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Google AMP is bad for e-commerce

367 points by themaveness 9y ago

aritali 9y ago
I cannot see AMP remaining viable in the long run. I think there is going to be a lot of push back or non adoption because the walled garden is just a way to track users and advertise to them better.
themaveness 9y ago
I imagine it will likely be shelved soon either by lawsuit or just by Google's closing it down.
- akras14 9y ago
  I appreciate your optimism, but my read is that current Google management is very heavily invested in this idea and will fight hard before they give it up. In addition AMP has penetrated other platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. The cat is out of the bag, and it will not be easy to put it back.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    I agree. AMP Cache discrimination won’t be shelved by Google, but by the antitrust cases that will destroy Google otherwise.
  - sliverstorm 9y ago
    The cat is out of the bag, and it will not be easy to put it back. Yup, now that those damn users have gotten a taste of speed & low data usage, it's gonna be hard to drag them back to how it used to be. We had a good thing going, and they didn't know any better.
    - akras14 9y ago
      No one is advocating for users to have a bad experience and large downloads.
      - onion2k 9y ago
        The author of the article being discussed expressly states that AMP is bad because it doesn't allow chat services or 3rd party integrations. Those are two examples of things that often lead to a bad experience and large downloads.
- TekMol 9y ago
  What keeps you from simply not using it?
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Oh? So how do I get into the AMP carousel on Google search without implementing AMP on my site? This is a major ranking factor, in some situations moving sites that would be on page 13! to the #1 spot in search. In other cases, the effect is less visible. That is what keeps people from not implementing AMP. And you get this ranking benefit not for using AMP, or for a certain performance, but it is given to everyone that uses Google’s AMP version, from Google’s CDN, with Google’s tracking solutions. If I want to run AMP from my own CDN, I can’t do it, and if I want to avoid Google’s cache, because I have my own CDN, I also don’t get the ranking boost.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      > If I want to run AMP from my own CDN, I can’t do it Got a source for that? I always heard that the criteria for the carousel was AMP-compatibility, not being hosted on Google's CDN.
      - kuschku 9y ago
        There is no direct source, but you can try it, or just look at the current implementation. Currently, Google serves AMP by serving all AMP search results from its own cache, which allows Google to add features such as the header bar, or the swiping between carousel elements. This doesn’t work if the pages are from different origins. EDIT: I found some sources: > contain a <script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> tag inside their head tag. https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/spec#required-markup https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/spec#required-mark... Which prevents self-hosting the JS And https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/faq https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/faq > Q: Can I stop content from being cached? > A: No. By using the AMP format, content producers are making the content in AMP files available to be cached by third parties. For example, Google products use the Google AMP Cache to serve AMP content as fast as possible.
- bitmapbrother 9y ago
  >I imagine it will likely be shelved soon either by lawsuit or just by Google's closing it down AMP isn't going anywhere so don't get your hopes up. But, by all means I encourage you to initiate a lawsuit if only to see you fleeced by a lawyer for your litigious attitude. Also, the article you linked to is so full of inaccuracies that it's impossible to take it seriously.
andy_ppp 9y ago
AMP is fine. AMP Cache is embrace, extended and break the web in fairly fundamental ways.
- roneythomas6 9y ago
  Cloudflare provides AMP cache. If you don't want to use Google CDN.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    That still doesn’t give you any of the ranking boost – that is only given if you allow Google to cache it on their CDN. Google does that by default, you likely don’t even notice it, but if you try to prevent it, you lose the ranking boost.
    - roneythomas6 9y ago
      Can you provide a reference where it says that there is rank boost for AMP sites. AFAIK if you're site is fast it will get some boost only in mobile. But it doesn't need to be an amp site. Gurdian for example runs their own AMP cache.
      - kuschku 9y ago
        Pages that use AMP get a massive indirect ranking boost. Yes, they don’t get directly boosted, but they get added to the AMP carousel, between the ads and the #1 result, or between the #1 and #2 result. If, for a given search term, none of the top pages have an AMP result, Google will boost the first 3-4 pages that have an AMP result to this place – even if they’d organically rank on page 10 or later. In some situations, I’ve seen results from page 13 boosted to #1. For example, none of the newspapers reporting about stuff where I live support AMP, but a few US newspapers that report about sports events that happened years ago do. So when I search about stuff in my city, at the top there’s an AMP carousel with news from years ago, and below that only the actual results.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
ucaetano 9y ago
The author seems to completely misunderstand the point of AMP. It was never designed or created for dynamic, interactive content, especially e-commerce. This is like complaining that a hammer is bad for driving screws.
- themaveness 9y ago
