6 ms·

I never really understood why google amp is bad. Can anyone explain the reason why people think its ethically bad?

by omot 9y ago

zakk 9y ago
Not really an expert, but I don't see any good in strengthening Google's monoculture.
- rak00n 9y ago
  If that's the argument everyone should boycott all Google products.
  - nilved 9y ago
    Very true, but you can start with the egregious violations such as AMP.
  - robryan 9y ago
    Or just not use new ones that actively make the internet worse.
- tajen 9y ago
  Plus pageviews are done on Google's servers, so Bing doesn't know which website has many views and which doesn't.
  - esrauch 9y ago
    How does Bing know it for non-AMP views?
    - tajen 9y ago
      You're right - Bing can't. Google knows a website's pageviews because it can cleverly cross information between the search engine, Google Analytics and Google Map's by-foot frequentation of shops (for shops and customers with tracking allowed). I'm just underlining that not owning a good share of all 3 of those may make it much harder for future competitors to enter the market.
    - robryan 9y ago
      A lot of websites would have a bing ads tracking Javascript.
muglug 9y ago
Worth reading the HN posts linked in the article. IMO it's a band-aid for a larger problem - a problem that Google is now incentivised not to address through less hegemonic means.
StavrosK 9y ago
Because the disadvantages (vendor lock-in, not as open, etc) outweigh the advantages (lighter pages, which you can just do without AMP anyway).
- agentdrtran 9y ago
  But people don't, that's the point of AMP.
  - ksk 9y ago
    If Google prioritized pages which didn't run ads and CPU sucking scripts, people would. Its entirely in their control.
- notatoad 9y ago
  how does AMP provide vendor lock-in?
  - ENGNR 9y ago
    Because now there's a big back button as well as a browser back button both back to Google, instead of just a browser back button and a menu to explore the rest of the site. Google is no longer neutral, they own those users, not you.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bo1024 9y ago
I'm not commenting on "ethics", but I can say why I dislike AMP as a user: I want to interact directly with a website, not through some third party. I especially don't want that third party observing my interactions or collecting data about them. I also don't want to allow that third party to run code (javascript) on my computer. As a website designer (barely), basically the same reasons: I don't want my site under control of a third party, I don't want my users to have to run javascript to view my site, and I don't want them to have to consent to (possibly) being tracked. Most ironically, my site probably accomplishes more of the stated AMP goals (due to being pure html and light) than it would when AMPed up. Quick edit: I also worry it can contribute to breaking or obfuscating hyperlinks, which is similar to the issue raised in this article. Having hyperlinks work correctly is crucial to the design of the web. I had similar problems when sites like Google search started making their search links redirect to some intermediate site before going to the actual link, and back when I used Google search I had an extension that removed them so I could e.g. right-click and copy the link.
- RhodesianHunter 9y ago
  Given that most of the web has Google analytics installed, I'm pretty sure all of the above is happening with or without amp.
  - bo1024 9y ago
    I just want to mention (1) I view this as a bad thing and think we ought to try to move away from it; (2) I whitelist javascript so at least not all of the above is happening to me, and I think we ought to move toward all users having the tools and competence to do the same.
    - sbov 9y ago
      I just use https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger Probably not 100%, but it's better than nothing. And having people install a plugin is easy enough.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
pcwalton 9y ago
From my perspective as a browser developer, AMP is an unfortunate disincentive to make anything faster unless Chrome already did it. Google bans things that are slow in Chrome from AMP, even if there's no good reason for them to be slow in the first place. An example is off-main-thread animations. There's no intrinsic reason why animating, say, background-color should be slow. A lot of sites empirically do this sort of thing. But that animation is banned in AMP [1], because it's slow in Chrome (and in other browsers). Even if I work on making it faster, it'll stay banned until Chrome catches up (due to Chrome's market share), thus negating the incentive to make it faster in the first place. Without this competition, Web developers and users lose. [1]: https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-animation https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-ani...
geofft 9y ago
Apart from everything else, in the last few weeks I've seen a bunch of AMP pages that include at most the first few paragraphs, possibly just a photo or something, and a "read more on our website" link below. This is strictly worse than a world with no AMP: I have to load the AMP page, and then I have to load the real website. Because of that I'm starting to seriously wonder if Google is going to end up declaring AMP a failed project (and, being Google, the prior probability was reasonably high in the first place), and then AMP is an uncleanable stain on the web, with www.google.com/amp/ URLs being kept around forever.
