google as platform and clicking x, takes user back to the platform. This was one of my biggest complains about the AMP project form the start. According to AMP team lead, however, the user testing on regular (not tech) users showed, that x did what people expected. I really think AMP can benefit a lot from PR stand point by letting techies opt out from it, but leaving it on for "regular" users. See https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/820344221450125312 https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/820344221450125312
    - niftich 10y ago
      Interesting info, but whether or not it's true, it certainly benefits their strategy. I have no doubt that they want to push the narrative that Google (Search) is the 'platform' and the news from publishers they wrap is a tab or viewport that you can [x] (exit) out of, returning to the default 'blank' Google page. The problem with that is that the UX is inconsistent between AMP results and web results. AMP results pretend they're this fake tab that can be "closed" and you return to Google, while web results take you away to the URL like you'd expect, which means navigation is the responsibility of the browser, and not of Google Search. Frankly, this all would make more sense in the viewport-wrapping context of Google Chrome or Google News or the Google App rather than a behavior of Google Search, but that's not the limit of their ambition. Or just, y'know, dress up the results page a bit more, and be honest about it. Brand the AMP subsection 'Read Instantly with AMP' and have it clearly and visibly wrap the results. This gains them a bunch of mindshare. Or change the [x] to a 'back arrow', like their own splash page shows [1]. [1] http://imgur.com/a/vAtqq http://imgur.com/a/vAtqq
bluejekyll 10y ago
I wish the post offered an alternative. Given that there are at least three similar specs, shouldn't there be a Light HTML5, or something that provides the same set of underlying guarantees?
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  You mean something like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement
dzhiurgis 10y ago
So the argument against AMP is someone's broken implementation and "security" of Google's CDN. Sounds like terrible arguments. That said, Google should give option to opt-out from CDN caching (if they don't already) as otherwise implementing AMP gives Google the right to host your content on their domain.
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  I believe the Google AMP CDN 'caching' is opt-in anyway
  - HappyTypist 10y ago
    It's not. Google will cache all AMP pages.
    - magicalist 10y ago
      Just don't include the Google CDN hosted amp.js file and you won't be cached on the Google CDN.
- matt4077 10y ago
  You can't implicitly grant licenses just by implementing something like AMP. That said, the DMCA contains specific language for caches (and search) so they probably have that right anyway.
adzm 10y ago
My biggest problem is simply being unable to open up an amp link in a new tab. Often in Google News for example I prefer to open up several tabs and read through them at my leisure. But with AMP this became impossible - though I'm unclear if this is simply a limitation of the implementation.
- stuckagain 10y ago
  Long press and open in new tab seems to work for me in chrome/iOS.
jordanlev 10y ago
And what happened to whole "don't build different markup for different devices" mantra that has been the accepted wisdom in web development for the past 4 or 5 years (whenever responsive design was discovered)? Feels like "m." sites all over again (but this time with google's CDN as a required intermediary).
- technion 10y ago
  As someone happy with their AMP site, I'm only happy with it on the basis that my Jekyll theme builds the whole site as a single site that happens to support AMP on the desktop page. I couldn't imagine dealing with supporting two deployments.
colept 10y ago
I'm glad AMP's weaknesses are finally gaining attention and making their rounds. Google should not be allowed to steal publishers' traffic and strong-arm them into going along with it.
- thesagan 10y ago
  Controversial question: At what point would Google start to be considered an antitrust issue? I know the EU has made some noise about it, but I'm a bit surprised I haven't heard more about it here in the U.S.
  - colept 10y ago
    In my opinion, they've already violated the trust of publishers. Take Google Lyrics for example: http://phandroid.com/2014/12/31/google-lyrics-search/ http://phandroid.com/2014/12/31/google-lyrics-search/ In all fairness, lyric sites were terrible. Slow, riddled with ads, and sometimes incorrect. While Google's lyrics are a great service to the user, they're at the top of search and displayed inline. There's no reason to go to lyric sites anymore. My biggest fear is Structured Data and AMP. With Structure Data, you volunteer your most valuable data in a format Google can easily consume and adapt to its own needs - all so you can get better page rankings. When Google introduces its own service in the same market - just like lyrics - you're effectively cut off from your audience. And with AMP, you don't have to wait for Google to siphon your traffic - you're volunteering.
    - thesagan 10y ago
      Thanks, I appreciate your view! That's how it strikes me as well; that Google provides unparalleled sticks and carrots towards publishers that will end up undoing those same publishers, while they (publishers) volunteer to go along and aid in the process! (Maybe they have little choice in the race to get traffic?) In other words, Google seems like a very powerful gatekeeper of content that ends up consuming the content providers. Smacks of an abuse of their position.
    - sjwright 10y ago
ejcx 10y ago
One thing I love about AMP, that seems to never be mentioned when people discuss it, is viewing AMP-HTML pages on my laptop. I wrote a small chrome extension that always forwards my page to the equivalent AMP page (if one exists) and the experience of reading the news is so much better. AMP pages off mobile are really really amazing. Compare Non-AMP[0] vs AMP[1] [0] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Trump-on-the-minds-of-MLK-Day-marchers-in-SF-10861091.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Trump-on-the-minds-of-... [1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/amp/Trump-on-the-minds-of-MLK-Day-marchers-in-SF-10861091.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/amp/Trump-on-the-minds-of-MLK-...
- candiodari 10y ago
  Yeah but here it's functioning effectively as a better ad-blocker (one that doesn't screw up site layout). Looking at how AMP works, I can see why : you'd have to decide before you know who the user is what ads to show. Wouldn't that effectively mean that in a search query followed by an AMP site visit only Google has the opportunity to show targeted ads ?
  - derefr 10y ago
    I imagine it's supposed to be similar to how Apple's iAd platform works for iOS apps. It's a bad shake for third-party ad networks, but it's great for user privacy, since third-party origin requests are no longer being made to anyone but the platform owner (who then anonymizes the impression metrics they give back to the ad creators, who just have to trust the platform-owner's stats.)
  - ec109685 10y ago
    That's not true. There is space in amp for a variety of iframe'd ad providers.
  - cramforce 10y ago
    AMP supports many dozens of ad providers. 2 of them are owned by Google.
- monochromatic 10y ago
alistproducer2 10y ago
I make my own amp pages by keeping JavaScript turned off on my phone. 95℅ of pages work and load instantly. Those that don't, I turn on JavaScript. If I go to those pages a lot I add them to my exception list. Sorry but I'm not an amp believer.
- amorphid 10y ago
  It just took me 8 clicks and a couple swipes to disable JS in my mobile browser, Chrome on Android. Another 8 clicks and couple swipes to enable JS. Is there a faster way to do that?
  - acdha 10y ago
    I use Brave mostly because it has a side panel which makes that two taps to reload the page with JavaScript enabled and remembers those settings per hostname. It really trims down page load times and metered data transfer.
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    I know this isn't really and answer to what you are asking, but... On FF mobile, with the "Toggle Javascript enabled" add-on it takes me 3 clicks to reload a page with JS disabled.
    - Sylos 10y ago
      NoScript is also available for Android Firefox: https://noscript.net/nsa/ https://noscript.net/nsa/
  - alistproducer2 10y ago
    There's not a faster way, that I'm aware of. That being said, I'm not exaggerating when I say the overwhelming majority of pages just work and the 5-10% that don't you can add them to the exception list (meaning they will run JavaScript) so you won't have to go through those 8 clicks every time. give a try for a day or so. Once I did, I can't go back to keeping it on because the web seems so slow by comparison.
jasonlingx 10y ago
Is it possible to fork the project and keep all the good things that makes it fast but remove all the evil lock in stuff?
- magicalist 10y ago
  If you mean the Google CDN cache, just don't include the Google CDN file and host it yourself instead
  - HappyTypist 10y ago
    Then google doesn't consider it a valid AMP file and won't give it the AMP tag. The spec literally requires you to use the CDN.
    - magicalist 10y ago
      That's not what the OP asked though. If you're fine not having an icon that's "all the good things that makes it fast". I am curious if the cloudfare cached pages are going to get a logo, though.
- roneythomas6 10y ago
  Yes you can and cloudflare is doing that https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/ Check the cache guideline https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-cache-guidelines.md https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-c...
  - mxuribe 10y ago
    Kudos to cloudflare team for doing this!
whyileft 10y ago
The more I read about complaints about AMP, the more it dawns on me that there are still a fair amount of people that do not understand that the web is basically Google's product. Facebook and others have arrived to take significant time away from that product. Then combine that with things like Facebook Video and Instant Articles. Google is in a difficult position where Facebook may be able to start offering up a superior product for content as opposed to the web. If you want to blame a big corp for AMP, you should probably take a closer look at Facebook as without it Google risks losing a large chunk of its market.
- dangoldin 10y ago
  It's true. Google has AMP and Facebook has Instant Articles. They're both about keeping the content inside their walled gardens that they can both improve the performance of (especially on mobile) but I'm sure at some point use their own monetization solution.
- astronautjones 10y ago
  Why not (complain about and be against) both?
Animats 10y ago
Google commands! Suffer us to obey! That's AMP.
monochromatic 10y ago
Screw AMP. I've started using DuckDuckGo.
- lightbulbjim 10y ago
  Yep, AMP is what finally made me switch away from Google on my phone.
alphagrowth 10y ago