  I don't think its that. Its that AMP is borderline an anti-trust. But the point is, even with the speed and possible ranking boost, does it boost conversions? More traffic without conversions generally does not help an e-commerce site.
  - SystemOut 9y ago
    First, how is it anti-trust? And second, it's been shown that faster page loads = better conversions since your bounce rate drops. This is especially true for mobile.
    - themaveness 9y ago
      Imagine the scenario, a user lands on the AMP page and a user lands on a responsive page. Both have a question about shipping time. The AMP user has to navigate to a contact form to ask, then submit. The responsive user can just ask in the chat window on the page.
      - ucaetano 9y ago
        > The AMP user has to navigate to a contact form to ask, then submit. The responsive user can just ask in the chat window on the page. Why would you use an AMP page for that? It was specifically NOT designed for those use cases. Now back on your point: if the users who have a question are a small % of the total users, why would you have all users load the heavy chat window on mobile devices with limited screen space?
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    > Its that AMP is borderline an anti-trust. And why is that? > More traffic without conversions generally does not help an e-commerce site. You should not be using AMP for e-commerce, at least not for anything but a static product page. Again, if you try to drive a nail with a hammer and it doesn't work, the fault isn't on the hammer, it's on you.
ziggzagg 9y ago
Mot google projects die organically, with a short life span. No need to keep bashing AMP like this.
- ashark 9y ago
  This particular AMP-bashing post just reminded me to go change mobile Safari's default search engine to DDG, which I'd been meaning to do so I stop being sent to terrible AMP pages, but kept forgetting to do because in the moment I'm always more interested in finding the info I want on a non-AMP page than fiddling with settings. So it was useful to me.
  - y_u_no_rust 9y ago
    protip -- bing.com
  - Lio 9y ago
    You can use Duck Duck Go to stop Google showing you AMP links in search results by starting your searches with "!g". If AMP was so good for me vs just good for Google I would expect them to allow opt out for those, like me, that don't want to see AMP results.
roneythomas6 9y ago
Why would you build your whole site on AMP??? Please read this before think about build AMP. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/12/progressive-web-amps/ https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/12/progressive-web-amp...
- kuschku 9y ago
  > Why would you build your whole site on AMP??? To get a ranking boost? For some search terms, moving to full AMP gives you a ranking boost catapulting you from page 13 or worse to the #1 result. So if you don’t use that, someone else will use that advantage.
  - roneythomas6 9y ago
    Guardian for example runs their own AMP cache and gets in page 1 without Google AMP cache. Also AMP is one in many factors that is used to decide site relevance. Amazon and many other sites that don't use AMP gets featured in page 1 on mobile.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      The guardian may run their own CDN, but all guardian search results in Google Search redirect to the Google AMP cache. For example, current #1 result for "guardian" is https://www.google.de/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/16/grace-mugabe-zimbabwe-south-africa-diplomatic-immunity https://www.google.de/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/a...
- squeaky-clean 9y ago
  Because many managers hear "AMP gets boosted in search results and a special icon" and stop hearing anything after that. The number of times I've had to tell people "No, you can't do that with AMP" is crazy.
kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
Despite understanding and largely agreeing with the concerns against AMP Cache that get discussed any time an AMP article gets posted on HN, I cannot stress enough on how relieved I feel to see the lightning icon next to a mobile search result, especially on my now aging phone. Most content websites have become such a massive crapfest of ad-bloat, bad UX, huge page sizes and general usability hell that it's nigh impossible that I'd be able to reach the actual content of a non AMP site in the first 5-10 seconds of clicking on its link. (On my phone that's an additional 1-2 seconds for registering the tap, and 1-2 seconds for navigating to the browser) My click-throughs to non AMP websites have reduced considerably. So say what you may, AMP (or FB Instant or its ilk) will prosper until the mobile web experience stops being so crappy. (Edit: About a decade ago, when mobile browsers were in their infancy and data plans were slow and limited, I distinctly remember using Opera Mini for mobile browsing because it used to pre-render pages on the server and send a very light payload to the phone. This saved you both data costs and made mobile browsing even realistically possible)
- dividuum 9y ago
  Personally I don't think the idea behind AMP is bad. But the implementation is dangerous as it artificially fragments the web. I guess fewer would oppose AMP if google made some machine verifiable guidelines for "light" webpages that would earn them this "icon". Linked from the "fat" page by some "link" meta tag.
  - godot 9y ago
    >if google made some machine verifiable guidelines for "light" webpages that would earn them this "icon". Linked from the "fat" page by some "link" meta tag. That is exactly what AMP is; with the exception (a huge one, I know) that Google also then caches the page on their server and serves it from a google.com host.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      And modifies the pages UI. And forces you to load content from Google’s CDN. And so on.
kuschku 9y ago
