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I'm personally neutral on it. In general, product managers hate complicating the product experience with settings and engineers hate maintaining multiple code p

I'm personally neutral on it. In general, product managers hate complicating the product experience with settings and engineers hate maintaining multiple code paths for the same feature. We did add the link away from AMP, so that users who cared have a per-link opt out. We know that most users love the experience.

MBCook 9y ago
I understand you don't want to keep 100 billion options around, that makes perfect sense. But haven't you seen the level of vitriol that comes up every time AMP is discussed? This isn't a minor thing, a lot of people REALLY dislike it. I have SERIOUSLY considered switching to a different search engine entirely because of this. The fact that there is now a link to get to the normal page after I've already gotten to the AMP page is not a solution to the issue. As an end-user that feels like I'm complaining that her website is too hard to read because of the noisy background and you're telling me I could just use print preview where the background doesn't show and read it that way. This feature has significantly change the way I use Google for the worse, and in the time since it was first launched it really hasn't gotten any better for me. It's so bad my OS vendor is starting to incorporate workarounds directly into their code. If I Google something how do I open five tabs to go look at? I have to ignore every AMP result because I can't open them in a tab. So would Google deems to be the "best" content is now unavailable to me. I don't have a choice to simply turn it off. Not everyone will. If you read the comments here there are people who do like it. But there are clearly a lot of us who HATE it with a passion because it's made your website so much harder to use. PLEASE give me an option to turn it off.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  > This isn't a minor thing, a lot of people REALLY dislike it. > But there are clearly a lot of us who HATE it with a passion because it's made your website so much harder to use. You really seem to overestimate the size of HN readership compared to the rest of the internet. It is a minor thing. We are a niche audience living in a bubble. We're not - by far - the typical or target users. Our usage behavior is - mostly - irrelevant to Google. The world has over 3 billion internet users. Let's say that HN has 3M unique monthly users, and that only 10% of those comment, and they are split between liking and hating AMP. That gives you 150k people who hate AMP compared to 3 billion users on the internet. Why would you build and maintain a feature for 0.005% of your users?
  - MBCook 9y ago
    You're assuming that the only people who dislike AMP or the people commenting on hacker news. What if it was 10% of all users? Or maybe 20%? Where would you draw the line… what percentage of users would have to dislike amp for you to think it was reasonable to add an option? I'm not sure what number I would choose (ignoring my bias that I don't like it and therefore my number would be smaller than probably reasonable).
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      > Where would you draw the line… what percentage of users would have to dislike amp for you to think it was reasonable to add an option? One easy piece of math is (cost of adding and maintaining that feature) vs. [(users who dislike) x (% of users who would quit you) x (profit per user)] For example, if 10% of all users disliked it (300M users), but only 1% of those would leave your services (3M users) and you made, on average, $10 per user in profit, you'd be putting $30M/year of profit at risk, which is probably enough to hire a few people to build and maintain that feature.
  - wwweston 9y ago
    > Why would you build and maintain a feature for 0.005% of your users? Even taking at face value the assumptions that yield your numbers (not obvious to me that's safe): 150K is still a pretty large audience. It's an influential audience, to the extent that tech and therefore thinking about tech is influential. It's an audience that understands the implications of technology choices like this and can articulate them. Also, I don't understand the assumption that this audience is completely complementary when it comes to understanding how the rest of the population thinks. I expect it's at least as likely a bet that there are people in the rest of the population who sense something is off or some aspect of the experience is degraded but can't understand and articulate the issue at as high a resolution as it is likely that everyone in the rest of the population simple does not care. And you really don't have to be some kind of programmer or other ubernerd to see some of the relevant issues in play with regards to URLs and walled gardens.