Our early data is showing that advantages like Search engine ranking and reduction in bounce rate are making AMP a necessity in 2017. All the content gateways have their own proprietary format to keep users locked into the platform it's a smart move. You can read more advantages at http://alphapages.io http://alphapages.io
- hoschicz 10y ago
  The mobile page allows scrolling to sides and the headers/features are hardly readable
booleandilemma 10y ago
I really prefer Google and still use it when I'm on my desktop, but I find myself using Bing more and more when I'm on my phone just to avoid AMP. If Google made an easy way to jump from the AMP page to the original page then I wouldn't mind it so much. The # 1 reason why AMP bothers me is when I want to share a link with someone, I don't want to send an AMP link.
- incongruity 10y ago
  This, exactly. AMP pages get in the way of sharing content – or at least in the way of being transparent about what you're sharing and where it's coming from.
- mattmanser 10y ago
  I actually didn't enjoy bing much so completely switched browser. AMP doesn't work on firefox.
gareim 10y ago
AMP hijacks scrolling and changes it. They've gotten better, but it's still annoying when I notice.
roneythomas6 10y ago
Yeah you can use Cloudflare to serve amp from your own subdomain instead of Google's CDN. https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/
- ec109685 10y ago
  Not within google search results though.
  - drhousejr 10y ago
    I don't think that's actually true... "Cloudflare now powers the only compliant non-Google AMP cache with all the same performance and security benefits as Google." https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/ The term "compliant" would make it seems as though Google has them as a trusted source now and as such will show that content in AMP features in Google
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
Every time I post a Wall Street Journal article, the first comment complains about the paywall. AMP is a reliable WSJ-paywall workaround. Could someone help me reconcile?
- maverick_iceman 10y ago
  Not anymore.
paco3346 10y ago
Ugh, why does nobody ever point out that AMP and Google displaying AMP are 2 different things? Yes, Google is a huge sponsor in the AMP world but they aren't the only ones involved. AMP itself isn't so bad- asynchronous Javascript (not no script as the article suggests) and it is still valid HTML- it just has extra properties on tags (just how Angular does).
- theWatcher37 10y ago
  AMP is cancer. I go to a search engine to find content, not your URL-obscuring crappy implementation that I can't even readily share without opening up the URL and dissecting what I originally wanted from it. It's 2017, my phone has a decent quad core and 1080p screen... I don't need your gimped "mobile" version and I don't want you locking me into your platform every time I try and make a search. It's absolutely baffling how anyone at google thought this was a good idea. I mean really, how do you mess something so simple up this bad? The user experience is terrible, the implementation is terrible, the fundamental technical idea is terrible... it's gotta go back.
  - majkinetor 10y ago
    Amen !
- flukus 10y ago
  Because if it weren't for google forcing AMP on everyone then no one would care about it at all.
- paco3346 10y ago
  Ouch, seem to have struck a nerve here. What's with the down votes HN?
rezashirazian 10y ago
I recently build a dictionary based on WordNet and decided to AMP all the pages. I didn't have any issues and honestly it was fairly straightforward. (http://www.wordcadet.com http://www.wordcadet.com) Again I'm not doing anything fancy, I don't handle any user data (JS breach at google is least of my concern) or have any concern regarding where Google might take AMP. I personally like the idea behind AMP. With all these over the top JS libraries and bloating web applications, a restrict markup that enforces speed over spectacle is a positive change.
brentis 10y ago
AMP and PWA are going to be big. What better to foster adoption than tell sees they will get an SEO boost.
akras14 10y ago
I wrote a similar(although not as concise) article about 3 month ago: https://www.alexkras.com/google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile-traffic/ https://www.alexkras.com/google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile-... After which I was invited to meet Google AMP team and to express my concerns, you can read my Q&A here: https://www.alexkras.com/i-had-lunch-with-google-amp-team/ https://www.alexkras.com/i-had-lunch-with-google-amp-team/ TLDR; A lot of concerns are getting addressed 1. Minor, but the bar at the top is now scrollable on all devices, including (finally) iOS: https://www.alexkras.com/amp-toolbar-is-now-scrollable-on-safari-mobile/ https://www.alexkras.com/amp-toolbar-is-now-scrollable-on-sa..., it was not when I first wrote the article, so it's a good sign. 2. It is my understanding that the team is actively working on a way to "fix" the link issue, and give an easy way to get to original article, although it remains to be seen how they will approach it. 3. You can opt out from AMP cache on the web site end, but it really defeats the purpose. Read more here: https://www.alexkras.com/i-had-lunch-with-google-amp-team/ https://www.alexkras.com/i-had-lunch-with-google-amp-team/ 4. Most importantly, looks like there is even internal pressure to give people an option to Turn Off AMP on the search engine side, if they don't like it. See this, for example: https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/820344221450125312 https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/820344221450125312 @cramforce is THE tech lead on AMP and @slightlylate is also a big shot at Google on Chrome Team. Personally, I have mixed feelings about AMP, on one side I really like the speed, on the other I hate how it breaks the Web as we know it.
- saurik 10y ago
  The navigation toolbar hiding is only part of the problem with the navigation on iOS: AMP also breaks the default iOS navigation bar hiding, so even with the AMP toolbar hiding screen real estate is still being burned. Your article also hadn't even mentioned scrolling: on iOS, at least, scrolling is "janky" and slow and unnatural; and that's before you realize the insanity of how they selfishly are breaking scroll left and right in their attempt to take control of the entire Internet as mere content for their website :/.
  - akras14 10y ago
    Great points!
tbv 10y ago
Cloudflare just launched an accelerated mobile links project which addresses most of your criticisms. https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/
cowardlydragon 10y ago
I think I was trapped on one of these AMP pages when I wanted an article and the link to it so I could send it to a friend, but the article was "trapped" with a google url and I couldn't get it. It was like those old-school days where sites tried to put their frame around the window you were browsing so their ads constantly showed. Or like the toolbar crapware. This sucks.
mcintyre1994 10y ago
I don't generally disagree with this article but I'd be interested to see research behind "it is a lot easier to stop using the Facebook app or Apple News app than it is to avoid Google search." - for Facebook specifically. I know a few people who view Facebook's app on their phone as the Internet and who would never think to Google search a question. I'd be interested to know how widespread that actually is among Facebook's vast user base, in comparison to how many use Google and avoid Facebook.
- beezischillin 10y ago
  Make no mistake, Facebook is also about the lock-in. Splitting the main app from Messenger makes a lot of sense in retrospect and is 100% about locking in users and their communication to be within the Facebook platform. Being in a situation where most of your communication goes through one platform, it's absolutely harder to abandon Facebook without abandoning a very important communication tool. Changing a search engine is somewhat easier in my opinion.
pmlnr 10y ago
The real "amp experience" is the reader mode in Firefox.
matthewmacleod 10y ago
I don't like AMP, and I very glad there is now some push back against Google's implementation of it. Fast pages are great, but I suppose I'm missing the background on why it was necessary to do this, when anybody who can implement AMP could presumably have implemented "lightweight non bloated pages" without using it. It's bad enough that I've had to switch to using Bing on mobile, despite the worse results, and I'm actually genuinely fearful for the first time about the openness of the web.
- davedx 10y ago
  Yeah, I'm tired of not being able to load Reddit from Google SERPs on my phone. Really tired of it. Time to give DuckDuckGo another try I guess...
  - djmobley 10y ago
    Have you checked your content blockers?
    - ricardobeat 10y ago
      Disabling ad blocking makes it work, yes. That is part of the problem here...
    - matthewmacleod 10y ago
      To be fair, even when it does load it's a rubbish half-page. I click on Google search results to see pages, not to see abstracts of them. It's so totally broken as a user experience for Reddit in particular.
  - ryao 10y ago
    Reddit AMP links break on the iPhone when the Reddit app is installed. I do not know exactly why but my guess is that the open in Reddit app functionality is incompatible. I am not sure how to report this to Reddit.
    - 10y ago
facepalm 10y ago
I don't understand why AMP needs all the extra shenanigans. Why can't it just be an optional CDN by Google, transparent to the users?
greenspot 10y ago
Google is abusing its powers. The search rank is our currency and Google has pushed AMP sites to the top for some while. So, everybody is now building weird AMP layers for their sites. We went from a free to a proprietary mobile web in just a few weeks. And we can't do anything. It feels like the times when the Internet Explorer tried to rule except that more people were complaining. The open solution to a faster mobile web would have been so easy: Just penalize large and slow web pages without defining a dedicated mobile specification. That's it. This wasn't done in the past, slow pages outperformed fast ones on the SERPs because of some weird Google voodoo ranking, heck sometimes even desktop sites outperformed responsive ones on smartphones. If they had just tweaked these odd ranking rules in way that speed and size got more impact on the overall ranking there wouldn't have been any reason for AMP—the market would have regulated itself. I'm wondering who at Google is responsible for AMP. Who created AMP's random specs (no external CSS but external fonts files, preference for four selected font providers, no JS but their JS, probable ranking preference of Google cached AMP sites, etc.). Why did they decide on the spec themselves and not as a part of an industry group? Again why didn't they just tweaked their ranking algorithm and btw, they could have also made Android's Chrome faster, it's still significantly slower than iOS' Safari. I'd be happy if this person could comment on the abuse of power (Sundar Pichai?).
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  > Google is abusing its powers. They are a business, doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. It's up to us to find a way to kill google and take back our internet. Edit, i love the downvotes for this. Google is legally required to act in their shareholders best interests. You all should understand fiduciary duty. They are building long term value for a massive (and growing) customer segment at the expense of a relatively small base of idealist tech users. Its morally reprehensible but still the correct decision in today's business climate.
