5 ms·

I am really curious if an ordinary user gets frustrated with AMP as much as an HN reader does. PS: Not intending to be sarcastic. PS2: I work for google, but n

by tehlike 10y ago

I am really curious if an ordinary user gets frustrated with AMP as much as an HN reader does. PS: Not intending to be sarcastic. PS2: I work for google, but not on something amp related.

jshen 10y ago
I've seen ordinary users get frustrated with it, but they don't understand why. They don't know what AMP is, and they don't realize they are on an AMP page. For example, the URL bar says they are on Google but they are reading a Slate article. The web is already confusing enough, and AMP makes it worse. Many ordinary users think they are reading content from Google, like that famous CNN interview where a lady said, "I read it in Facebook" Which leads to the question, why is google doing this? They, you, could easily promote AMP pages while not masking the real URL! The answer is simple, profits over what's best for users. Edit: I just did a search to find the CNN interview I mentioned, copied the URL to share here, and look it's a google URL. WHY? https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/trump-voter-fraud-facebook-cnn-2016-12?client=safari https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/trump-v...
- paradite 10y ago
  Ah I didn't know this. I run a WordPress blog. From the documentations of Google and WordPress AMP plugins, I have always thought that the user will be directed to "originalurl/amp" on my domain when they click on the Google link on their phone. Now that I see it's a Google domain, this is really weird.
  - jshen 10y ago
    It's not an AMP thing per se, it's how Google handles AMP in search results.
    - wheelerwj 10y ago
      No, its explicitly an AMP thing. Google serves the user a cached version of your page directly from its servers, hence the google.com/amp/ url
      - jshen 10y ago
        True, but you can serve the AMP page directly from the host.
      - blntechie 10y ago
        No, it's not. See Nuzzel's implementation of AMP, it opens the AMP version on the host.
- agentS 10y ago
  > Which leads to the question, why is google doing this? They, you, could easily promote AMP pages while not masking the real URL! Perhaps to allow the content to be served from a CDN (over HTTPS), without requiring the site to CNAME over their domain to Google. If webmasters are willing to CNAME over their domain to a caching proxy, then a less intrusive design is possible[0], such as the one recently announced by Cloudflare[1]. [0]: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-cache-guidelines.md https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-c... [1]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/
  - jshen 10y ago
    Most major sites use a CDN already. It's really to keep users within google.
  - lllr_finger 10y ago
    The AMP CDN doesn't even really help with caching - when I implemented AMP at launch for some large sites, it was strongly implied that we couldn't expect any reduction in calls to our servers, and we didn't notice any reduction when AMP went live. From my perspective it appeared to be a walled garden counter-measure to FB Instant Articles and Apple News.
- tehlike 10y ago
  i am curious about the numbers, though i do not know internally or externally if there are numbers showing this. As a power android user, i kind of like the rss-reader-esque look and feel of the amp links. It also opens blazing fast. With these in mind, minor inconveniences (like the address bar) are probably something i wouldn't mind.
  - sah2ed 10y ago
    > It also opens blazing fast. With these in mind, minor inconveniences (like the address bar) are probably something i wouldn't mind. Of course you wouldn't mind, since, as you've said elsewhere that you work at Google. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" — Upton Sinclair
    - tehlike 10y ago
      Eh - that is because you don't know me. I have been a very vocal critic of many google products and product shutdowns. edit: typo
  - addicted 10y ago