    - 9y ago
- themacguffinman 9y ago
  > But haven't you seen the level of vitriol that comes up every time AMP is discussed? Mostly on HN. And it's clear from this thread that a lot of vitriol comes from deeply ideological positions rather than real technical reasons. That won't be fixed by adding an opt-out.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    You're right that would remain no matter what. I don't care that much on the ideological position. My objection is purely from a user experience standpoint. My assumption is that the idea logical issue is much stronger here on hacker news than among the public at large. Much like views on free software purity. My guess, for lack of better reasoning, is that the percentage of people on hacker news who hate the experience is roughly the same as those in the "real world". I wouldn't expect that being more technically inclined would make people more likely to like AMP or dislike it (ignoring idea logical issues).
fgadhksf 9y ago
Your response feels like a lame excuse, and I think is insulting to the HN crowd.
protomyth 9y ago
> We know that most users love the experience. How exactly do you know that?
- cramforce 9y ago
  I can't go into details, but in general we closely track analytics for our product (like most companies with websites would) and run AB experiments to see how changes impact user behavior.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    I really question drawing a conclusion from analytics saying people are using it versus actually liking it. I know some folks at work have used it and they regard it as broken enough to call in a ticket about their device being broke.
    - euyyn 9y ago
      Dude just said he can't go into details, and you question the method he didn't explain?
      - protomyth 9y ago
        Analytics is a pretty well known idea. I question the base theory that it will answer this specific question. Also, given that the indicator for an AMP page is a greyscale, hard to see icon and words, people who don't want to use AMP might hit it because they are in a hurry and the text they are looking at is black and noticeable.
        cacarr 9y ago
        And they are experimenting with removing the AMP page indicator in search results.
        protomyth 9y ago
asdgjkkiiztrew 9y ago
I hope that the option of an 'opt out' or 'disable AMP' option (whether globally or on a per-result basis) is explored in the future. As an iOS user I have found AMP to be a frustrating experience. I'm sure you are including iOS users when you say "We know that most users love the experience" but for me AMP has been annoying. I wrote a comment earlier about my experience with AMP from my perspective as purely a user. Please excuse some of the rantiness of it. Like i said, I can get a little frustrated with AMP at times. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15087504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15087504
Aaargh20318 9y ago
As long as it has AMP Google Search is completely unusable to me. It needs to die TODAY.
wwweston 9y ago
> We did add the link away from AMP, so that users who cared have a per-link opt out. We know that most users love the experience. You know that most users love the experience, or you know that most users take the path of least resistance and don't click away using a UI whose purpose isn't particularly clear yet?
Aaargh20318 9y ago
You misunderstand the issue. Google search basically is a function where you input a search string and it returns a list of URL's matching the search criteria. That's all I need and want it to do. AMP breaks the core behaviour of Google Search, it no longer provides a list of URL's that match my criteria. Basically most search results aren't actual search results anymore.
LeifCarrotson 9y ago
There's a happy medium between a product with too many settings and code paths and a product that has none. We're not asking for AMP to run in a plethora of different ways, we're asking for an on/off switch.