  - joelthelion 10y ago
    > They are a business, doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. Violating anti-trust laws?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
EdSharkey 10y ago
As described I don't believe I've ever seen an AMP'ified page as they're described?! Is it because I don't use Google as my goto search engine? (I use ddg almost exclusively.) Or, is it because I don't use Android Chrome as my browser? (I'm on Firefox Mobile unless some site owners forgot to test on Firefox and I'm forced onto Chrome.)
- Sylos 10y ago
  As far as I understand it, both of the above. AMP apparently doesn't work on Firefox and AMP-pages are only linked to by Google. Obviously, some people might copy the AMP-link themselves and post it somewhere, but if you're not much on social media, it's entirely possible that you just haven't seen that yet.
beebeebush 10y ago
Future is heading day by day more towards internet ghetto's direction. People's freedom of speech is controlled by Google, facebook or some other corporation. By keepining very limited development requirements these "instant" ghettos also can fully controll all content. People please, do not use these ghettos. Don't loose rights to have own pages or technology. I'm sure static site in good cdn is almost instant also. Why to limit your content only for google also ?? I'm more and more against these major corporations daily.
minijackson 10y ago
CPP (Content Performance Policy) is an open, standardized alternative to AMP, that may need help to finish it: Draft: http://wicg.github.io/ContentPerformancePolicy/ http://wicg.github.io/ContentPerformancePolicy/ Github: https://github.com/wicg/ContentPerformancePolicy/ https://github.com/wicg/ContentPerformancePolicy/ Launch article: https://timkadlec.com/2016/02/a-standardized-alternative-to-amp/ https://timkadlec.com/2016/02/a-standardized-alternative-to-... HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12787462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12787462
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  This wont matter because google isn't prioritizing CPP sites. Google has the majority of the traffic and it gets to dictate that amp gets preferential treatment.
Philipp__ 10y ago
AMP made me switch to DuckDuckGO on my iPhone as default search engine. Day 5, and so far I am surprised how well it works! I might switch on my computers too... Google just went too far with AMP in my opinion, pure abuse of power. Reminds me of something that would Facebook do, where they push changes down the consumers throat, but they aren't aware of their dependency on users (but most people don't care, bitch and whine about something that they do not like and don't sanction the product/company).
tyfon 10y ago
I am always confused by this topic. Having browsed the web via mobile for several years with chrome, I have yet to encounter an AMP page. Do I have to enable something or is this region specific? I live in Norway if that matters. Six months ago I switched my mobile browser from chrome to firefox but I still se nothing (nor the bar with the X everyone are talking about).
- vurpo 10y ago
  Sometimes you see Google search results (mostly news) that have a little grey lightning icon underneath the title. When you click the link, the page loads and looks normal, but is actually loaded from the Google AMP cache and the address begins with `google.com/amp`.
throw2016 10y ago
Something like AMP should be an opt-in for users that requires marketing, education and the standard process of trying to make your idea work in the market. Currently its being forced down users and websites throats and is a blatant abuse of market power. There should be a opt-in for every search that specifies amp explicity to signify you want it. Google should be taken to the cleaners for trying to expand its market power so egregriously. Since its is not going to happen in the US at least the EU can step in. There has to be something illegal about these kinds of monopolistic actions.
oflannabhra 10y ago
My biggest issue with AMP regards its UX. In mobile Safari, scrolling is hijacked. This creates two issues: non-native scroll momentum, and the inability to scroll to the top (by tapping the status bar). I have several other issues as well, but they are mentioned in the article.
BillBatw2 10y ago
This! Thanks for writing about it. I couldn't pin what bothered me with AMP, but I share your points.
christop 10y ago
> Techniques such as subresource integrity should be used where appropriate. While this is a good recommendation, I'm not sure this is possible with AMP, as they don't provide versioned URLs; the JS loaded keeps changing over time. Edit: Indeed, this was rejected: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/534 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/534
daveheq 10y ago
I've had almost nothing but problems reading news webpages on my phone since AMP; variously, I can't see the URL, I lose the typical Chrome app functions, I can't zoom in or out, I can't see side or video content referenced in the article, and I lose options I normally would with long-pressing. I can't disable any of this from the browser and I can't choose to view the non-AMP version. It's painfully frustrating, and I'm being forced to read my news AMP's way instead of my way.
halr9000 10y ago
Wah? I mean, it's a giant step up from a non mobile optimized website, hands down. The article downplays Facebook and Apple despite them doing the same exact thing.
otakucode 10y ago
I am unfamiliar with AMP, so I apologize if this question is based on a misunderstanding. The article says that all links in AMP pages begin with "https://www.google.com/amp/" https://www.google.com/amp/" right? Isn't this an invitation to bad actors of every flavor to produce AMP pages which will, to the users who know to look at their address bar and note the source domain, appear to be legitimate?
- akras14 10y ago
  100% and it's already being exploited
vajrapani666 10y ago
There's little power for us when Google abuses the trust the community has afforded to them. Let's assume this got much worse, and evidence came out that private political interests worked with Google to interfere with informed consent by reprioritizing what some called "fake news", when really what was being called fake news was actually anti-government activists pointing out collusion between tech companies and the government. Clearly, Google would be an agent to destroying democracy. I imagine detecting that a visitor came from Google, and showing them an interstitial informing the user they have come from a state-sponsored search engine, and letting them know what that means and the alternatives to Google. I think it's actually pretty trivial to build something like this with recipes for the popular CDNs and servers out there. Even a JS snippet would be totally fine. Google is pursuing AMP not because it wants to promote a better experience on the web, but because Google wants to be the provider whose technology and own practices perform best on SRPs. They are acting like capitalist pigs, and we should coordinate a protest against Google to let them know they can't just walk all over us with no consequences. January 20th seems like an ideal day.
homero 10y ago
I despise not being able to see the real url, I actively avoid amp
p94ka 10y ago
>Google insists that AMP is not a factor in a site’s search ranking. Site speed is a factor in search ranking. Imagine how fast Google benchmarks the speed of a page that is hosted on their own servers...
vgprice 10y ago
As a small but growing site, I've been meaning to get on the AMP train and essentially steal some SEO before my competitor sites get in on it. Having a 50k page and dynamic site that lives in the database proves to be a challenge to create AMP optimized pages. On the topic of AMP being a problem for web standards, I agree. I also can't afford to miss opportunities to get ahead either.
ksk 10y ago
A simple way to increase performance would be to stop with the bandwidth hogging ads and the CPU sucking JS scripts.
WA 10y ago
The joke of AMP is this: I lost a few rankings for an important keyword to a competitor. My page loads in milliseconds without AMP, whereas the competitor shovels 300 HTTP requests down the visitor's throat with several MB worth of ad trackers and junk. The technical side of SEO – and thus the justification of AMP – is a joke if a trash website like my competitor's can be on #1.
apeace 10y ago
Google deserves more credit than it's being given here. I think AMP is Google's next SPDY. As you know, SPDY eventually became HTTP/2 through an open standardization process, and Google has since deprecated SPDY in favor of the open HTTP/2 standard. AMP is similarly open. While it is still Google-driven at this stage, other companies are already iterating on it and implementing their own AMP caches[0]. There's no reason to believe Google is attempting to "lock-in" users to Google (and this article provides no evidence of that). Every major tech company is trying to keep up with the demands of users. They demand content that loads really fast. People in many parts of the world have poor access to mobile data, which increases the importance of this even further. As mentioned in this article, both Apple and Facebook are also working on similar projects. At least you can send a pull request to Google's. Is Google using its influence to push the web in a different direction? Yes. Is it a bad thing? I don't think so, but others may disagree. The issue is that this article provides no argument that AMP is a bad thing, but rather a conspiracy theory that it is Google's attempt at "lock-in". I agree that requiring an external Javascript to be loaded is a privacy issue, and that should be fixed. How about contributing a solution? If not AMP or something along the same lines, how do we the tech community solve the problem of delivering static articles lightning-fast? [0] https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/accelerated-mobile-links/ https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/accelerated-...
bassman9000 10y ago
IMHO, worst AMP feature it's that it's viral: when sharing the link, you're sharing the AMP link, so you force your followers to read the AMP version, and, if they share, they'll share the AMP version...
manigandham 10y ago
There is no reason for a quasi-proprietary fork of HTML. We already have enough standards as it is. HTML is perfectly fast. Sites are only show because of the media/ads/stuff that's put on them, most of which is a business requirement. Factoring site speed/weight into search and traffic rankings could've easily pressured sites into making much better progress that would benefit anyone using a browser, instead of this random fork that also takes away even more of the limited time and resources that a publisher has to work on their main site. I like Chrome and Google's efforts in making the web faster but this is one of the worst projects they've ever started.
iliketurtlez 10y ago
I am completely against AMP and personally have zero plans to learn and implement it. That may come back and bite me in the ass, but that's my current stance.