So, to avoid having to argue the same problems always again, here’s a summary of some of the technical and antitrust issues with AMP: 1. You have to embed the AMP version from Google’s servers, you can’t self-host the AMP js, or run it from another CDN. This makes your site unavailable in, for example, China, relies on Google’s systems, and ensures that Google knows every user of your site. Source: https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/spec#required-markup https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/spec#required-mark... > contain a <script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> tag inside their head tag. 2. You need to allow Google to cache the content, and all Google products will always link to the Google cache version. You can not opt out of this. You can not ensure users visit your own CDN version. You can not prevent Google from displaying modified versions of the pages (for example, the header UI of AMP pages in Google search, and the swiping between pages gesture). Source: https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/faq https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/faq > Q: Can I stop content from being cached? > A: No. By using the AMP format, content producers are making the content in AMP files available to be cached by third parties. For example, Google products use the Google AMP Cache to serve AMP content as fast as possible. 3. Pages that use AMP get a massive indirect ranking boost. Yes, they don’t get directly boosted, but they get added to the AMP carousel, between the ads and the #1 result, or between the #1 and #2 result. If, for a given search term, none of the top pages have an AMP result, Google will boost the first 3-4 pages that have an AMP result to this place – even if they’d organically rank on page 10 or later. In some situations, I’ve seen results from page 13 boosted to #1.
taytus 9y ago
Disclaimer: I'm working on ROBOAMP (an AMP generator) AMP has limitations, like any piece of technology. Once you understand the limitations you should be able to plan your attack accordingly. We are pre-launch but if you want early access and test our automatic generator please email me.
dbg31415 9y ago
Conceptually I hate AMP. I wish they would just have guidelines for fast load times, and award better rank and a lightening badge next to pages that are adhering to those guidelines. I HATE that Google restricts design, re-formats pages, and serves your content. That said, AMP clearly isn't for eCommerce. You want dynamic, personalized content for eCommerce. Recommendations based on past pages visited, or search terms, or your location... It's not just about fast loading pages. Some eCommerce may fear that their sales will suffer if someone else gets a page that's in AMP and then Google's new rankings put that page over their own... But that's no reason to convert your site to AMP. It's a good reason to build out landing pages specific for search terms, do paid advertising around keywords, and just generally market your products / site. Generally speaking, people who come in to product pages straight from Google are just doing price comparison anyway -- it's just a step in the decision journey, but if you've done a proper job of marketing your business, customers that buy tend to go straight to your site and do a search using your own search tools.
cramforce 9y ago
"AMP does not allow for use of forms". This is wrong https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-form https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-for... …and similarly the rest of the article seems badly researched.
- Navarr 9y ago
  The biggest key to me was the complete ignorance of why a pagespeed might be higher despite "overall load time" being slower. Perhaps, author, because of how those pages are painted
linopolus 9y ago
So AMP is not even faster than other mobile pages without the google CDN? A pity so many prefer something like AMP to generally stripping down their sites. Get rid of JS unless absolutely necessary, compress/remove images, remove all this ad and bloat, and your page, whatever category it fits in, will load blazyingly fast. What happened to good old sole HTML and CSS, served statically or server-generated for lightning speed?
- acdha 9y ago
  It's not only not faster but it's often slower — AMP puts 100KB of render-blocking JavaScript into the critical path. If you can render a page with less than that, you're likely to beat it, which I see regularly on iOS.
  - squeaky-clean 9y ago
    Not only that, but because of the limitations of AMP, many AMP sites are getting slower and slower as they attempt workarounds. I've seen many sites recently that do section headers as a large image-as-text, I'd guess because they want to use a custom font? Even worse is AMP won't load images until you've scrolled them into view.
gregable 9y ago
Breaking down a few of the concerns in this article: > With AMP [chat applications] cannot be used True currently. There are no chat application amp extensions, yet. This could change in the future. Vendors interested in implementing one for AMP should get involved at http://github.com/ampproject/amphtml http://github.com/ampproject/amphtml > AMP does not have any markup specific to checkouts Most web pages move from shopping cart to payment by changing URLs. This would work just fine with an AMP page. There is in fact at least one vendor who has integrated payments with AMP already: https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-access-laterpay https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-acc... Also take a look at https://ampbyexample.com/advanced/payments_in_amp/ https://ampbyexample.com/advanced/payments_in_amp/ > AMP does not allow for use of forms See https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-form https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-for... > They really do not support a logged in state, or user preferences. Things like recommended products, or recently viewed products will not work with an AMP page. None