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The complaint about AMP's strange UX paradigms is valid: it works very hard to pretend like every AMP article is a standalone website, but it actually behaves l

The complaint about AMP's strange UX paradigms is valid: it works very hard to pretend like every AMP article is a standalone website, but it actually behaves like a viewport-wrapping iframe, where Google Search is on the outside and the article is on the inside [1]. But it's not a personal affront to iOS; it's more of an artifact of Google's confusing market strategy and conflicting requirements for AMP's deployment: pretend like AMP pages are real browser-resident tabs, while actually driving traffic around within the confines of Google Search (vs. outside) when possible. As much as I don't care for their strategy, I respect needing to balance conflicting requirements. They should scrap the dishonest UX and be up-front about what they are, as I write [1]. But Josh descends to hyperbole. I've been both critical and supportive of AMP on here [2], but it's important to not lose sight of the big picture. AMP isn't an effort by Google to kill the open web; it's a technology whose existence was forced by Facebook Instant Articles' meteoric rise, a competitor from a company that doesn't even operate on the level of the open web, but runs a family of products where the data flow is one-way: inbound. Instant Articles made publishing harder on the web, giving preferential treatment to articles posted within Facebook's walled garden (cf. AMP giving preferential treatment to content that adheres to the AMP spec, the same way they give preferential treatment to content served with TLS). With Instant Articles fizzling a bit [3], AMP's importance as a strategic play is lessened, and we can enjoy its benefits without feeling like we're pawns in a game between two massive content aggregation portals. Besides, Apple News is the same idea as AMP; I'd be curious how Josh feels about that. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13415625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13415625 [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=niftich%20%22AMP%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=niftich%20%22AMP%22&sort=byDat... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14126073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14126073

jeffbax 9y ago
Is Apple news more than a feed spec like RSS / is the content hosted by Apple directly, like how AMP pages actually live on google.com?
- tjl 9y ago
  Apple News is really just RSS. I think Gruber's Daring Fireball stuff in Apple News just comes from his RSS feed. It's all hosted on your servers, so it's basically just a specialized browser.
- niftich 9y ago
  AMP pages don't intrinsically live on google.com. Rather, when you use Google Search on mobile, some results may have AMP equivalents, they're often prioritized on or closer to the top [1] or otherwise highlighted (like in a carousel). As of writing, these results are marked with the lightningbolt-in-circle logo and the text 'AMP' somewhere in the result's most immediate box [2]. Clicking on one of these AMP results in Google Search will lead to a Google-hosted page with the base URL of "google.com/amp/", which loads an iframe (or equivalent) of the AMP article content. This whole thing takes up the entire viewport, save for a small grey horizontal bar up top, which collapses (hides) with JS if you scroll down far enough, but is otherwise pinned to the top, staying adjacent to the browser chrome. This AMP navbar, as of time of writing, has the original publisher's domain name in the middle (which isn't a link, just informational text); then on the right side is a link ("chain-link") icon which will produce a small overlay containing the article's original (non-AMP, non-google.com/amp/ link), and a vertical triple-dot button with a link to 'More info'. This 'More info' link takes you to a Google Search Help article [3] (along with a really, really long visit_id as a tracking parameter), which talks about AMP and the Google AMP Cache, says that "The Viewer is a hybrid environment where Google and the third-party webmaster may each collect data about you", links to a few FAQs and the Google privacy policy, and the like. In the past, the navbar was different [4], and its deficiencies where a frequent source of criticism. In short, Google Search on Mobile serves AMP results out of Google's own AMP Cache in a not-completely-obvious in-place wrapping viewer that tracks your visits, but it's now possible to get original URL [4]. Meanwhile, Cloudflare, currently the only other operator of an AMP cache, offers auto-AMP links [5] for customer domains, and offers an SDK to customize the wrapper-viewer [6] that will surround the articles surfaced for that domain. Apple News is a client application that combines a feed-reader with articles delivered from Apple News' servers; these latter types of articles are always hosted by Apple [7], and in the beginning the only way to publish to it was to use Apple's APIs to post to Apple News directly [8][9]. Now there's integrations that will consume content out of your CMS and post it to Apple News on your behalf, which makes it easier to use, but doesn't change the fact that the the content is published into Apple's ecosystem. [1] https://www.wired.com/2016/02/google-will-now-favor-pages-use-fast-loading-tech/ https://www.wired.com/2016/02/google-will-now-favor-pages-us... [2] http://imgur.com/a/rggVe http://imgur.com/a/rggVe [3] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7220196 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7220196 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13582844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13582844 [5] https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/accelerated-mobile-links/ https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/accelerated-... [6] https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/amp-viewer-sdk/ https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/amp-viewer-s... [7] https://www.wired.com/2015/06/apple-builds-content-business-news-app/ https://www.wired.com/2015/06/apple-builds-content-business-... [8] https://help.apple.com/newspublisher/icloud/#/ https://help.apple.com/newspublisher/icloud/#/ [9] https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/General/Conceptual/News_API_Ref/CreateArticle.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40015409-CH14-SW1 https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Ge...