641 points by segf4ult 10y ago

Using https://encrypted.google.com/ https://encrypted.google.com/ to avoid AMP is a great tip. I'll be doing that, does anybody have more information on what that URL is for? Is it possible to set it as default on iOS/Android somehow? AMP really frustratingly breaks link sharing, and I'd like to totally avoid it.

itcrowd 10y ago
I'm not sure there is a more natural way, but if you install DuckDuckGo as default search engine, then searches which use their !bang syntax to redirect to a Google search are via encrypted.google.com. Example: !g search query Leads to https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=search%20query https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=search%20query Of course, this also works if you type this query in at duckduckgo.com Edit to add: I guess it is a matter of time before amp pages also appear on the encrypted subdomain; another incentive to switch to DDG now.
Spivak 10y ago
That's why I've never seen any AMP pages! I've been wondering about this forever -- I thought Google must have figured out I wouldn't want them somehow. But any Google searches I do are usually through DuckDuckGo which use the encrypted link.
ivank 10y ago
> does anybody have more information on what that URL is for? Many years ago, Google Search existed only on http:// http:// and schools used filters to block searches that they didn't like. Then Google shipped https:// https:// for search on www.google.com, upset the schools because they could no longer block just some searches, then moved encrypted search to encrypted.google.com so that the entire domain could be blocked: https://cloud.googleblog.com/2010/06/an-update-on-encrypted-web-search-in.html https://cloud.googleblog.com/2010/06/an-update-on-encrypted-...
- astronautjones 10y ago
  this seems so dumb... is the difference between schools blocking and governments blocking negligible to them?
duskwuff 10y ago
> Does anybody have more information on what that URL is for? You used to have to use that domain to run searches over HTTPS. Google's enabled that for all users now, so it's kind of obsolete -- but apparently it still behaves a little bit differently?
ayrx 10y ago
This StackExchange answer[0] has a nice overview of what encrypted.google.com does. [0]: http://security.stackexchange.com/a/32374 http://security.stackexchange.com/a/32374
kobayashi 10y ago
It's from the era before which Google defaulted to TLS. Nowadays, the only known difference relates to clicking of links. Here's the info from SE[0]: >1. Clicking on an ad: > - https://google.com https://google.com : Google will take you to an HTTP redirection page where they'd append your search query to the referrer information. > - https://encrypted.google.com https://encrypted.google.com : If the advertiser uses HTTP, Google will not let the advertiser know about your query. If the advertiser uses HTTPS, they will receive the referrer information normally (including your search query). >2. Clicking on a normal search result: > - https://google.com https://google.com : If the website uses HTTP, Google will take you to an HTTP redirection page and will not append your search query to the referrer information. They'll only tell the website that you're coming from Google. If it uses HTTPS, it will receive referrer information normally. > - https://encrypted.google.com https://encrypted.google.com : If the website you click in the results uses HTTP, it will have no idea where you're coming from or what your search query is. If it uses HTTPS, it will receive referrer information normally. [0] http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/32367/what-is-the-difference-between-https-google-com-and-https-encrypted-google-c#32374 http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/32367/what-is-th...
clydethefrog 10y ago
Startpage is a search engine who displays Google's search results without all the tracking and AMP, as an alternative to using DDG and using !g.

BrandonM 10y ago

On my iPhone, I use DuckDuckGo mainly to avoid AMP. I use Google on my laptop.

lightbulbjim 10y ago
Ditto.
- BrandonM 10y ago
  Apparently, 6 people (including you) agree with me.

symbolepro 10y ago

Sorry, this is a lame blog post. I did not feel any pain in using AMP powered pages.

freyir 10y ago
You must have not wanted access to the site's full set of features, not wanted to use a mobile ad blocker, now wanted access to comments, etc. That's fine, but for many, it's an annoyance.
- aclsid 10y ago
  Comments are half the news anyways :)
  - sova 10y ago
    So true

freyir 10y ago

AMP is one of the most frustrating experiences I've had with Google. the fact that it's foisted on users, with no option to disable it, makes it borderline infuriating. If you're stuck on an AMP page in your mobile browser, you can click on the browser's "Request desktop site" option to load the full page.

rashkov 10y ago
I get the frustration, but mobile sites in general also have this problem. "Request desktop site" should be a more prominent feature, at least in safari which is what I'm familiar with. It's quite buried unfortunately and I think that more non-techies would benefit from knowing about it.
- pryelluw 10y ago
  Firefox on Android does have this feature as well.
  - zem 10y ago
    as does chrome on android
- ChrisClark 10y ago
  It's right on the main menu in Chrome on Android. A checkbox item on the menu, so you know you can turn it on and off. So at least it isn't that hidden, same level as the other main features.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- m-p-3 10y ago
  And websites should honor the "Request desktop version" at all time. It's frustrating when you enable the option and it still bring up the mobile version.
  - 10y ago

robryan 10y ago

AMP is okay for news, but terrible for other forms of content. The reddit implementation is way less usable on mobile than going to their actual site. It also results in lower quality news appearing at the top of searches in cases where they have implemented AMP and the better sources haven't.

freehunter 10y ago
Man trying to go back a page on Reddit then clicking a link on that page and seeing "there was an error, please reload the page" gets me out of there so damn fast.
kristianp 10y ago
Can you give an example of how to view reddit via AMP? If I just search for "reddit" on my Android phone for example, there are no AMP links to reddit, only Business Insider etc.
- magicalist 10y ago
  On my phone (chrome on android), basically any google search result from reddit goes to the amp version of the page. (with all five visible comments, and since the full comments are almost certainly what I was searching for, I end up having to click through to the full page anyway every time)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - fortytw2 10y ago
    For me, on iOS, I've _never_ had a Reddit AMP page actually finish loading / rendering. Broken since the start
    - ryao 10y ago
      There is an incompatibility between the Reddit app and Reddit amp links. If the Reddit app is not installed, they load just fine. Reddit likely could fix that if they were told about it. I have no idea how to tell them though.