    If only Google had a nice RSS Reader view which was blazing fast, and allowed you to view an uncluttered, non JS version of an article, while still correctly attributing it to the original provider, while making it easy to link to the original source. Such really simple syndication technology could even have a catch TLA. I can't really think of one, but I'm sure there is something.
    - tehlike 10y ago
      we had that, it was google reader. rest in peace - i used it a lot back in the day. That said, i think people disable JS in general for this reason.
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    Your opinion is here is valid, but how would you address the criticism that this isn't solving the real issue, and is obviously a power-grab?
- Twirrim 10y ago
  I've seen people say about "fake news" articles that have google.com as the top domain (because AMP) as an indicator of some reliability. Google is unintentionally, but actively, harming their image by being associated with and promoting such content.
  - mack73 10y ago
    Fake news make little harm to Google, like an atomic bomb fired into the sun. Google supporting fake news, intentionally and actively, does marvelous things for that piece of misinformation and it gives credit to the publisher. I hope this AMP experiment is soon over. As someone already said here, the web is confusing as it is. Google used to want to make things clearer, better. AMP is not. It's fixing symptoms instead of causes.
- quickben 10y ago
  >Which leads to the question, why is google doing this? Money. Amp vs adblockers
- pdkl95 10y ago
  > For example, the URL bar says they are on Google but they are reading a Slate article. The web is already confusing enough, and AMP makes it worse. Well, that explains why they wanted Chrome to hide URLs[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693995
  - Andrex 10y ago
    The Chrome experiment in question ended before AMP was even a thought, and AMP and Chrome are separate teams inside Google. I doubt they're even mildly related.
    - pdkl95 10y ago
      > separate teams Different teams inside a business can have coordinated long-term goals. Regardless, their master plan[1] clearly shows "Redesign HTTP", "Browser", and "Next generation web (Fish Pod)" as precursors that lead to "Private Internet", "Walled Garden", "need more cache", and "NEWSBANK". [1] http://undergoogle.com/tools/GoogleMasterPlan.html http://undergoogle.com/tools/GoogleMasterPlan.html
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  Because that's where the site you are viewing is located... Do you really want to go down the rabit hole of a browser displaying a different url than what you are viewing?
  - jshen 10y ago
    Not really, the page is located on slate.com, that's the canonical location, and google is adding a secondary location that is confusing and adds very little benefit. AMP provides a lot of benefits that do not depend on google hosting the page in addition to the canonical location.
- mysterydip 10y ago
  I'm one of those frustrated mobile users. I like to think I keep up on tech trends (being here for one example) but I hadn't heard of AMP before. I have experienced it, though, without knowing what the issue was until now. I like to share news with friends, and recently more frequently when I try to send the url it was google instead of the domain I expected. I had to go out of my way to send them the actual source, but it didn't happen everywhere. Now I know why.
nunez 10y ago
I browse AMP pages often and don't have any issues with it. It's great for getting news quickly in one page load. If I need to interact with it more, I'll simply go to the site hosting the AMP page
aarongolliver 10y ago
I've never had an issue with it. Actually I try to click on AMP links when I'm searching for news because I know I'll get an experience that doesn't suck.
sfifs 10y ago
As I remarked elsewhere, I actually find AMP an excellent and speedy experience. I read articles on a mobile connection in India primarily and I now invariably click AMP news story options vs. others
- lips 10y ago
  Have you used other compensating mechanisms, like tap-to-show images?
  - tehlike 10y ago