- bitmapbrother 9y ago
  Do you also use the argument about Microsoft being Microsoft and shutting down more products and services than Google ever has?
tyingq 9y ago
>Can anyone explain the reason why people think its ethically bad This is just one of many reasons, but try this on a mobile phone. Go to Google and search for "Trump" Note what choices you have to pick from without excessive scrolling. They all end in either ads or Google urls. Click one of the featured stories in the carousel, almost guaranteed to be an AMP site. Seems to be a prerequisite to sit in the carousel. Lets say you land on a Washington Post story. What do you think a "right swipe" should do? Should it navigate to a competitor of Wapo? This is Wapo's page, right? So it should go to another Wapo page. Nope, it goes to Fox News. Okay, so now you've navigated from Wapo to say Fox News. Hit the back button. It should go back to the Wapo story, right? Nope, goes back to Google. How this isn't viewed as a land grab is a mystery to me.
- awqrre 9y ago
  So in other words, ad blockers should block Google's "Top Stories" ?
- quadrangle 9y ago
  what is this right-swipe business? You swipe and it, what, just takes you to a page that the makers of the current page think you should read next in your infinite time-sink staring at your phone‽
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Well, in this case the makers of the previous page (Google) are deciding what right swipe on the current page (Washington Post) does. It certainly makes it clear that the content owner of an AMP page is not the page owner.
    - quadrangle 9y ago
      I get that, but what is right-swipe supposed to or expected to do? Why would people be right-swiping ever?
      - 9y ago
teraflop 9y ago
Leaving aside the lock-in issues, AMP causes me minor annoyances more often than it helps. For instance, when I open a search result from a site like Reddit, I get a static logged-out view, instead of the normal one that obeys my preferences. And if I want to copy the link, it takes a few extra taps to get the original one.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  I still don't understand why Reddit signed up, it's a terrible experience for their users. I commonly search 'reddit x' when I want an opinion and know there will be a sub Reddit, but now Reddit have made that use case incredibly bad by enabling AMP.
  - niftich 9y ago
    I'd imagine a notoriously cash-strapped site like Reddit is enthusiastic that Google is willing to offload traffic originating from Google Search on Mobile to Google's own AMP CDN. This helps incidental visitors still consume Reddit content, while real Reddit users interacting with real website or through a Reddit app are still getting the normal experience. This arrangement only really frays at edge cases, where a logged-in Reddit user uses an external search like Google to look something up.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    >I still don't understand why Reddit signed up Sign up, or face the reduced google referral traffic as AMP-only carousel results push the organic results below the fold.
- robryan 9y ago
  Yeah, encountering pages that are less useful than the or original or outright broken is a big reason for me.
ksk 9y ago
All else being equal, disabling ads and other javascript bs will speed up most websites, so if Google really cared about speed, they would (also) boost sites which didn't show ads and didn't rely heavily on JS. AMP is about keeping users on google's properties by using content that they didn't create.
myth_buster 9y ago
Goes against the notion of decentralized web. The content that user gets on their browser is cached content hosted on Google's servers. The URL that is shown in the location bar is `www.google.com/amp/<site>`. The rapid adoption is primarily due to fear of being left behind in Google's search ranking. As the blog states, it drives mobile views away from the site whose content is being shown (some call it stealing). On occasions I've seen more "Suggested Content" on an AMP page than the actual site. From what I've read, AMP came as a response to Facebook's instant articles not primarily driven from user needs.
ehsankia 9y ago
It isn't. I fully agree with the article that it should be optional, but it's hilarious how the only reason the author can give is that it "doesn't feel right". They state "I just automatically go to the main url" without giving any real reason for it. They also mention how all studies show that it's a huge positive for users. And it is. It's much faster and easier way to browse content. You can try to shit on Google, but the reality is that people sucked at making fast content, so someone had to step in and no one was.
JoshMnem 9y ago
> Can anyone explain the reason why people think its ethically bad? There is also some discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14518985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14518985 And more links in these articles: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/19/open_source_insider_google_amp_bad_bad_bad/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/19/open_source_insider... https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/05/20/gilbertson-amp https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/05/20/gilbertson-amp

I never really understood why google amp is bad. Can anyone explain the reason why people think its ethically bad?