of the personalization aspects like “Hi, Lesley” are done with AMP. See the (perhaps poorly named) https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-list https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-lis... This supports loading content specific to the user, even on a cached amp document. > if search and filtering are a large part of your site’s mobile navigation, AMP will be useless. This is exactly what amp-bind was built for: https://ampbyexample.com/components/amp-bind/ https://ampbyexample.com/components/amp-bind/ > Google Analytics is not supported on AMP Google Analytics is fully supported in AMP. Here's the Google Analytics support page: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/amp-analytics/ https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection... > If you use a different suite of tracking such as Piwik or kissmetrics, they will not work with AMP. There is a large list of analytics vendors that have direct support here: https://www.ampproject.org/docs/guides/analytics/analytics-vendors https://www.ampproject.org/docs/guides/analytics/analytics-v... Other vendors can be added with a small amount of configuration. Here's a guide for Piwik, for example: https://www.elftronix.com/guide-to-using-piwik-analytics-with-amp-on-wordpress/ https://www.elftronix.com/guide-to-using-piwik-analytics-wit... Alternatively, vendors can submit a configuration to the AMP project which is just a few lines of JSON, then the vendor will be supported more directly. > Ad Revenue is Decreased The link is to a single article from a year ago. There are many studies pointing to the opposite effect as well. > A/B testing is not supported See https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-experiment https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-exp... > Performance I'm not sure what URLs the author used, but I tried to find a similar overstock recliner page that might be the right one. I found: https://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Recliners/Leather,/material,/18555/subcat.html https://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Recliners/Leather,/mat... The author tries to use a google.com/amp URL, but these redirect when not coming from a search click. Much easier is to take the CDN amp URL, which is served the same way: https://cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Recliners/amp/Leather,/material,/18555/subcat.html https://cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.overstock.com/Home-Garden... I loaded both of these in Chrome, simulated a mobile device, network tab, and throttling with Fast 3G. Here were my results: * non-AMP: 42 requests, 1.1 MB transferred, Finish: 10.3s, DomContentLoad: 3.38s, Load: 9.52s * AMP: 35 requests, 408 KB transferred, Finish 5.87s, DomContentLoaded 1.28s, Load: 5.88s The AMP page is 60% smaller and hits the load event in 40% less time. However "loaded" is a funny term in the world of javascript driven websites and needs to be looked at more carefully. I suspect that the author's referenced tool is reporting "fully loaded time" as the time that the last network event ended. AMP pages intentionally delay loading images below the fold to prioritize visible content. This results in some images loading later without impacting the user experience. For example, as I scrolled in the AMP page, the "Finish" time would move ahead to a new time as new images were loaded. With events like analytics triggers, looking at the time the last network event finished is typically a misleading metric and won't work correctly with most amp documents. If you load filmstrips in Chrome's Performance Tab, you can see this more clearly. Filmstrips display what the page looked like at snapshots in time after loading starts. For my quick test with network throttling, the non-AMP page takes a little over 6s to finish reaching it's final state and the AMP page takes about 2.2s. So AMP here is nearly 3x faster as the user would perceive it on similar connection speed.
JoshMnem 9y ago
AMP is terrible for the decentralized, open Web in general.
nouveau0 9y ago
Should have stopped at Google AMP is bad.
thinbeige 9y ago
Tried today to find a way to let amp-img mimic CSS' background-size cover paired with background-position. Not possible, so I need still to use CSS' background-image without AMP's preloading feature. This is one of the most used features in HTML/CSS to handle images, people are complaining in the Github issues, others rewrite the whole Internet in AMP with AMP components. This is ridiculous, Google just wants to restrict other ad networks' JS and recreates HTML/CSS/JS for no real reason.
benmarks 9y ago
There's a whole lot wrong with this article. Chief for me is the absolute ignorance around AMP -> PWA flow and browser-native payments API: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/07/payment-request https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/07/payment-re... This tech may seem trivial to broadband users, but has demonstrated itself to be effective in mobile-heavy, low-bandwidth markets (ref India & myntra.com)
k__ 9y ago
Privacy issues aside, I don't get AMP, most of the time it doesn't even work right and I'm using chrome on my android tablet. It either doesn't load or goes back to the previous page after a few seconds.
w00bl3ywook 9y ago
wtf is this guy talking about? This article has so many errors, it should be retracted.
w00bl3ywook 9y ago
wtf is this guy talking about? This article has so many errors, it should be retracted.
droopybuns 9y ago
Anyone else annoyed at how evernote web clips are completely busted on AMP pages?
denisehilton 9y ago
What do you say about blogs? I understand that AMP is harmful to e-commerce based websites but what about blogs that are totally based on content and Google ads? How does it impact them?
Businessmen 9y ago
Google AMP's existence is just bad in general. Please stop trying to make the internet literally only google.com and facebook.com