    not exactly the same thing, right? js environment also matters a lot.
  - sfifs 10y ago
    Why should I take the extra effort to make publisher's poor websites usable when something like AMP does it out of the box? I don't really have any ideological objections to Googleplex which would warrant such extra effort.
arjie 10y ago
I love amp. Loads fast. It's so fast, it almost feels native.
- tehlike 10y ago
  One of the reasons Google (and FB with instant articles) came out with is the speed, and data consumption, which matters a lot more in some countries than in others.
  - manigandham 10y ago
    Google and Facebook had far better ways to affect change (by using site speed/weight to factor heavily into rankings).
balls187 10y ago
Why does it matter if a user is an HN reader or not?
- tehlike 10y ago
  it does, because we care about a number of things, including: 1. Technical implementation (and alternative ways of implementation). 2. Freedom (keeping things within google's walled-garden or not) Your average user (who doesn't necessarily know anything about software) doesn't really care about 1, and probably doesn't care about 2. They care about speed of the page, data consumption of the page, and maybe the look-and-feel of the page (bloated vs sane). When I say HN user, i mean technically informed and most often skeptic people. The distinction matters.
  - applejuicestand 10y ago
    99% of internet users are average users. All your concerns are fine but at the end of the day when you want to read the news or whatever, speed matters.
    - CaptSpify 10y ago
      Then why doesn't Google rank speedy pages?
      - brainfire 10y ago
        It does, since 2010. https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-i...
        CaptSpify 10y ago
        I'm not convinced that's still true. Obviously I can't see google-rankings internal stuff, but... If I search for weather, lyrics, or other common sites, the top results are always slow, bloated, JS-filled nightmares. Yet the sites that are quick and small are never to be found. Maybe they do and they need to weight speed higher. I don't know, but I know that I don't ever seem to get fast loading results. This feels too much like creating a problem that you want to be able to step in and solve.
Angostura 10y ago
Prople in my family get quite confused when trying to share links.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  This is my main problem with it. I don't mind too much that it loads an AMP page (well, I don't know, I go back and forth on it), it's the fact that if I want to share the page afterwards, I want the page to be shared to be the original site, not the AMP site, and finding a non-AMP version of the link is damn near impossible.
  - tf2manu994 10y ago
    >near impossible Check the link rel canonical tag. Obviously not ideal but nowhere near "impossible"
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
sp332 10y ago
Yes. My brother switched browsers on his Android phone (to Firefox) just to get away from AMP crap.
UntitledNo4 10y ago
Yes. My boyfriend (who is not in tech) was so annoyed that he researched what it was that annoyed him and changed his default search engine to DuckDuckGo as a result.
tehwebguy 10y ago
The difference between Google and Apple: Apple: These article webpages are annoying - let's add a client side button to make it readable. Google: These article webpages are annoying[0] - let's force[1] everyone to grant us a royalty-free license to their whole website. [0] The real problem might be that Google results are "getting bad" - a thing people bring up all the time but which can only be measured individually. So people tap the first 3 results and don't get the info they were looking for. On top of that it's slow af so people are wasting time. Now Google serves up faster pages so they'll tap through 4 or 5 results. So why not fix the real problem instead? [1] Yeah it's optional but only to a point. First the spammiest blogs implement it and they get a free pass to partially skip the line. Then some bigger sites implement it and even things out. People here are rightfully afraid that within 12 months you can't even hit page 2 without AMP.