by omot 9y ago

I never really understood why google amp is bad. Can anyone explain the reason why people think its ethically bad?

zakk 9y ago

Not really an expert, but I don't see any good in strengthening Google's monoculture.

rak00n 9y ago
If that's the argument everyone should boycott all Google products.
- nilved 9y ago
  Very true, but you can start with the egregious violations such as AMP.
- robryan 9y ago
  Or just not use new ones that actively make the internet worse.
tajen 9y ago
Plus pageviews are done on Google's servers, so Bing doesn't know which website has many views and which doesn't.
- esrauch 9y ago
  How does Bing know it for non-AMP views?
  - tajen 9y ago
    You're right - Bing can't. Google knows a website's pageviews because it can cleverly cross information between the search engine, Google Analytics and Google Map's by-foot frequentation of shops (for shops and customers with tracking allowed). I'm just underlining that not owning a good share of all 3 of those may make it much harder for future competitors to enter the market.
  - robryan 9y ago
    A lot of websites would have a bing ads tracking Javascript.

muglug 9y ago

Worth reading the HN posts linked in the article. IMO it's a band-aid for a larger problem - a problem that Google is now incentivised not to address through less hegemonic means.

StavrosK 9y ago

Because the disadvantages (vendor lock-in, not as open, etc) outweigh the advantages (lighter pages, which you can just do without AMP anyway).

agentdrtran 9y ago
But people don't, that's the point of AMP.
- ksk 9y ago
  If Google prioritized pages which didn't run ads and CPU sucking scripts, people would. Its entirely in their control.
notatoad 9y ago
how does AMP provide vendor lock-in?
- ENGNR 9y ago
  Because now there's a big back button as well as a browser back button both back to Google, instead of just a browser back button and a menu to explore the rest of the site. Google is no longer neutral, they own those users, not you.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

bo1024 9y ago

I'm not commenting on "ethics", but I can say why I dislike AMP as a user: I want to interact directly with a website, not through some third party. I especially don't want that third party observing my interactions or collecting data about them. I also don't want to allow that third party to run code (javascript) on my computer. As a website designer (barely), basically the same reasons: I don't want my site under control of a third party, I don't want my users to have to run javascript to view my site, and I don't want them to have to consent to (possibly) being tracked. Most ironically, my site probably accomplishes more of the stated AMP goals (due to being pure html and light) than it would when AMPed up. Quick edit: I also worry it can contribute to breaking or obfuscating hyperlinks, which is similar to the issue raised in this article. Having hyperlinks work correctly is crucial to the design of the web. I had similar problems when sites like Google search started making their search links redirect to some intermediate site before going to the actual link, and back when I used Google search I had an extension that removed them so I could e.g. right-click and copy the link.

RhodesianHunter 9y ago
Given that most of the web has Google analytics installed, I'm pretty sure all of the above is happening with or without amp.
- bo1024 9y ago
  I just want to mention (1) I view this as a bad thing and think we ought to try to move away from it; (2) I whitelist javascript so at least not all of the above is happening to me, and I think we ought to move toward all users having the tools and competence to do the same.
  - sbov 9y ago
    I just use https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger Probably not 100%, but it's better than nothing. And having people install a plugin is easy enough.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

pcwalton 9y ago

From my perspective as a browser developer, AMP is an unfortunate disincentive to make anything faster unless Chrome already did it. Google bans things that are slow in Chrome from AMP, even if there's no good reason for them to be slow in the first place. An example is off-main-thread animations. There's no intrinsic reason why animating, say, background-color should be slow. A lot of sites empirically do this sort of thing. But that animation is banned in AMP [1], because it's slow in Chrome (and in other browsers). Even if I work on making it faster, it'll stay banned until Chrome catches up (due to Chrome's market share), thus negating the incentive to make it faster in the first place. Without this competition, Web developers and users lose. [1]: https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-animation https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-ani...

geofft 9y ago

Apart from everything else, in the last few weeks I've seen a bunch of AMP pages that include at most the first few paragraphs, possibly just a photo or something, and a "read more on our website" link below. This is strictly worse than a world with no AMP: I have to load the AMP page, and then I have to load the real website. Because of that I'm starting to seriously wonder if Google is going to end up declaring AMP a failed project (and, being Google, the prior probability was reasonably high in the first place), and then AMP is an uncleanable stain on the web, with www.google.com/amp/ URLs being kept around forever.