djsumdog 10y ago

I've had many of these concerns about AMP myself and have seen other posts on this before. I tend to agree with their points. If you want to optimize your mobile view, than you can do that without a Google pseudo-standard. When someone clicks on a link to your site, they should go to your site. This wouldn't be that big a deal if Google didn't emphasize the rank of AMP pages. There aren't a lot of alternatives out there to search, and Google dominates the market in much of the world.

deminature 10y ago

I agree with some missing content and linking issues with reddit, however the improvement in loading time is probably 10x. I'd be interested in seeing this quantified - I didn't appreciate just how slowly reddit loaded until loading the amp version, followed by the real version. Loading the amp version on a less-than-stellar mobile connection is much preferable to the real version.

tschellenbach 10y ago

It's actually a pretty nifty feature when you're browsing the web from a plane's slow wifi.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago
But the people who designed the page in the first place should be able to make it just as fast without using AMP.
- magicalist 10y ago
  > But the people who designed the page in the first place should be able to make it just as fast without using AMP. ...but they don't, which is the point. I'll throw my hat in on being a fan of reading news on AMP pages as well (though reddit amp does seem completely broken). I wouldn't care in the least if news site x instead wrote a fast site, I'd happily use that instead. But until they do, yeah, as a user I'll click on the amp link first.
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    And I'm the opposite. I do my best to NOT use AMP pages. If a site can't be bothered to optimize it's own pages, then they don't get my attention/money/whatever. I can do without. Let the best developed sites win.
  - swiley 10y ago
    It would be a lot better if instead they just ranked pages with slow load times and JavaScript lower, oh wait, that makes it harder for ads...
- ec109685 10y ago
  No, only amp pages can be preloaded by google's SERP, so that is large reason it is so fast to render.
jimueller 10y ago
I actually like the AMP pages. Aside from public radio sites and a handful of other sites, news pages are so full of ads and slow loading, especially on mobile, that they're unreadable. With AMP I can actually read articles from my local newspaper or TV station. I guess in this case, I see it as a win for fast loading pages with just the article I'm looking for. Using AMP is my way of fighting back against autoplaying video ads and click bait links mixed in with news.

jey 10y ago

There's definitely something wrong with Reddit's AMP implementation.

65827 10y ago

It's so strange to see Google repeating all the same mistakes AOL did so many years ago. No I don't want your fucking garden, I want the network. If you get in the way of that I'm done with you.

space_fountain 10y ago
Everything seems to be moving towards gardens right now. Certainly not just Google. It's one of the things that depresses me most about tech right now.
- swiley 10y ago
  They where when AOL was big too.
- flukus 10y ago
  The most depressing part of it is that the HN community don't seem to care and will actively cheer it in many cases (walled garden IRC and cloud in general). The only reason we have an open internet at all is because techies cared back in the day.
  - ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
    Internet is a co-operative anarchy: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1726#page-5 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1726#page-5
  - jdironman 10y ago
    I feel like this is only partially true. The majority of the articles, excluding those from large name corps, are simple loading pages. Using primarily the basic HTML and inline CSS. You do have the occasional blog page with some fancy touches, but the majority of the links that I click on while browsing HN has me questioning why, on sub par satellite internet, that HN and a majority of it's submitted posts work when Facebook, Google, Bing, etc.. does not. I feel it can. Everything just feels so bloated.
twsted 10y ago

mrfusion 10y ago

Do the amp links from google results to Reddit seem broken to anyone else? Edit: sorry that was actually in the article.

freyir 10y ago
Yes. I disabled my mobile ad blocker, and then the Redit AMP pages started working for me.

abusque 10y ago

Possibly off-topic, but the article isn't displaying[0] for me on Chromium 55.0.2883.87 (64-bit), running on Arch Linux, unless I go in the dev tools and manually remove "Fira Sans" from the font-family list in .container[1]. Not sure whether the problem is with me or the site, I'm surprised it doesn't fall-back to sans-serif before I override manually. [0] http://i.imgur.com/qJKSvMC.png http://i.imgur.com/qJKSvMC.png [1] http://i.imgur.com/zYDZrtr.png http://i.imgur.com/zYDZrtr.png

segf4ult 10y ago
That's weird. I'll look into a fix. Edit: I couldn't reproduce this with Chromium on Ubuntu 16.10. I might set up an Arch Linux box to see if that makes a difference.
- krzyk 10y ago
  It happens on my Firefox 52 on Debian. I also have ublock origin installed. Maybe you use some strange fonts?
glandium 10y ago
Same here with Firefox.

conductr 10y ago

On AMP page, clicking the X on the header box should load the HTML page. Instead it kicks you back to the search results. I think I would be okay if they fixed that one thing.

jedmeyers 10y ago
That's my main pet peeve with AMP as well. In my mind the [x] in the top bar is almost exclusively associated with 'remove the bar' behavior in Safari on iOS.
- theWatcher37 10y ago
  Google: "let's completely reinvent our core product in terms of user experience... and mess it up" Google is search, everything else is secondary. 20 people in a room testing this should have been all the red flags they needed to fix it before launch.
- akras14 10y ago
  They viewed Google as platform and clicking x, takes user back to the platform. This was one of my biggest complains about the AMP project form the start. According to AMP team lead, however, the user testing on regular (not tech) users showed, that x did what people expected. I really think AMP can benefit a lot from PR stand point by letting techies opt out from it, but leaving it on for "regular" users. See https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/820344221450125312 https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/820344221450125312
  - niftich 10y ago
    Interesting info, but whether or not it's true, it certainly benefits their strategy. I have no doubt that they want to push the narrative that Google (Search) is the 'platform' and the news from publishers they wrap is a tab or viewport that you can [x] (exit) out of, returning to the default 'blank' Google page. The problem with that is that the UX is inconsistent between AMP results and web results. AMP results pretend they're this fake tab that can be "closed" and you return to Google, while web results take you away to the URL like you'd expect, which means navigation is the responsibility of the browser, and not of Google Search. Frankly, this all would make more sense in the viewport-wrapping context of Google Chrome or Google News or the Google App rather than a behavior of Google Search, but that's not the limit of their ambition. Or just, y'know, dress up the results page a bit more, and be honest about it. Brand the AMP subsection 'Read Instantly with AMP' and have it clearly and visibly wrap the results. This gains them a bunch of mindshare. Or change the [x] to a 'back arrow', like their own splash page shows [1]. [1] http://imgur.com/a/vAtqq http://imgur.com/a/vAtqq

bluejekyll 10y ago

I wish the post offered an alternative. Given that there are at least three similar specs, shouldn't there be a Light HTML5, or something that provides the same set of underlying guarantees?

JustSomeNobody 10y ago
You mean something like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement

dzhiurgis 10y ago

So the argument against AMP is someone's broken implementation and "security" of Google's CDN. Sounds like terrible arguments. That said, Google should give option to opt-out from CDN caching (if they don't already) as otherwise implementing AMP gives Google the right to host your content on their domain.

madeofpalk 10y ago
I believe the Google AMP CDN 'caching' is opt-in anyway
- HappyTypist 10y ago
  It's not. Google will cache all AMP pages.
  - magicalist 10y ago
    Just don't include the Google CDN hosted amp.js file and you won't be cached on the Google CDN.
matt4077 10y ago
You can't implicitly grant licenses just by implementing something like AMP. That said, the DMCA contains specific language for caches (and search) so they probably have that right anyway.

adzm 10y ago

My biggest problem is simply being unable to open up an amp link in a new tab. Often in Google News for example I prefer to open up several tabs and read through them at my leisure. But with AMP this became impossible - though I'm unclear if this is simply a limitation of the implementation.

stuckagain 10y ago
Long press and open in new tab seems to work for me in chrome/iOS.

jordanlev 10y ago

And what happened to whole "don't build different markup for different devices" mantra that has been the accepted wisdom in web development for the past 4 or 5 years (whenever responsive design was discovered)? Feels like "m." sites all over again (but this time with google's CDN as a required intermediary).

