8 ms·

I fail to see what, in AMP, makes the web less free or open. I am usually among the first on the stockade on invasive tech, but I have a hard time to understand

by Iv 9y ago

I fail to see what, in AMP, makes the web less free or open. I am usually among the first on the stockade on invasive tech, but I have a hard time to understand the fuss around AMP. Yes, the cache is problematic, as it may allow Google, in a possible future, to filter some content, censor some other or not refresh often some pages. The thing is, if it does that, people will start using Google's caching, that's as simple as that.

ehsankia 9y ago
And as I user, I've never had any issues and I still don't really see the whole fuss about "copying the link being much harder". I love the much much faster load times and couldn't be happier.
- noxToken 9y ago
  As a user, I don't mind AMP. The Web is a mostly hostile place for end users. Malicious ads, 5MB+ pages just so you can read a 1 minute text article, auto-playing videos with volume set to 100%, obtrusive ads - AMP aims to fix this crud and give users a better browsing experience. Ideologically, I'm opposed for all the reasons listed in TFA. People work to create something, yet the content and website are being ferried around by Google. AMP rendering basically strips content down to a barebones text page of the content in question with some images. Not inherently bad. However the site loses a lot of navigability, and swiping to either side moves people off of the current site and to the next search result. It's basically loading the site I selected as a search result instead of actually giving me the site I want to navigate to. It's the same as Google scraping content to respond to search queries. It's nice to be able to search for "28th US president" and get the answer, an image, quotes, some basic biographical information, and people related to Wilson. I get all that without ever have to leave the results page, yet all of the content creators who worked hard to catalog that information get no benefit. As a user: Thanks! Ideologically: Ouch.
  - corobo 9y ago
    You make good points on the size of pages and load speed. How about instead of AMP we have something that's hosted on the server instead? Something like RSS but with built in single-article views and a standard (or at least lightweight) framework? On the other hand you say AMP aims to fix this - anyone doing that for the ad views etc would simply not enable AMP on their site. AMP does not fix this.
    - noxToken 9y ago
      I meant that AMP aims to make a holistically better browsing experience. We should not need anything special to make the web better, but until we can get some sort of unified contribution model, making money for producing web content tends to be a race to the bottom. There are in-house subscription models and sites like Patreon, but those seem to be only moderately successful to pointless. I just want a Web where people write a lean website that delivers your content with low overhead. Then do your best to use ad networks that aren't trying to set your users' computer on fire.
coldtea 9y ago
>I fail to see what, in AMP, makes the web less free or open. Google serving your pages? Hijacking your domain for the server pages and obscuring links to the original content? Use of a proprietary technology (whether open sourced or not, it's not a standard)? Abuse of power with veiled threats of punishing content publishers who are not using recommending AMP to make their pages "fast and responsive"? The only way to be any more against the free and open web is if they made Google search a web proxy where you never get access to the underlying page...
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > The only way to be any more against the free and open web is if they made Google search a web proxy where you never get access to the underlying page... Give it some time. They are pulling more and more content into the search results pages which has roughly that effect, since people no longer click through.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Interestingly, assuming it works well, that's kind of exactly what I want as a user. Whenever I'm searching for one of the following (which form a large fraction of my searches): - definition of a word - lyrics of a song - summary of a movie - phone number and/or address of a business - distance between places - unit or currency conversions - weather I have no desire to "click through" to anything. I want my piece of information, a raw fact. That I have to select from various providers, each with their own (non-standardized) UX and possibly various "value-added" crap like ads and popups, is at best a nuisance, at worst a big time-waster. In this way, the "content providers" are becoming annoying middlemen between me and the information I seek. So while I don't want to see Google monopolizing the Internet, I also don't like the model in which information is served by individual web pages (which can, and do, disappear all the time and get replaced by something different). So I wonder - how can we promote and develop the open web, while also making it better and more productive for people? Maybe if people served data streams instead of web pages, things would be easier? Related, I'm all for every kind of way of taking control over the way a page looks away from their authors. The Web is increasingly becoming a place for designers to show off, and this wastes both users' time and resources. Ad blockers, noscript and reader modes are huge wins in this space, but I think we need more. Maybe some self-hosted auto scrappers that would help me answer my information queries without actually visiting full pages?
p49k 9y ago
In my opinion, the reason it makes the web less free and open is because Google has a de-facto monopoly on search and they're abusing it to force you host your content on their domain and to use proprietary technology in order to receive fair placement in their results. In the past, Google said "we will prioritize search results by load speed." That's completely fair and a move I can applaud – it points out a serious problem with the web and leaves it up to publishers to come up with innovative and creative solutions of their own to reduce load time. Now, Google has changed the deal. It doesn't matter how much you've innovated to provide a good experience to your visitors – it doesn't matter if you created a version that loads ten times as fast as AMP and provides a better user experience, you will still be penalized by Google if you don't use AMP. You will not be allowed in the carousel, regardless of how well your site performs. You will not be prioritized above AMP results, you won't see the "lightning bolt," even if your site is legitimately as fast as AMP. It kills any motivation for any company or person to develop a better system for loading pages quickly, because sites using it will never be able to overcome the unfair advantage given to AMP sites.
- zaphar 9y ago
  As I understand it Google has stated it does not penalize or boost AMP pages. Do you have evidence to support this accusation?
  - K0nserv 9y ago
    As pointed out in the article only AMP results get placed in the carousel at the top of the search results. That's definitely an example of boosting AMP. They could generate carousel entries for non-AMP pages with og:title and og:image just fine so there's not a compelling technical reason.
    - criddell 9y ago
      I believe Google uses page load time as one of the ranking factors. If your non-AMP pages load quickly, you will be fine. I don't think they specifically reward AMP.
tyingq 9y ago
The cache already hijacks pages in a bad way. The [x] on the AMP banner is a back button that takes you back to Google. Most users would expect it to dismiss the banner and stay on the page. If your AMP page was reached by a Google search carousel widget, they hijack left/right swipe on YOUR page to go to competitors pages. And, after swiping, using the real back button skips any AMP pages in history and goes directly back to Google. I suspect Google will do the same as they've done in search (ads vs organics)...keep taking ground in little bites over time, until it is a walled garden.
thesagan 9y ago
AMP is pretty much mandatory. If you don't do it you're "left behind."
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Unless everybody drops it. These Google incited arms races in the end help nobody but Google, it's a web scale version of the prisoners dilemma.
  - thesagan 9y ago
    100% – I think this is a shortsighted move predicated by fear and it will backfire (hopefully). Google probably wants/expects to remain dominate forever, and that's very hard to do in this space without becoming a problem yourself.
  - mpclark 9y ago
    Agreed. We dropped AMP on nfcworld.com last month. Too much like building a business on somebody else's platform, and by now we all know where that ends up.
  - criddell 9y ago
    I hope publisher's drop it and take with them a few lessons about showing a little respect for the audience.
IanCal 9y ago
> The thing is, if it does that, people will start using Google's caching, that's as simple as that. I assume you mean "stop", but you can't. There is no way, as far as I can find, that you can opt out of google rehosting your content.
- Iv 9y ago
  Yes, I meant "stop", sorry. What is ironical in that issue is that Google copying/caching your content is part of the free web. We would bitch about websites that prevent copying their contents somehow. What people can opt out of is sharing links to AMP and AMP redirects, which will happen 2.7 seconds after Google starts censoring content.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