MBCook 9y ago

I understand you don't want to keep 100 billion options around, that makes perfect sense. But haven't you seen the level of vitriol that comes up every time AMP is discussed? This isn't a minor thing, a lot of people REALLY dislike it. I have SERIOUSLY considered switching to a different search engine entirely because of this. The fact that there is now a link to get to the normal page after I've already gotten to the AMP page is not a solution to the issue. As an end-user that feels like I'm complaining that her website is too hard to read because of the noisy background and you're telling me I could just use print preview where the background doesn't show and read it that way. This feature has significantly change the way I use Google for the worse, and in the time since it was first launched it really hasn't gotten any better for me. It's so bad my OS vendor is starting to incorporate workarounds directly into their code. If I Google something how do I open five tabs to go look at? I have to ignore every AMP result because I can't open them in a tab. So would Google deems to be the "best" content is now unavailable to me. I don't have a choice to simply turn it off. Not everyone will. If you read the comments here there are people who do like it. But there are clearly a lot of us who HATE it with a passion because it's made your website so much harder to use. PLEASE give me an option to turn it off.

ucaetano 9y ago
> This isn't a minor thing, a lot of people REALLY dislike it. > But there are clearly a lot of us who HATE it with a passion because it's made your website so much harder to use. You really seem to overestimate the size of HN readership compared to the rest of the internet. It is a minor thing. We are a niche audience living in a bubble. We're not - by far - the typical or target users. Our usage behavior is - mostly - irrelevant to Google. The world has over 3 billion internet users. Let's say that HN has 3M unique monthly users, and that only 10% of those comment, and they are split between liking and hating AMP. That gives you 150k people who hate AMP compared to 3 billion users on the internet. Why would you build and maintain a feature for 0.005% of your users?
- MBCook 9y ago
  You're assuming that the only people who dislike AMP or the people commenting on hacker news. What if it was 10% of all users? Or maybe 20%? Where would you draw the line… what percentage of users would have to dislike amp for you to think it was reasonable to add an option? I'm not sure what number I would choose (ignoring my bias that I don't like it and therefore my number would be smaller than probably reasonable).
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    > Where would you draw the line… what percentage of users would have to dislike amp for you to think it was reasonable to add an option? One easy piece of math is (cost of adding and maintaining that feature) vs. [(users who dislike) x (% of users who would quit you) x (profit per user)] For example, if 10% of all users disliked it (300M users), but only 1% of those would leave your services (3M users) and you made, on average, $10 per user in profit, you'd be putting $30M/year of profit at risk, which is probably enough to hire a few people to build and maintain that feature.
- wwweston 9y ago
  > Why would you build and maintain a feature for 0.005% of your users? Even taking at face value the assumptions that yield your numbers (not obvious to me that's safe): 150K is still a pretty large audience. It's an influential audience, to the extent that tech and therefore thinking about tech is influential. It's an audience that understands the implications of technology choices like this and can articulate them. Also, I don't understand the assumption that this audience is completely complementary when it comes to understanding how the rest of the population thinks. I expect it's at least as likely a bet that there are people in the rest of the population who sense something is off or some aspect of the experience is degraded but can't understand and articulate the issue at as high a resolution as it is likely that everyone in the rest of the population simple does not care. And you really don't have to be some kind of programmer or other ubernerd to see some of the relevant issues in play with regards to URLs and walled gardens.
  - 9y ago
themacguffinman 9y ago
> But haven't you seen the level of vitriol that comes up every time AMP is discussed? Mostly on HN. And it's clear from this thread that a lot of vitriol comes from deeply ideological positions rather than real technical reasons. That won't be fixed by adding an opt-out.
- MBCook 9y ago
  You're right that would remain no matter what. I don't care that much on the ideological position. My objection is purely from a user experience standpoint. My assumption is that the idea logical issue is much stronger here on hacker news than among the public at large. Much like views on free software purity. My guess, for lack of better reasoning, is that the percentage of people on hacker news who hate the experience is roughly the same as those in the "real world". I wouldn't expect that being more technically inclined would make people more likely to like AMP or dislike it (ignoring idea logical issues).

fgadhksf 9y ago

Your response feels like a lame excuse, and I think is insulting to the HN crowd.

protomyth 9y ago

> We know that most users love the experience. How exactly do you know that?

cramforce 9y ago
I can't go into details, but in general we closely track analytics for our product (like most companies with websites would) and run AB experiments to see how changes impact user behavior.
- protomyth 9y ago
  I really question drawing a conclusion from analytics saying people are using it versus actually liking it. I know some folks at work have used it and they regard it as broken enough to call in a ticket about their device being broke.
  - euyyn 9y ago
    Dude just said he can't go into details, and you question the method he didn't explain?
    - protomyth 9y ago
      Analytics is a pretty well known idea. I question the base theory that it will answer this specific question. Also, given that the indicator for an AMP page is a greyscale, hard to see icon and words, people who don't want to use AMP might hit it because they are in a hurry and the text they are looking at is black and noticeable.
      - cacarr 9y ago
        And they are experimenting with removing the AMP page indicator in search results.
        protomyth 9y ago

asdgjkkiiztrew 9y ago

I hope that the option of an 'opt out' or 'disable AMP' option (whether globally or on a per-result basis) is explored in the future. As an iOS user I have found AMP to be a frustrating experience. I'm sure you are including iOS users when you say "We know that most users love the experience" but for me AMP has been annoying. I wrote a comment earlier about my experience with AMP from my perspective as purely a user. Please excuse some of the rantiness of it. Like i said, I can get a little frustrated with AMP at times. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15087504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15087504

Aaargh20318 9y ago

As long as it has AMP Google Search is completely unusable to me. It needs to die TODAY.

wwweston 9y ago

> We did add the link away from AMP, so that users who cared have a per-link opt out. We know that most users love the experience. You know that most users love the experience, or you know that most users take the path of least resistance and don't click away using a UI whose purpose isn't particularly clear yet?

Aaargh20318 9y ago

You misunderstand the issue. Google search basically is a function where you input a search string and it returns a list of URL's matching the search criteria. That's all I need and want it to do. AMP breaks the core behaviour of Google Search, it no longer provides a list of URL's that match my criteria. Basically most search results aren't actual search results anymore.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago

There's a happy medium between a product with too many settings and code paths and a product that has none. We're not asking for AMP to run in a plethora of different ways, we're asking for an on/off switch.