technion 10y ago
As someone happy with their AMP site, I'm only happy with it on the basis that my Jekyll theme builds the whole site as a single site that happens to support AMP on the desktop page. I couldn't imagine dealing with supporting two deployments.

colept 10y ago

I'm glad AMP's weaknesses are finally gaining attention and making their rounds. Google should not be allowed to steal publishers' traffic and strong-arm them into going along with it.

thesagan 10y ago
Controversial question: At what point would Google start to be considered an antitrust issue? I know the EU has made some noise about it, but I'm a bit surprised I haven't heard more about it here in the U.S.
- colept 10y ago
  In my opinion, they've already violated the trust of publishers. Take Google Lyrics for example: http://phandroid.com/2014/12/31/google-lyrics-search/ http://phandroid.com/2014/12/31/google-lyrics-search/ In all fairness, lyric sites were terrible. Slow, riddled with ads, and sometimes incorrect. While Google's lyrics are a great service to the user, they're at the top of search and displayed inline. There's no reason to go to lyric sites anymore. My biggest fear is Structured Data and AMP. With Structure Data, you volunteer your most valuable data in a format Google can easily consume and adapt to its own needs - all so you can get better page rankings. When Google introduces its own service in the same market - just like lyrics - you're effectively cut off from your audience. And with AMP, you don't have to wait for Google to siphon your traffic - you're volunteering.
  - thesagan 10y ago
    Thanks, I appreciate your view! That's how it strikes me as well; that Google provides unparalleled sticks and carrots towards publishers that will end up undoing those same publishers, while they (publishers) volunteer to go along and aid in the process! (Maybe they have little choice in the race to get traffic?) In other words, Google seems like a very powerful gatekeeper of content that ends up consuming the content providers. Smacks of an abuse of their position.
  - sjwright 10y ago

ejcx 10y ago

One thing I love about AMP, that seems to never be mentioned when people discuss it, is viewing AMP-HTML pages on my laptop. I wrote a small chrome extension that always forwards my page to the equivalent AMP page (if one exists) and the experience of reading the news is so much better. AMP pages off mobile are really really amazing. Compare Non-AMP[0] vs AMP[1] [0] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Trump-on-the-minds-of-MLK-Day-marchers-in-SF-10861091.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Trump-on-the-minds-of-... [1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/amp/Trump-on-the-minds-of-MLK-Day-marchers-in-SF-10861091.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/amp/Trump-on-the-minds-of-MLK-...

candiodari 10y ago
Yeah but here it's functioning effectively as a better ad-blocker (one that doesn't screw up site layout). Looking at how AMP works, I can see why : you'd have to decide before you know who the user is what ads to show. Wouldn't that effectively mean that in a search query followed by an AMP site visit only Google has the opportunity to show targeted ads ?
- derefr 10y ago
  I imagine it's supposed to be similar to how Apple's iAd platform works for iOS apps. It's a bad shake for third-party ad networks, but it's great for user privacy, since third-party origin requests are no longer being made to anyone but the platform owner (who then anonymizes the impression metrics they give back to the ad creators, who just have to trust the platform-owner's stats.)
- ec109685 10y ago
  That's not true. There is space in amp for a variety of iframe'd ad providers.
- cramforce 10y ago
  AMP supports many dozens of ad providers. 2 of them are owned by Google.
monochromatic 10y ago

alistproducer2 10y ago

I make my own amp pages by keeping JavaScript turned off on my phone. 95℅ of pages work and load instantly. Those that don't, I turn on JavaScript. If I go to those pages a lot I add them to my exception list. Sorry but I'm not an amp believer.

amorphid 10y ago
It just took me 8 clicks and a couple swipes to disable JS in my mobile browser, Chrome on Android. Another 8 clicks and couple swipes to enable JS. Is there a faster way to do that?
- acdha 10y ago
  I use Brave mostly because it has a side panel which makes that two taps to reload the page with JavaScript enabled and remembers those settings per hostname. It really trims down page load times and metered data transfer.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  I know this isn't really and answer to what you are asking, but... On FF mobile, with the "Toggle Javascript enabled" add-on it takes me 3 clicks to reload a page with JS disabled.
  - Sylos 10y ago
    NoScript is also available for Android Firefox: https://noscript.net/nsa/ https://noscript.net/nsa/
- alistproducer2 10y ago
  There's not a faster way, that I'm aware of. That being said, I'm not exaggerating when I say the overwhelming majority of pages just work and the 5-10% that don't you can add them to the exception list (meaning they will run JavaScript) so you won't have to go through those 8 clicks every time. give a try for a day or so. Once I did, I can't go back to keeping it on because the web seems so slow by comparison.

jasonlingx 10y ago

Is it possible to fork the project and keep all the good things that makes it fast but remove all the evil lock in stuff?

magicalist 10y ago
If you mean the Google CDN cache, just don't include the Google CDN file and host it yourself instead
- HappyTypist 10y ago
  Then google doesn't consider it a valid AMP file and won't give it the AMP tag. The spec literally requires you to use the CDN.
  - magicalist 10y ago
    That's not what the OP asked though. If you're fine not having an icon that's "all the good things that makes it fast". I am curious if the cloudfare cached pages are going to get a logo, though.
roneythomas6 10y ago
Yes you can and cloudflare is doing that https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/ Check the cache guideline https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-cache-guidelines.md https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-c...
- mxuribe 10y ago
  Kudos to cloudflare team for doing this!

whyileft 10y ago

The more I read about complaints about AMP, the more it dawns on me that there are still a fair amount of people that do not understand that the web is basically Google's product. Facebook and others have arrived to take significant time away from that product. Then combine that with things like Facebook Video and Instant Articles. Google is in a difficult position where Facebook may be able to start offering up a superior product for content as opposed to the web. If you want to blame a big corp for AMP, you should probably take a closer look at Facebook as without it Google risks losing a large chunk of its market.

dangoldin 10y ago
It's true. Google has AMP and Facebook has Instant Articles. They're both about keeping the content inside their walled gardens that they can both improve the performance of (especially on mobile) but I'm sure at some point use their own monetization solution.
astronautjones 10y ago
Why not (complain about and be against) both?

Animats 10y ago

Google commands! Suffer us to obey! That's AMP.

monochromatic 10y ago

Screw AMP. I've started using DuckDuckGo.

lightbulbjim 10y ago
Yep, AMP is what finally made me switch away from Google on my phone.

alphagrowth 10y ago

Our early data is showing that advantages like Search engine ranking and reduction in bounce rate are making AMP a necessity in 2017. All the content gateways have their own proprietary format to keep users locked into the platform it's a smart move. You can read more advantages at http://alphapages.io http://alphapages.io

hoschicz 10y ago
The mobile page allows scrolling to sides and the headers/features are hardly readable

booleandilemma 10y ago

I really prefer Google and still use it when I'm on my desktop, but I find myself using Bing more and more when I'm on my phone just to avoid AMP. If Google made an easy way to jump from the AMP page to the original page then I wouldn't mind it so much. The # 1 reason why AMP bothers me is when I want to share a link with someone, I don't want to send an AMP link.

incongruity 10y ago
This, exactly. AMP pages get in the way of sharing content – or at least in the way of being transparent about what you're sharing and where it's coming from.
mattmanser 10y ago
I actually didn't enjoy bing much so completely switched browser. AMP doesn't work on firefox.

gareim 10y ago

AMP hijacks scrolling and changes it. They've gotten better, but it's still annoying when I notice.

roneythomas6 10y ago

Yeah you can use Cloudflare to serve amp from your own subdomain instead of Google's CDN. https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/

ec109685 10y ago
Not within google search results though.
- drhousejr 10y ago
  I don't think that's actually true... "Cloudflare now powers the only compliant non-Google AMP cache with all the same performance and security benefits as Google." https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/ The term "compliant" would make it seems as though Google has them as a trusted source now and as such will show that content in AMP features in Google

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

Every time I post a Wall Street Journal article, the first comment complains about the paywall. AMP is a reliable WSJ-paywall workaround. Could someone help me reconcile?

maverick_iceman 10y ago
Not anymore.

paco3346 10y ago

Ugh, why does nobody ever point out that AMP and Google displaying AMP are 2 different things? Yes, Google is a huge sponsor in the AMP world but they aren't the only ones involved. AMP itself isn't so bad- asynchronous Javascript (not no script as the article suggests) and it is still valid HTML- it just has extra properties on tags (just how Angular does).