by Iv 9y ago

ehsankia 9y ago

And as I user, I've never had any issues and I still don't really see the whole fuss about "copying the link being much harder". I love the much much faster load times and couldn't be happier.

noxToken 9y ago
As a user, I don't mind AMP. The Web is a mostly hostile place for end users. Malicious ads, 5MB+ pages just so you can read a 1 minute text article, auto-playing videos with volume set to 100%, obtrusive ads - AMP aims to fix this crud and give users a better browsing experience. Ideologically, I'm opposed for all the reasons listed in TFA. People work to create something, yet the content and website are being ferried around by Google. AMP rendering basically strips content down to a barebones text page of the content in question with some images. Not inherently bad. However the site loses a lot of navigability, and swiping to either side moves people off of the current site and to the next search result. It's basically loading the site I selected as a search result instead of actually giving me the site I want to navigate to. It's the same as Google scraping content to respond to search queries. It's nice to be able to search for "28th US president" and get the answer, an image, quotes, some basic biographical information, and people related to Wilson. I get all that without ever have to leave the results page, yet all of the content creators who worked hard to catalog that information get no benefit. As a user: Thanks! Ideologically: Ouch.
- corobo 9y ago
  You make good points on the size of pages and load speed. How about instead of AMP we have something that's hosted on the server instead? Something like RSS but with built in single-article views and a standard (or at least lightweight) framework? On the other hand you say AMP aims to fix this - anyone doing that for the ad views etc would simply not enable AMP on their site. AMP does not fix this.
  - noxToken 9y ago
    I meant that AMP aims to make a holistically better browsing experience. We should not need anything special to make the web better, but until we can get some sort of unified contribution model, making money for producing web content tends to be a race to the bottom. There are in-house subscription models and sites like Patreon, but those seem to be only moderately successful to pointless. I just want a Web where people write a lean website that delivers your content with low overhead. Then do your best to use ad networks that aren't trying to set your users' computer on fire.

coldtea 9y ago

>I fail to see what, in AMP, makes the web less free or open. Google serving your pages? Hijacking your domain for the server pages and obscuring links to the original content? Use of a proprietary technology (whether open sourced or not, it's not a standard)? Abuse of power with veiled threats of punishing content publishers who are not using recommending AMP to make their pages "fast and responsive"? The only way to be any more against the free and open web is if they made Google search a web proxy where you never get access to the underlying page...