by tehlike 10y ago

I am really curious if an ordinary user gets frustrated with AMP as much as an HN reader does. PS: Not intending to be sarcastic. PS2: I work for google, but not on something amp related.

jshen 10y ago

I've seen ordinary users get frustrated with it, but they don't understand why. They don't know what AMP is, and they don't realize they are on an AMP page. For example, the URL bar says they are on Google but they are reading a Slate article. The web is already confusing enough, and AMP makes it worse. Many ordinary users think they are reading content from Google, like that famous CNN interview where a lady said, "I read it in Facebook" Which leads to the question, why is google doing this? They, you, could easily promote AMP pages while not masking the real URL! The answer is simple, profits over what's best for users. Edit: I just did a search to find the CNN interview I mentioned, copied the URL to share here, and look it's a google URL. WHY? https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/trump-voter-fraud-facebook-cnn-2016-12?client=safari https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/trump-v...

paradite 10y ago
Ah I didn't know this. I run a WordPress blog. From the documentations of Google and WordPress AMP plugins, I have always thought that the user will be directed to "originalurl/amp" on my domain when they click on the Google link on their phone. Now that I see it's a Google domain, this is really weird.
- jshen 10y ago
  It's not an AMP thing per se, it's how Google handles AMP in search results.
  - wheelerwj 10y ago
    No, its explicitly an AMP thing. Google serves the user a cached version of your page directly from its servers, hence the google.com/amp/ url
    - jshen 10y ago
      True, but you can serve the AMP page directly from the host.
    - blntechie 10y ago
      No, it's not. See Nuzzel's implementation of AMP, it opens the AMP version on the host.
agentS 10y ago
> Which leads to the question, why is google doing this? They, you, could easily promote AMP pages while not masking the real URL! Perhaps to allow the content to be served from a CDN (over HTTPS), without requiring the site to CNAME over their domain to Google. If webmasters are willing to CNAME over their domain to a caching proxy, then a less intrusive design is possible[0], such as the one recently announced by Cloudflare[1]. [0]: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-cache-guidelines.md https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-c... [1]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/
- jshen 10y ago
  Most major sites use a CDN already. It's really to keep users within google.
- lllr_finger 10y ago
  The AMP CDN doesn't even really help with caching - when I implemented AMP at launch for some large sites, it was strongly implied that we couldn't expect any reduction in calls to our servers, and we didn't notice any reduction when AMP went live. From my perspective it appeared to be a walled garden counter-measure to FB Instant Articles and Apple News.
tehlike 10y ago
i am curious about the numbers, though i do not know internally or externally if there are numbers showing this. As a power android user, i kind of like the rss-reader-esque look and feel of the amp links. It also opens blazing fast. With these in mind, minor inconveniences (like the address bar) are probably something i wouldn't mind.
- sah2ed 10y ago
  > It also opens blazing fast. With these in mind, minor inconveniences (like the address bar) are probably something i wouldn't mind. Of course you wouldn't mind, since, as you've said elsewhere that you work at Google. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" — Upton Sinclair
  - tehlike 10y ago
    Eh - that is because you don't know me. I have been a very vocal critic of many google products and product shutdowns. edit: typo
- addicted 10y ago
  If only Google had a nice RSS Reader view which was blazing fast, and allowed you to view an uncluttered, non JS version of an article, while still correctly attributing it to the original provider, while making it easy to link to the original source. Such really simple syndication technology could even have a catch TLA. I can't really think of one, but I'm sure there is something.
  - tehlike 10y ago
    we had that, it was google reader. rest in peace - i used it a lot back in the day. That said, i think people disable JS in general for this reason.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  Your opinion is here is valid, but how would you address the criticism that this isn't solving the real issue, and is obviously a power-grab?
Twirrim 10y ago
I've seen people say about "fake news" articles that have google.com as the top domain (because AMP) as an indicator of some reliability. Google is unintentionally, but actively, harming their image by being associated with and promoting such content.
- mack73 10y ago
  Fake news make little harm to Google, like an atomic bomb fired into the sun. Google supporting fake news, intentionally and actively, does marvelous things for that piece of misinformation and it gives credit to the publisher. I hope this AMP experiment is soon over. As someone already said here, the web is confusing as it is. Google used to want to make things clearer, better. AMP is not. It's fixing symptoms instead of causes.
quickben 10y ago
>Which leads to the question, why is google doing this? Money. Amp vs adblockers
pdkl95 10y ago
> For example, the URL bar says they are on Google but they are reading a Slate article. The web is already confusing enough, and AMP makes it worse. Well, that explains why they wanted Chrome to hide URLs[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693995
- Andrex 10y ago
  The Chrome experiment in question ended before AMP was even a thought, and AMP and Chrome are separate teams inside Google. I doubt they're even mildly related.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    > separate teams Different teams inside a business can have coordinated long-term goals. Regardless, their master plan[1] clearly shows "Redesign HTTP", "Browser", and "Next generation web (Fish Pod)" as precursors that lead to "Private Internet", "Walled Garden", "need more cache", and "NEWSBANK". [1] http://undergoogle.com/tools/GoogleMasterPlan.html http://undergoogle.com/tools/GoogleMasterPlan.html
wheelerwj 10y ago
Because that's where the site you are viewing is located... Do you really want to go down the rabit hole of a browser displaying a different url than what you are viewing?
- jshen 10y ago
  Not really, the page is located on slate.com, that's the canonical location, and google is adding a secondary location that is confusing and adds very little benefit. AMP provides a lot of benefits that do not depend on google hosting the page in addition to the canonical location.
mysterydip 10y ago
I'm one of those frustrated mobile users. I like to think I keep up on tech trends (being here for one example) but I hadn't heard of AMP before. I have experienced it, though, without knowing what the issue was until now. I like to share news with friends, and recently more frequently when I try to send the url it was google instead of the domain I expected. I had to go out of my way to send them the actual source, but it didn't happen everywhere. Now I know why.