theWatcher37 10y ago
AMP is cancer. I go to a search engine to find content, not your URL-obscuring crappy implementation that I can't even readily share without opening up the URL and dissecting what I originally wanted from it. It's 2017, my phone has a decent quad core and 1080p screen... I don't need your gimped "mobile" version and I don't want you locking me into your platform every time I try and make a search. It's absolutely baffling how anyone at google thought this was a good idea. I mean really, how do you mess something so simple up this bad? The user experience is terrible, the implementation is terrible, the fundamental technical idea is terrible... it's gotta go back.
- majkinetor 10y ago
  Amen !
flukus 10y ago
Because if it weren't for google forcing AMP on everyone then no one would care about it at all.
paco3346 10y ago
Ouch, seem to have struck a nerve here. What's with the down votes HN?

rezashirazian 10y ago

I recently build a dictionary based on WordNet and decided to AMP all the pages. I didn't have any issues and honestly it was fairly straightforward. (http://www.wordcadet.com http://www.wordcadet.com) Again I'm not doing anything fancy, I don't handle any user data (JS breach at google is least of my concern) or have any concern regarding where Google might take AMP. I personally like the idea behind AMP. With all these over the top JS libraries and bloating web applications, a restrict markup that enforces speed over spectacle is a positive change.

brentis 10y ago

AMP and PWA are going to be big. What better to foster adoption than tell sees they will get an SEO boost.

akras14 10y ago

I wrote a similar(although not as concise) article about 3 month ago: https://www.alexkras.com/google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile-traffic/ https://www.alexkras.com/google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile-... After which I was invited to meet Google AMP team and to express my concerns, you can read my Q&A here: https://www.alexkras.com/i-had-lunch-with-google-amp-team/ https://www.alexkras.com/i-had-lunch-with-google-amp-team/ TLDR; A lot of concerns are getting addressed 1. Minor, but the bar at the top is now scrollable on all devices, including (finally) iOS: https://www.alexkras.com/amp-toolbar-is-now-scrollable-on-safari-mobile/ https://www.alexkras.com/amp-toolbar-is-now-scrollable-on-sa..., it was not when I first wrote the article, so it's a good sign. 2. It is my understanding that the team is actively working on a way to "fix" the link issue, and give an easy way to get to original article, although it remains to be seen how they will approach it. 3. You can opt out from AMP cache on the web site end, but it really defeats the purpose. Read more here: https://www.alexkras.com/i-had-lunch-with-google-amp-team/ https://www.alexkras.com/i-had-lunch-with-google-amp-team/ 4. Most importantly, looks like there is even internal pressure to give people an option to Turn Off AMP on the search engine side, if they don't like it. See this, for example: https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/820344221450125312 https://twitter.com/slightlylate/status/820344221450125312 @cramforce is THE tech lead on AMP and @slightlylate is also a big shot at Google on Chrome Team. Personally, I have mixed feelings about AMP, on one side I really like the speed, on the other I hate how it breaks the Web as we know it.

saurik 10y ago
The navigation toolbar hiding is only part of the problem with the navigation on iOS: AMP also breaks the default iOS navigation bar hiding, so even with the AMP toolbar hiding screen real estate is still being burned. Your article also hadn't even mentioned scrolling: on iOS, at least, scrolling is "janky" and slow and unnatural; and that's before you realize the insanity of how they selfishly are breaking scroll left and right in their attempt to take control of the entire Internet as mere content for their website :/.
- akras14 10y ago
  Great points!

tbv 10y ago

Cloudflare just launched an accelerated mobile links project which addresses most of your criticisms. https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/

cowardlydragon 10y ago

I think I was trapped on one of these AMP pages when I wanted an article and the link to it so I could send it to a friend, but the article was "trapped" with a google url and I couldn't get it. It was like those old-school days where sites tried to put their frame around the window you were browsing so their ads constantly showed. Or like the toolbar crapware. This sucks.

mcintyre1994 10y ago

I don't generally disagree with this article but I'd be interested to see research behind "it is a lot easier to stop using the Facebook app or Apple News app than it is to avoid Google search." - for Facebook specifically. I know a few people who view Facebook's app on their phone as the Internet and who would never think to Google search a question. I'd be interested to know how widespread that actually is among Facebook's vast user base, in comparison to how many use Google and avoid Facebook.

beezischillin 10y ago
Make no mistake, Facebook is also about the lock-in. Splitting the main app from Messenger makes a lot of sense in retrospect and is 100% about locking in users and their communication to be within the Facebook platform. Being in a situation where most of your communication goes through one platform, it's absolutely harder to abandon Facebook without abandoning a very important communication tool. Changing a search engine is somewhat easier in my opinion.

pmlnr 10y ago

The real "amp experience" is the reader mode in Firefox.

matthewmacleod 10y ago

I don't like AMP, and I very glad there is now some push back against Google's implementation of it. Fast pages are great, but I suppose I'm missing the background on why it was necessary to do this, when anybody who can implement AMP could presumably have implemented "lightweight non bloated pages" without using it. It's bad enough that I've had to switch to using Bing on mobile, despite the worse results, and I'm actually genuinely fearful for the first time about the openness of the web.

davedx 10y ago
Yeah, I'm tired of not being able to load Reddit from Google SERPs on my phone. Really tired of it. Time to give DuckDuckGo another try I guess...
- djmobley 10y ago
  Have you checked your content blockers?
  - ricardobeat 10y ago
    Disabling ad blocking makes it work, yes. That is part of the problem here...
  - matthewmacleod 10y ago
    To be fair, even when it does load it's a rubbish half-page. I click on Google search results to see pages, not to see abstracts of them. It's so totally broken as a user experience for Reddit in particular.
- ryao 10y ago
  Reddit AMP links break on the iPhone when the Reddit app is installed. I do not know exactly why but my guess is that the open in Reddit app functionality is incompatible. I am not sure how to report this to Reddit.
  - 10y ago

facepalm 10y ago

I don't understand why AMP needs all the extra shenanigans. Why can't it just be an optional CDN by Google, transparent to the users?

greenspot 10y ago

Google is abusing its powers. The search rank is our currency and Google has pushed AMP sites to the top for some while. So, everybody is now building weird AMP layers for their sites. We went from a free to a proprietary mobile web in just a few weeks. And we can't do anything. It feels like the times when the Internet Explorer tried to rule except that more people were complaining. The open solution to a faster mobile web would have been so easy: Just penalize large and slow web pages without defining a dedicated mobile specification. That's it. This wasn't done in the past, slow pages outperformed fast ones on the SERPs because of some weird Google voodoo ranking, heck sometimes even desktop sites outperformed responsive ones on smartphones. If they had just tweaked these odd ranking rules in way that speed and size got more impact on the overall ranking there wouldn't have been any reason for AMP—the market would have regulated itself. I'm wondering who at Google is responsible for AMP. Who created AMP's random specs (no external CSS but external fonts files, preference for four selected font providers, no JS but their JS, probable ranking preference of Google cached AMP sites, etc.). Why did they decide on the spec themselves and not as a part of an industry group? Again why didn't they just tweaked their ranking algorithm and btw, they could have also made Android's Chrome faster, it's still significantly slower than iOS' Safari. I'd be happy if this person could comment on the abuse of power (Sundar Pichai?).

wheelerwj 10y ago
> Google is abusing its powers. They are a business, doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. It's up to us to find a way to kill google and take back our internet. Edit, i love the downvotes for this. Google is legally required to act in their shareholders best interests. You all should understand fiduciary duty. They are building long term value for a massive (and growing) customer segment at the expense of a relatively small base of idealist tech users. Its morally reprehensible but still the correct decision in today's business climate.
- joelthelion 10y ago
  > They are a business, doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. Violating anti-trust laws?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

EdSharkey 10y ago

As described I don't believe I've ever seen an AMP'ified page as they're described?! Is it because I don't use Google as my goto search engine? (I use ddg almost exclusively.) Or, is it because I don't use Android Chrome as my browser? (I'm on Firefox Mobile unless some site owners forgot to test on Firefox and I'm forced onto Chrome.)