jacquesm 9y ago
> The only way to be any more against the free and open web is if they made Google search a web proxy where you never get access to the underlying page... Give it some time. They are pulling more and more content into the search results pages which has roughly that effect, since people no longer click through.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Interestingly, assuming it works well, that's kind of exactly what I want as a user. Whenever I'm searching for one of the following (which form a large fraction of my searches): - definition of a word - lyrics of a song - summary of a movie - phone number and/or address of a business - distance between places - unit or currency conversions - weather I have no desire to "click through" to anything. I want my piece of information, a raw fact. That I have to select from various providers, each with their own (non-standardized) UX and possibly various "value-added" crap like ads and popups, is at best a nuisance, at worst a big time-waster. In this way, the "content providers" are becoming annoying middlemen between me and the information I seek. So while I don't want to see Google monopolizing the Internet, I also don't like the model in which information is served by individual web pages (which can, and do, disappear all the time and get replaced by something different). So I wonder - how can we promote and develop the open web, while also making it better and more productive for people? Maybe if people served data streams instead of web pages, things would be easier? Related, I'm all for every kind of way of taking control over the way a page looks away from their authors. The Web is increasingly becoming a place for designers to show off, and this wastes both users' time and resources. Ad blockers, noscript and reader modes are huge wins in this space, but I think we need more. Maybe some self-hosted auto scrappers that would help me answer my information queries without actually visiting full pages?

p49k 9y ago

In my opinion, the reason it makes the web less free and open is because Google has a de-facto monopoly on search and they're abusing it to force you host your content on their domain and to use proprietary technology in order to receive fair placement in their results. In the past, Google said "we will prioritize search results by load speed." That's completely fair and a move I can applaud – it points out a serious problem with the web and leaves it up to publishers to come up with innovative and creative solutions of their own to reduce load time. Now, Google has changed the deal. It doesn't matter how much you've innovated to provide a good experience to your visitors – it doesn't matter if you created a version that loads ten times as fast as AMP and provides a better user experience, you will still be penalized by Google if you don't use AMP. You will not be allowed in the carousel, regardless of how well your site performs. You will not be prioritized above AMP results, you won't see the "lightning bolt," even if your site is legitimately as fast as AMP. It kills any motivation for any company or person to develop a better system for loading pages quickly, because sites using it will never be able to overcome the unfair advantage given to AMP sites.

zaphar 9y ago
As I understand it Google has stated it does not penalize or boost AMP pages. Do you have evidence to support this accusation?
- K0nserv 9y ago
  As pointed out in the article only AMP results get placed in the carousel at the top of the search results. That's definitely an example of boosting AMP. They could generate carousel entries for non-AMP pages with og:title and og:image just fine so there's not a compelling technical reason.
  - criddell 9y ago
    I believe Google uses page load time as one of the ranking factors. If your non-AMP pages load quickly, you will be fine. I don't think they specifically reward AMP.

tyingq 9y ago

The cache already hijacks pages in a bad way. The [x] on the AMP banner is a back button that takes you back to Google. Most users would expect it to dismiss the banner and stay on the page. If your AMP page was reached by a Google search carousel widget, they hijack left/right swipe on YOUR page to go to competitors pages. And, after swiping, using the real back button skips any AMP pages in history and goes directly back to Google. I suspect Google will do the same as they've done in search (ads vs organics)...keep taking ground in little bites over time, until it is a walled garden.

thesagan 9y ago

AMP is pretty much mandatory. If you don't do it you're "left behind."

jacquesm 9y ago
Unless everybody drops it. These Google incited arms races in the end help nobody but Google, it's a web scale version of the prisoners dilemma.
- thesagan 9y ago
  100% – I think this is a shortsighted move predicated by fear and it will backfire (hopefully). Google probably wants/expects to remain dominate forever, and that's very hard to do in this space without becoming a problem yourself.
- mpclark 9y ago
  Agreed. We dropped AMP on nfcworld.com last month. Too much like building a business on somebody else's platform, and by now we all know where that ends up.
- criddell 9y ago
  I hope publisher's drop it and take with them a few lessons about showing a little respect for the audience.

IanCal 9y ago

> The thing is, if it does that, people will start using Google's caching, that's as simple as that. I assume you mean "stop", but you can't. There is no way, as far as I can find, that you can opt out of google rehosting your content.

Iv 9y ago
Yes, I meant "stop", sorry. What is ironical in that issue is that Google copying/caching your content is part of the free web. We would bitch about websites that prevent copying their contents somehow. What people can opt out of is sharing links to AMP and AMP redirects, which will happen 2.7 seconds after Google starts censoring content.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]