367 points by themaveness 9y ago

I cannot see AMP remaining viable in the long run. I think there is going to be a lot of push back or non adoption because the walled garden is just a way to track users and advertise to them better.

themaveness 9y ago

I imagine it will likely be shelved soon either by lawsuit or just by Google's closing it down.

akras14 9y ago
I appreciate your optimism, but my read is that current Google management is very heavily invested in this idea and will fight hard before they give it up. In addition AMP has penetrated other platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. The cat is out of the bag, and it will not be easy to put it back.
- kuschku 9y ago
  I agree. AMP Cache discrimination won’t be shelved by Google, but by the antitrust cases that will destroy Google otherwise.
- sliverstorm 9y ago
  The cat is out of the bag, and it will not be easy to put it back. Yup, now that those damn users have gotten a taste of speed & low data usage, it's gonna be hard to drag them back to how it used to be. We had a good thing going, and they didn't know any better.
  - akras14 9y ago
    No one is advocating for users to have a bad experience and large downloads.
    - onion2k 9y ago
      The author of the article being discussed expressly states that AMP is bad because it doesn't allow chat services or 3rd party integrations. Those are two examples of things that often lead to a bad experience and large downloads.
TekMol 9y ago
What keeps you from simply not using it?
- kuschku 9y ago
  Oh? So how do I get into the AMP carousel on Google search without implementing AMP on my site? This is a major ranking factor, in some situations moving sites that would be on page 13! to the #1 spot in search. In other cases, the effect is less visible. That is what keeps people from not implementing AMP. And you get this ranking benefit not for using AMP, or for a certain performance, but it is given to everyone that uses Google’s AMP version, from Google’s CDN, with Google’s tracking solutions. If I want to run AMP from my own CDN, I can’t do it, and if I want to avoid Google’s cache, because I have my own CDN, I also don’t get the ranking boost.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    > If I want to run AMP from my own CDN, I can’t do it Got a source for that? I always heard that the criteria for the carousel was AMP-compatibility, not being hosted on Google's CDN.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      There is no direct source, but you can try it, or just look at the current implementation. Currently, Google serves AMP by serving all AMP search results from its own cache, which allows Google to add features such as the header bar, or the swiping between carousel elements. This doesn’t work if the pages are from different origins. EDIT: I found some sources: > contain a <script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> tag inside their head tag. https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/spec#required-markup https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/spec#required-mark... Which prevents self-hosting the JS And https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/faq https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/faq > Q: Can I stop content from being cached? > A: No. By using the AMP format, content producers are making the content in AMP files available to be cached by third parties. For example, Google products use the Google AMP Cache to serve AMP content as fast as possible.
bitmapbrother 9y ago
>I imagine it will likely be shelved soon either by lawsuit or just by Google's closing it down AMP isn't going anywhere so don't get your hopes up. But, by all means I encourage you to initiate a lawsuit if only to see you fleeced by a lawyer for your litigious attitude. Also, the article you linked to is so full of inaccuracies that it's impossible to take it seriously.

andy_ppp 9y ago

AMP is fine. AMP Cache is embrace, extended and break the web in fairly fundamental ways.

roneythomas6 9y ago
Cloudflare provides AMP cache. If you don't want to use Google CDN.
- kuschku 9y ago
  That still doesn’t give you any of the ranking boost – that is only given if you allow Google to cache it on their CDN. Google does that by default, you likely don’t even notice it, but if you try to prevent it, you lose the ranking boost.
  - roneythomas6 9y ago
    Can you provide a reference where it says that there is rank boost for AMP sites. AFAIK if you're site is fast it will get some boost only in mobile. But it doesn't need to be an amp site. Gurdian for example runs their own AMP cache.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      Pages that use AMP get a massive indirect ranking boost. Yes, they don’t get directly boosted, but they get added to the AMP carousel, between the ads and the #1 result, or between the #1 and #2 result. If, for a given search term, none of the top pages have an AMP result, Google will boost the first 3-4 pages that have an AMP result to this place – even if they’d organically rank on page 10 or later. In some situations, I’ve seen results from page 13 boosted to #1. For example, none of the newspapers reporting about stuff where I live support AMP, but a few US newspapers that report about sports events that happened years ago do. So when I search about stuff in my city, at the top there’s an AMP carousel with news from years ago, and below that only the actual results.
  - ucaetano 9y ago

ucaetano 9y ago

The author seems to completely misunderstand the point of AMP. It was never designed or created for dynamic, interactive content, especially e-commerce. This is like complaining that a hammer is bad for driving screws.