Sylos 10y ago
As far as I understand it, both of the above. AMP apparently doesn't work on Firefox and AMP-pages are only linked to by Google. Obviously, some people might copy the AMP-link themselves and post it somewhere, but if you're not much on social media, it's entirely possible that you just haven't seen that yet.

beebeebush 10y ago

Future is heading day by day more towards internet ghetto's direction. People's freedom of speech is controlled by Google, facebook or some other corporation. By keepining very limited development requirements these "instant" ghettos also can fully controll all content. People please, do not use these ghettos. Don't loose rights to have own pages or technology. I'm sure static site in good cdn is almost instant also. Why to limit your content only for google also ?? I'm more and more against these major corporations daily.

minijackson 10y ago

CPP (Content Performance Policy) is an open, standardized alternative to AMP, that may need help to finish it: Draft: http://wicg.github.io/ContentPerformancePolicy/ http://wicg.github.io/ContentPerformancePolicy/ Github: https://github.com/wicg/ContentPerformancePolicy/ https://github.com/wicg/ContentPerformancePolicy/ Launch article: https://timkadlec.com/2016/02/a-standardized-alternative-to-amp/ https://timkadlec.com/2016/02/a-standardized-alternative-to-... HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12787462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12787462

wheelerwj 10y ago
This wont matter because google isn't prioritizing CPP sites. Google has the majority of the traffic and it gets to dictate that amp gets preferential treatment.

Philipp__ 10y ago

AMP made me switch to DuckDuckGO on my iPhone as default search engine. Day 5, and so far I am surprised how well it works! I might switch on my computers too... Google just went too far with AMP in my opinion, pure abuse of power. Reminds me of something that would Facebook do, where they push changes down the consumers throat, but they aren't aware of their dependency on users (but most people don't care, bitch and whine about something that they do not like and don't sanction the product/company).

tyfon 10y ago

I am always confused by this topic. Having browsed the web via mobile for several years with chrome, I have yet to encounter an AMP page. Do I have to enable something or is this region specific? I live in Norway if that matters. Six months ago I switched my mobile browser from chrome to firefox but I still se nothing (nor the bar with the X everyone are talking about).

vurpo 10y ago
Sometimes you see Google search results (mostly news) that have a little grey lightning icon underneath the title. When you click the link, the page loads and looks normal, but is actually loaded from the Google AMP cache and the address begins with `google.com/amp`.

throw2016 10y ago

Something like AMP should be an opt-in for users that requires marketing, education and the standard process of trying to make your idea work in the market. Currently its being forced down users and websites throats and is a blatant abuse of market power. There should be a opt-in for every search that specifies amp explicity to signify you want it. Google should be taken to the cleaners for trying to expand its market power so egregriously. Since its is not going to happen in the US at least the EU can step in. There has to be something illegal about these kinds of monopolistic actions.

oflannabhra 10y ago

My biggest issue with AMP regards its UX. In mobile Safari, scrolling is hijacked. This creates two issues: non-native scroll momentum, and the inability to scroll to the top (by tapping the status bar). I have several other issues as well, but they are mentioned in the article.

BillBatw2 10y ago

This! Thanks for writing about it. I couldn't pin what bothered me with AMP, but I share your points.

christop 10y ago

> Techniques such as subresource integrity should be used where appropriate. While this is a good recommendation, I'm not sure this is possible with AMP, as they don't provide versioned URLs; the JS loaded keeps changing over time. Edit: Indeed, this was rejected: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/534 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/534

daveheq 10y ago

I've had almost nothing but problems reading news webpages on my phone since AMP; variously, I can't see the URL, I lose the typical Chrome app functions, I can't zoom in or out, I can't see side or video content referenced in the article, and I lose options I normally would with long-pressing. I can't disable any of this from the browser and I can't choose to view the non-AMP version. It's painfully frustrating, and I'm being forced to read my news AMP's way instead of my way.

halr9000 10y ago

Wah? I mean, it's a giant step up from a non mobile optimized website, hands down. The article downplays Facebook and Apple despite them doing the same exact thing.

otakucode 10y ago

I am unfamiliar with AMP, so I apologize if this question is based on a misunderstanding. The article says that all links in AMP pages begin with "https://www.google.com/amp/" https://www.google.com/amp/" right? Isn't this an invitation to bad actors of every flavor to produce AMP pages which will, to the users who know to look at their address bar and note the source domain, appear to be legitimate?

akras14 10y ago
100% and it's already being exploited

vajrapani666 10y ago

There's little power for us when Google abuses the trust the community has afforded to them. Let's assume this got much worse, and evidence came out that private political interests worked with Google to interfere with informed consent by reprioritizing what some called "fake news", when really what was being called fake news was actually anti-government activists pointing out collusion between tech companies and the government. Clearly, Google would be an agent to destroying democracy. I imagine detecting that a visitor came from Google, and showing them an interstitial informing the user they have come from a state-sponsored search engine, and letting them know what that means and the alternatives to Google. I think it's actually pretty trivial to build something like this with recipes for the popular CDNs and servers out there. Even a JS snippet would be totally fine. Google is pursuing AMP not because it wants to promote a better experience on the web, but because Google wants to be the provider whose technology and own practices perform best on SRPs. They are acting like capitalist pigs, and we should coordinate a protest against Google to let them know they can't just walk all over us with no consequences. January 20th seems like an ideal day.

homero 10y ago

I despise not being able to see the real url, I actively avoid amp

p94ka 10y ago

>Google insists that AMP is not a factor in a site’s search ranking. Site speed is a factor in search ranking. Imagine how fast Google benchmarks the speed of a page that is hosted on their own servers...

vgprice 10y ago

As a small but growing site, I've been meaning to get on the AMP train and essentially steal some SEO before my competitor sites get in on it. Having a 50k page and dynamic site that lives in the database proves to be a challenge to create AMP optimized pages. On the topic of AMP being a problem for web standards, I agree. I also can't afford to miss opportunities to get ahead either.

ksk 10y ago

A simple way to increase performance would be to stop with the bandwidth hogging ads and the CPU sucking JS scripts.

WA 10y ago

The joke of AMP is this: I lost a few rankings for an important keyword to a competitor. My page loads in milliseconds without AMP, whereas the competitor shovels 300 HTTP requests down the visitor's throat with several MB worth of ad trackers and junk. The technical side of SEO – and thus the justification of AMP – is a joke if a trash website like my competitor's can be on #1.

apeace 10y ago

Google deserves more credit than it's being given here. I think AMP is Google's next SPDY. As you know, SPDY eventually became HTTP/2 through an open standardization process, and Google has since deprecated SPDY in favor of the open HTTP/2 standard. AMP is similarly open. While it is still Google-driven at this stage, other companies are already iterating on it and implementing their own AMP caches[0]. There's no reason to believe Google is attempting to "lock-in" users to Google (and this article provides no evidence of that). Every major tech company is trying to keep up with the demands of users. They demand content that loads really fast. People in many parts of the world have poor access to mobile data, which increases the importance of this even further. As mentioned in this article, both Apple and Facebook are also working on similar projects. At least you can send a pull request to Google's. Is Google using its influence to push the web in a different direction? Yes. Is it a bad thing? I don't think so, but others may disagree. The issue is that this article provides no argument that AMP is a bad thing, but rather a conspiracy theory that it is Google's attempt at "lock-in". I agree that requiring an external Javascript to be loaded is a privacy issue, and that should be fixed. How about contributing a solution? If not AMP or something along the same lines, how do we the tech community solve the problem of delivering static articles lightning-fast? [0] https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/accelerated-mobile-links/ https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/accelerated-...

bassman9000 10y ago

IMHO, worst AMP feature it's that it's viral: when sharing the link, you're sharing the AMP link, so you force your followers to read the AMP version, and, if they share, they'll share the AMP version...

manigandham 10y ago

There is no reason for a quasi-proprietary fork of HTML. We already have enough standards as it is. HTML is perfectly fast. Sites are only show because of the media/ads/stuff that's put on them, most of which is a business requirement. Factoring site speed/weight into search and traffic rankings could've easily pressured sites into making much better progress that would benefit anyone using a browser, instead of this random fork that also takes away even more of the limited time and resources that a publisher has to work on their main site. I like Chrome and Google's efforts in making the web faster but this is one of the worst projects they've ever started.

iliketurtlez 10y ago

I am completely against AMP and personally have zero plans to learn and implement it. That may come back and bite me in the ass, but that's my current stance.