nunez 10y ago

I browse AMP pages often and don't have any issues with it. It's great for getting news quickly in one page load. If I need to interact with it more, I'll simply go to the site hosting the AMP page

aarongolliver 10y ago

I've never had an issue with it. Actually I try to click on AMP links when I'm searching for news because I know I'll get an experience that doesn't suck.

sfifs 10y ago

As I remarked elsewhere, I actually find AMP an excellent and speedy experience. I read articles on a mobile connection in India primarily and I now invariably click AMP news story options vs. others

lips 10y ago
Have you used other compensating mechanisms, like tap-to-show images?
- tehlike 10y ago
  not exactly the same thing, right? js environment also matters a lot.
- sfifs 10y ago
  Why should I take the extra effort to make publisher's poor websites usable when something like AMP does it out of the box? I don't really have any ideological objections to Googleplex which would warrant such extra effort.

arjie 10y ago

I love amp. Loads fast. It's so fast, it almost feels native.

tehlike 10y ago
One of the reasons Google (and FB with instant articles) came out with is the speed, and data consumption, which matters a lot more in some countries than in others.
- manigandham 10y ago
  Google and Facebook had far better ways to affect change (by using site speed/weight to factor heavily into rankings).

balls187 10y ago

Why does it matter if a user is an HN reader or not?

tehlike 10y ago
it does, because we care about a number of things, including: 1. Technical implementation (and alternative ways of implementation). 2. Freedom (keeping things within google's walled-garden or not) Your average user (who doesn't necessarily know anything about software) doesn't really care about 1, and probably doesn't care about 2. They care about speed of the page, data consumption of the page, and maybe the look-and-feel of the page (bloated vs sane). When I say HN user, i mean technically informed and most often skeptic people. The distinction matters.
- applejuicestand 10y ago
  99% of internet users are average users. All your concerns are fine but at the end of the day when you want to read the news or whatever, speed matters.
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    Then why doesn't Google rank speedy pages?
    - brainfire 10y ago
      It does, since 2010. https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-i...
      - CaptSpify 10y ago
        I'm not convinced that's still true. Obviously I can't see google-rankings internal stuff, but... If I search for weather, lyrics, or other common sites, the top results are always slow, bloated, JS-filled nightmares. Yet the sites that are quick and small are never to be found. Maybe they do and they need to weight speed higher. I don't know, but I know that I don't ever seem to get fast loading results. This feels too much like creating a problem that you want to be able to step in and solve.

Angostura 10y ago

Prople in my family get quite confused when trying to share links.

cableshaft 10y ago
This is my main problem with it. I don't mind too much that it loads an AMP page (well, I don't know, I go back and forth on it), it's the fact that if I want to share the page afterwards, I want the page to be shared to be the original site, not the AMP site, and finding a non-AMP version of the link is damn near impossible.
- tf2manu994 10y ago
  >near impossible Check the link rel canonical tag. Obviously not ideal but nowhere near "impossible"
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

sp332 10y ago

Yes. My brother switched browsers on his Android phone (to Firefox) just to get away from AMP crap.

UntitledNo4 10y ago

Yes. My boyfriend (who is not in tech) was so annoyed that he researched what it was that annoyed him and changed his default search engine to DuckDuckGo as a result.

tehwebguy 10y ago

The difference between Google and Apple: Apple: These article webpages are annoying - let's add a client side button to make it readable. Google: These article webpages are annoying[0] - let's force[1] everyone to grant us a royalty-free license to their whole website. [0] The real problem might be that Google results are "getting bad" - a thing people bring up all the time but which can only be measured individually. So people tap the first 3 results and don't get the info they were looking for. On top of that it's slow af so people are wasting time. Now Google serves up faster pages so they'll tap through 4 or 5 results. So why not fix the real problem instead? [1] Yeah it's optional but only to a point. First the spammiest blogs implement it and they get a free pass to partially skip the line. Then some bigger sites implement it and even things out. People here are rightfully afraid that within 12 months you can't even hit page 2 without AMP.