themaveness 9y ago
I don't think its that. Its that AMP is borderline an anti-trust. But the point is, even with the speed and possible ranking boost, does it boost conversions? More traffic without conversions generally does not help an e-commerce site.
- SystemOut 9y ago
  First, how is it anti-trust? And second, it's been shown that faster page loads = better conversions since your bounce rate drops. This is especially true for mobile.
  - themaveness 9y ago
    Imagine the scenario, a user lands on the AMP page and a user lands on a responsive page. Both have a question about shipping time. The AMP user has to navigate to a contact form to ask, then submit. The responsive user can just ask in the chat window on the page.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      > The AMP user has to navigate to a contact form to ask, then submit. The responsive user can just ask in the chat window on the page. Why would you use an AMP page for that? It was specifically NOT designed for those use cases. Now back on your point: if the users who have a question are a small % of the total users, why would you have all users load the heavy chat window on mobile devices with limited screen space?
- ucaetano 9y ago
  > Its that AMP is borderline an anti-trust. And why is that? > More traffic without conversions generally does not help an e-commerce site. You should not be using AMP for e-commerce, at least not for anything but a static product page. Again, if you try to drive a nail with a hammer and it doesn't work, the fault isn't on the hammer, it's on you.

ziggzagg 9y ago

Mot google projects die organically, with a short life span. No need to keep bashing AMP like this.

ashark 9y ago
This particular AMP-bashing post just reminded me to go change mobile Safari's default search engine to DDG, which I'd been meaning to do so I stop being sent to terrible AMP pages, but kept forgetting to do because in the moment I'm always more interested in finding the info I want on a non-AMP page than fiddling with settings. So it was useful to me.
- y_u_no_rust 9y ago
  protip -- bing.com
- Lio 9y ago
  You can use Duck Duck Go to stop Google showing you AMP links in search results by starting your searches with "!g". If AMP was so good for me vs just good for Google I would expect them to allow opt out for those, like me, that don't want to see AMP results.

roneythomas6 9y ago

Why would you build your whole site on AMP??? Please read this before think about build AMP. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/12/progressive-web-amps/ https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/12/progressive-web-amp...

kuschku 9y ago
> Why would you build your whole site on AMP??? To get a ranking boost? For some search terms, moving to full AMP gives you a ranking boost catapulting you from page 13 or worse to the #1 result. So if you don’t use that, someone else will use that advantage.
- roneythomas6 9y ago
  Guardian for example runs their own AMP cache and gets in page 1 without Google AMP cache. Also AMP is one in many factors that is used to decide site relevance. Amazon and many other sites that don't use AMP gets featured in page 1 on mobile.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    The guardian may run their own CDN, but all guardian search results in Google Search redirect to the Google AMP cache. For example, current #1 result for "guardian" is https://www.google.de/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/16/grace-mugabe-zimbabwe-south-africa-diplomatic-immunity https://www.google.de/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/a...
squeaky-clean 9y ago
Because many managers hear "AMP gets boosted in search results and a special icon" and stop hearing anything after that. The number of times I've had to tell people "No, you can't do that with AMP" is crazy.

kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago

Despite understanding and largely agreeing with the concerns against AMP Cache that get discussed any time an AMP article gets posted on HN, I cannot stress enough on how relieved I feel to see the lightning icon next to a mobile search result, especially on my now aging phone. Most content websites have become such a massive crapfest of ad-bloat, bad UX, huge page sizes and general usability hell that it's nigh impossible that I'd be able to reach the actual content of a non AMP site in the first 5-10 seconds of clicking on its link. (On my phone that's an additional 1-2 seconds for registering the tap, and 1-2 seconds for navigating to the browser) My click-throughs to non AMP websites have reduced considerably. So say what you may, AMP (or FB Instant or its ilk) will prosper until the mobile web experience stops being so crappy. (Edit: About a decade ago, when mobile browsers were in their infancy and data plans were slow and limited, I distinctly remember using Opera Mini for mobile browsing because it used to pre-render pages on the server and send a very light payload to the phone. This saved you both data costs and made mobile browsing even realistically possible)

dividuum 9y ago
Personally I don't think the idea behind AMP is bad. But the implementation is dangerous as it artificially fragments the web. I guess fewer would oppose AMP if google made some machine verifiable guidelines for "light" webpages that would earn them this "icon". Linked from the "fat" page by some "link" meta tag.
- godot 9y ago
  >if google made some machine verifiable guidelines for "light" webpages that would earn them this "icon". Linked from the "fat" page by some "link" meta tag. That is exactly what AMP is; with the exception (a huge one, I know) that Google also then caches the page on their server and serves it from a google.com host.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    And modifies the pages UI. And forces you to load content from Google’s CDN. And so on.