bitmapbrother 9y ago
Do you also use the argument about Microsoft being Microsoft and shutting down more products and services than Google ever has?

tyingq 9y ago

>Can anyone explain the reason why people think its ethically bad This is just one of many reasons, but try this on a mobile phone. Go to Google and search for "Trump" Note what choices you have to pick from without excessive scrolling. They all end in either ads or Google urls. Click one of the featured stories in the carousel, almost guaranteed to be an AMP site. Seems to be a prerequisite to sit in the carousel. Lets say you land on a Washington Post story. What do you think a "right swipe" should do? Should it navigate to a competitor of Wapo? This is Wapo's page, right? So it should go to another Wapo page. Nope, it goes to Fox News. Okay, so now you've navigated from Wapo to say Fox News. Hit the back button. It should go back to the Wapo story, right? Nope, goes back to Google. How this isn't viewed as a land grab is a mystery to me.

awqrre 9y ago
So in other words, ad blockers should block Google's "Top Stories" ?
quadrangle 9y ago
what is this right-swipe business? You swipe and it, what, just takes you to a page that the makers of the current page think you should read next in your infinite time-sink staring at your phone‽
- tyingq 9y ago
  Well, in this case the makers of the previous page (Google) are deciding what right swipe on the current page (Washington Post) does. It certainly makes it clear that the content owner of an AMP page is not the page owner.
  - quadrangle 9y ago
    I get that, but what is right-swipe supposed to or expected to do? Why would people be right-swiping ever?
    - 9y ago

teraflop 9y ago

Leaving aside the lock-in issues, AMP causes me minor annoyances more often than it helps. For instance, when I open a search result from a site like Reddit, I get a static logged-out view, instead of the normal one that obeys my preferences. And if I want to copy the link, it takes a few extra taps to get the original one.

mattmanser 9y ago
I still don't understand why Reddit signed up, it's a terrible experience for their users. I commonly search 'reddit x' when I want an opinion and know there will be a sub Reddit, but now Reddit have made that use case incredibly bad by enabling AMP.
- niftich 9y ago
  I'd imagine a notoriously cash-strapped site like Reddit is enthusiastic that Google is willing to offload traffic originating from Google Search on Mobile to Google's own AMP CDN. This helps incidental visitors still consume Reddit content, while real Reddit users interacting with real website or through a Reddit app are still getting the normal experience. This arrangement only really frays at edge cases, where a logged-in Reddit user uses an external search like Google to look something up.
- tyingq 9y ago
  >I still don't understand why Reddit signed up Sign up, or face the reduced google referral traffic as AMP-only carousel results push the organic results below the fold.
robryan 9y ago
Yeah, encountering pages that are less useful than the or original or outright broken is a big reason for me.

ksk 9y ago

All else being equal, disabling ads and other javascript bs will speed up most websites, so if Google really cared about speed, they would (also) boost sites which didn't show ads and didn't rely heavily on JS. AMP is about keeping users on google's properties by using content that they didn't create.

myth_buster 9y ago

Goes against the notion of decentralized web. The content that user gets on their browser is cached content hosted on Google's servers. The URL that is shown in the location bar is `www.google.com/amp/<site>`. The rapid adoption is primarily due to fear of being left behind in Google's search ranking. As the blog states, it drives mobile views away from the site whose content is being shown (some call it stealing). On occasions I've seen more "Suggested Content" on an AMP page than the actual site. From what I've read, AMP came as a response to Facebook's instant articles not primarily driven from user needs.

ehsankia 9y ago

It isn't. I fully agree with the article that it should be optional, but it's hilarious how the only reason the author can give is that it "doesn't feel right". They state "I just automatically go to the main url" without giving any real reason for it. They also mention how all studies show that it's a huge positive for users. And it is. It's much faster and easier way to browse content. You can try to shit on Google, but the reality is that people sucked at making fast content, so someone had to step in and no one was.

JoshMnem 9y ago

> Can anyone explain the reason why people think its ethically bad? There is also some discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14518985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14518985 And more links in these articles: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/19/open_source_insider_google_amp_bad_bad_bad/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/19/open_source_insider... https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/05/20/gilbertson-amp https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/05/20/gilbertson-amp