jeffbax 9y ago

Is Apple news more than a feed spec like RSS / is the content hosted by Apple directly, like how AMP pages actually live on google.com?

tjl 9y ago
Apple News is really just RSS. I think Gruber's Daring Fireball stuff in Apple News just comes from his RSS feed. It's all hosted on your servers, so it's basically just a specialized browser.
niftich 9y ago
AMP pages don't intrinsically live on google.com. Rather, when you use Google Search on mobile, some results may have AMP equivalents, they're often prioritized on or closer to the top [1] or otherwise highlighted (like in a carousel). As of writing, these results are marked with the lightningbolt-in-circle logo and the text 'AMP' somewhere in the result's most immediate box [2]. Clicking on one of these AMP results in Google Search will lead to a Google-hosted page with the base URL of "google.com/amp/", which loads an iframe (or equivalent) of the AMP article content. This whole thing takes up the entire viewport, save for a small grey horizontal bar up top, which collapses (hides) with JS if you scroll down far enough, but is otherwise pinned to the top, staying adjacent to the browser chrome. This AMP navbar, as of time of writing, has the original publisher's domain name in the middle (which isn't a link, just informational text); then on the right side is a link ("chain-link") icon which will produce a small overlay containing the article's original (non-AMP, non-google.com/amp/ link), and a vertical triple-dot button with a link to 'More info'. This 'More info' link takes you to a Google Search Help article [3] (along with a really, really long visit_id as a tracking parameter), which talks about AMP and the Google AMP Cache, says that "The Viewer is a hybrid environment where Google and the third-party webmaster may each collect data about you", links to a few FAQs and the Google privacy policy, and the like. In the past, the navbar was different [4], and its deficiencies where a frequent source of criticism. In short, Google Search on Mobile serves AMP results out of Google's own AMP Cache in a not-completely-obvious in-place wrapping viewer that tracks your visits, but it's now possible to get original URL [4]. Meanwhile, Cloudflare, currently the only other operator of an AMP cache, offers auto-AMP links [5] for customer domains, and offers an SDK to customize the wrapper-viewer [6] that will surround the articles surfaced for that domain. Apple News is a client application that combines a feed-reader with articles delivered from Apple News' servers; these latter types of articles are always hosted by Apple [7], and in the beginning the only way to publish to it was to use Apple's APIs to post to Apple News directly [8][9]. Now there's integrations that will consume content out of your CMS and post it to Apple News on your behalf, which makes it easier to use, but doesn't change the fact that the the content is published into Apple's ecosystem. [1] https://www.wired.com/2016/02/google-will-now-favor-pages-use-fast-loading-tech/ https://www.wired.com/2016/02/google-will-now-favor-pages-us... [2] http://imgur.com/a/rggVe http://imgur.com/a/rggVe [3] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7220196 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7220196 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13582844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13582844 [5] https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/accelerated-mobile-links/ https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/accelerated-... [6] https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/amp-viewer-sdk/ https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/amp-viewer-s... [7] https://www.wired.com/2015/06/apple-builds-content-business-news-app/ https://www.wired.com/2015/06/apple-builds-content-business-... [8] https://help.apple.com/newspublisher/icloud/#/ https://help.apple.com/newspublisher/icloud/#/ [9] https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/General/Conceptual/News_API_Ref/CreateArticle.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40015409-CH14-SW1 https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Ge...