kuschku 9y ago

So, to avoid having to argue the same problems always again, here’s a summary of some of the technical and antitrust issues with AMP: 1. You have to embed the AMP version from Google’s servers, you can’t self-host the AMP js, or run it from another CDN. This makes your site unavailable in, for example, China, relies on Google’s systems, and ensures that Google knows every user of your site. Source: https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/spec#required-markup https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/spec#required-mark... > contain a <script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> tag inside their head tag. 2. You need to allow Google to cache the content, and all Google products will always link to the Google cache version. You can not opt out of this. You can not ensure users visit your own CDN version. You can not prevent Google from displaying modified versions of the pages (for example, the header UI of AMP pages in Google search, and the swiping between pages gesture). Source: https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/faq https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/faq > Q: Can I stop content from being cached? > A: No. By using the AMP format, content producers are making the content in AMP files available to be cached by third parties. For example, Google products use the Google AMP Cache to serve AMP content as fast as possible. 3. Pages that use AMP get a massive indirect ranking boost. Yes, they don’t get directly boosted, but they get added to the AMP carousel, between the ads and the #1 result, or between the #1 and #2 result. If, for a given search term, none of the top pages have an AMP result, Google will boost the first 3-4 pages that have an AMP result to this place – even if they’d organically rank on page 10 or later. In some situations, I’ve seen results from page 13 boosted to #1.

taytus 9y ago

Disclaimer: I'm working on ROBOAMP (an AMP generator) AMP has limitations, like any piece of technology. Once you understand the limitations you should be able to plan your attack accordingly. We are pre-launch but if you want early access and test our automatic generator please email me.

dbg31415 9y ago

Conceptually I hate AMP. I wish they would just have guidelines for fast load times, and award better rank and a lightening badge next to pages that are adhering to those guidelines. I HATE that Google restricts design, re-formats pages, and serves your content. That said, AMP clearly isn't for eCommerce. You want dynamic, personalized content for eCommerce. Recommendations based on past pages visited, or search terms, or your location... It's not just about fast loading pages. Some eCommerce may fear that their sales will suffer if someone else gets a page that's in AMP and then Google's new rankings put that page over their own... But that's no reason to convert your site to AMP. It's a good reason to build out landing pages specific for search terms, do paid advertising around keywords, and just generally market your products / site. Generally speaking, people who come in to product pages straight from Google are just doing price comparison anyway -- it's just a step in the decision journey, but if you've done a proper job of marketing your business, customers that buy tend to go straight to your site and do a search using your own search tools.

cramforce 9y ago

"AMP does not allow for use of forms". This is wrong https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-form https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-for... …and similarly the rest of the article seems badly researched.

Navarr 9y ago
The biggest key to me was the complete ignorance of why a pagespeed might be higher despite "overall load time" being slower. Perhaps, author, because of how those pages are painted

linopolus 9y ago

So AMP is not even faster than other mobile pages without the google CDN? A pity so many prefer something like AMP to generally stripping down their sites. Get rid of JS unless absolutely necessary, compress/remove images, remove all this ad and bloat, and your page, whatever category it fits in, will load blazyingly fast. What happened to good old sole HTML and CSS, served statically or server-generated for lightning speed?

acdha 9y ago
It's not only not faster but it's often slower — AMP puts 100KB of render-blocking JavaScript into the critical path. If you can render a page with less than that, you're likely to beat it, which I see regularly on iOS.
- squeaky-clean 9y ago
  Not only that, but because of the limitations of AMP, many AMP sites are getting slower and slower as they attempt workarounds. I've seen many sites recently that do section headers as a large image-as-text, I'd guess because they want to use a custom font? Even worse is AMP won't load images until you've scrolled them into view.

gregable 9y ago

Breaking down a few of the concerns in this article: > With AMP [chat applications] cannot be used True currently. There are no chat application amp extensions, yet. This could change in the future. Vendors interested in implementing one for AMP should get involved at http://github.com/ampproject/amphtml http://github.com/ampproject/amphtml > AMP does not have any markup specific to checkouts Most web pages move from shopping cart to payment by changing URLs. This would work just fine with an AMP page. There is in fact at least one vendor who has integrated payments with AMP already: https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-access-laterpay https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-acc... Also take a look at https://ampbyexample.com/advanced/payments_in_amp/ https://ampbyexample.com/advanced/payments_in_amp/ > AMP does not allow for use of forms See https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-form https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-for... > They really do not support a logged in state, or user preferences. Things like recommended products, or recently viewed products will not work with an AMP page. None of the personalization aspects like “Hi, Lesley” are done with AMP. See the (perhaps poorly named) https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-list https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-lis... This supports loading content specific to the user, even on a cached amp document. > if search and filtering are a large part of your site’s mobile navigation, AMP will be useless. This is exactly what amp-bind was built for: https://ampbyexample.com/components/amp-bind/ https://ampbyexample.com/components/amp-bind/ > Google Analytics is not supported on AMP Google Analytics is fully supported in AMP. Here's the Google Analytics support page: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/amp-analytics/ https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection... > If you use a different suite of tracking such as Piwik or kissmetrics, they will not work with AMP. There is a large list of analytics vendors that have direct support here: https://www.ampproject.org/docs/guides/analytics/analytics-vendors https://www.ampproject.org/docs/guides/analytics/analytics-v... Other vendors can be added with a small amount of configuration. Here's a guide for Piwik, for example: https://www.elftronix.com/guide-to-using-piwik-analytics-with-amp-on-wordpress/ https://www.elftronix.com/guide-to-using-piwik-analytics-wit... Alternatively, vendors can submit a configuration to the AMP project which is just a few lines of JSON, then the vendor will be supported more directly. > Ad Revenue is Decreased The link is to a single article from a year ago. There are many studies pointing to the opposite effect as well. > A/B testing is not supported See https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-experiment https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-exp... > Performance I'm not sure what URLs the author used, but I tried to find a similar overstock recliner page that might be the right one. I found: https://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Recliners/Leather,/material,/18555/subcat.html https://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Recliners/Leather,/mat... The author tries to use a google.com/amp URL, but these redirect when not coming from a search click. Much easier is to take the CDN amp URL, which is served the same way: https://cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Recliners/amp/Leather,/material,/18555/subcat.html https://cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.overstock.com/Home-Garden... I loaded both of these in Chrome, simulated a mobile device, network tab, and throttling with Fast 3G. Here were my results: * non-AMP: 42 requests, 1.1 MB transferred, Finish: 10.3s, DomContentLoad: 3.38s, Load: 9.52s * AMP: 35 requests, 408 KB transferred, Finish 5.87s, DomContentLoaded 1.28s, Load: 5.88s The AMP page is 60% smaller and hits the load event in 40% less time. However "loaded" is a funny term in the world of javascript driven websites and needs to be looked at more carefully. I suspect that the author's referenced tool is reporting "fully loaded time" as the time that the last network event ended. AMP pages intentionally delay loading images below the fold to prioritize visible content. This results in some images loading later without impacting the user experience. For example, as I scrolled in the AMP page, the "Finish" time would move ahead to a new time as new images were loaded. With events like analytics triggers, looking at the time the last network event finished is typically a misleading metric and won't work correctly with most amp documents. If you load filmstrips in Chrome's Performance Tab, you can see this more clearly. Filmstrips display what the page looked like at snapshots in time after loading starts. For my quick test with network throttling, the non-AMP page takes a little over 6s to finish reaching it's final state and the AMP page takes about 2.2s. So AMP here is nearly 3x faster as the user would perceive it on similar connection speed.

JoshMnem 9y ago

AMP is terrible for the decentralized, open Web in general.

nouveau0 9y ago

Should have stopped at Google AMP is bad.

thinbeige 9y ago

Tried today to find a way to let amp-img mimic CSS' background-size cover paired with background-position. Not possible, so I need still to use CSS' background-image without AMP's preloading feature. This is one of the most used features in HTML/CSS to handle images, people are complaining in the Github issues, others rewrite the whole Internet in AMP with AMP components. This is ridiculous, Google just wants to restrict other ad networks' JS and recreates HTML/CSS/JS for no real reason.

benmarks 9y ago

There's a whole lot wrong with this article. Chief for me is the absolute ignorance around AMP -> PWA flow and browser-native payments API: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/07/payment-request https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/07/payment-re... This tech may seem trivial to broadband users, but has demonstrated itself to be effective in mobile-heavy, low-bandwidth markets (ref India & myntra.com)

k__ 9y ago

Privacy issues aside, I don't get AMP, most of the time it doesn't even work right and I'm using chrome on my android tablet. It either doesn't load or goes back to the previous page after a few seconds.

w00bl3ywook 9y ago

wtf is this guy talking about? This article has so many errors, it should be retracted.

w00bl3ywook 9y ago

wtf is this guy talking about? This article has so many errors, it should be retracted.

droopybuns 9y ago

Anyone else annoyed at how evernote web clips are completely busted on AMP pages?

denisehilton 9y ago

What do you say about blogs? I understand that AMP is harmful to e-commerce based websites but what about blogs that are totally based on content and Google ads? How does it impact them?

Businessmen 9y ago

Google AMP's existence is just bad in general. Please stop trying to make the internet literally only google.com and facebook.com