8 ms·

Good article. My main objection to AMP is not that is it being portrayed as a community project (although, that does bother me). It is that Google are creating

Good article. My main objection to AMP is not that is it being portrayed as a community project (although, that does bother me). It is that Google are creating their own subset of already well established standards (HTML, CSS), and forcing developers to adopt them if they wish their content to appear at the top of search results. If this is truly a project to increase the speed and readability of the Web, as it was initially promoted to be, Google have better tools for achieving that outcome (demoting excessively slow sites in search results, for example). In it's current guise, AMP is little more than Google aiming to force all content on the web to be consistent with their own look-and-feel, and breaking the fundamental philosophy of the web in the process.

SimeVidas 9y ago
Why do you think has Google created these restrictions on HTML and CSS code in AMP pages?
- davethedevguy 9y ago
  I do believe that it is an effort to increase the speed of pages, by preventing content creators from doing things that can harm the user's experience on slower connections - I just don't think it's the right way to go about it. It also has the side-effect that all AMP pages must look fairly similar and 'on brand' for Google - which I doubt is an accident.
  - lllr_finger 9y ago
    What's the right way then? When I worked at a media conglomerate, AMP was the only thing that reigned in and enraged the biz-dev and ad-ops departments. I'm still proud that my AMP launch partner pages are out there and serving up content really fast. I hate that it took this to provide that experience, but I prefer it to the FB and AAPL walled garden syndication approach for business and tech reasons.
    - falcolas 9y ago
      The right way: influencing ranking by load times for some exemplar (and easily replicable) device and inter-actability events. That way, sites like HN are boosted to the top, while sites which take 10 seconds for their JS frameworks and ads to load before showing text on the screen are penalized.
      - SquareWheel 9y ago
        Page load speeds are a ranking factor.
        falcolas 9y ago
        Why add a special ranking for amp pages, if page speed is already a major factor? It would seem like the reality is that page speed is not an important factor, and that re-tuning that factor would have been a better solution if Google's primary concern was for the health of the open web; not just Google's ecosystem.
        SquareWheel 9y ago
        >Why add a special ranking for amp pages, if page speed is already a major factor? I touched on this confusion elsewhere in this thread, but AMP is actually not a ranking factor. The carousel is a vertical which has been integrated into the page. However, I do agree with you. It's confusing to end-users when it's described as a non-ranking factor because it still appears on the search page. It just doesn't influence organic search. I would also like to see page speed become even more important, as performance is very important to user satisfaction. I spend a lot of time trying to minimize bits wherever possible. It's not just pure loading times either, but perceived speed too. Small effects like animations can make a page feel faster, even if it's technically slower.
        kemayo 9y ago
        Mind you, it's at the top, which I think matters regardless of whether it's technically in the search results. It's an implicit "use AMP and we'll show you first" statement.
- drawkbox 9y ago
  Why is it Google's job to make your site fast? Google is overstepping their bounds by reducing standards to make their search better ultimately. Very similar to Microsoft in their IE4 overstepping days, led to years of stagnation and problems. Google is actively picking winners and losers based on whether they bend to how Google wants you to make your sites, a bigger encroachment than Microsoft ever made. Businesses don't take on products unless it has a revenue impact to them or control impact. - Do you think AMP is purely just to improve speeds or to get a further grip on content? - Do you believe the business reasons are just to make sites fast? How much is Google costing content creation businesses to implement ANOTHER standard? My guess is Google is going to force AMP into HTML6 or into standard bodies as well like they did with HTTP/2 and how they are now using Chrome like Microsoft used IE to kill common standards and make up their own using their power to force people to use it. AMP is reminiscent of AOL's markup sandbox / terrible browser and Facebook's early specialized markup FBML, both maintained some control but eventually were long drawn out losses. How long until Google starts recompressing images and changing your content? If AMP didn't influence search results in Google would people implement AMP? No as it costs money to change and add new per company standards. AMP is another smell that Google is going too far in control. AMP does make sites faster, but good content sites already know how to do that and they should win in the open market not having to attach on to Google specific (sorry I mean "community" wink) standards. Google regularly now kills common internet standards, offers an alternative that is only their standard, very late 90s Microsoft of them. I love Google but AMP is the first thing that really bothers me because you have to do it now to compete, not because it is necessarily better.
gregable 9y ago
The look-and-feel argument is a misunderstanding of AMP. What you probably notice are pages generated by the Wordpress AMP plugin, which does not implement much in the way of different templates. AMP has some severe constraints on javascript, but is pretty non-constrained on HTML and CSS. Nearly all HTML5 tags and attributes are supported, including non-standard tags like <big>. It even allows super-non-standard tags like "<o:p>" which was part of an old microsoft word export-to-html feature. Take a look at some of the examples on https://www.ampstart.com/ https://www.ampstart.com/ http://ampproject.org/ http://ampproject.org/ is AMP and https://daily.spiegel.de/ https://daily.spiegel.de/ is AMP. These look very different.

SimeVidas 9y ago

Why do you think has Google created these restrictions on HTML and CSS code in AMP pages?

davethedevguy 9y ago
I do believe that it is an effort to increase the speed of pages, by preventing content creators from doing things that can harm the user's experience on slower connections - I just don't think it's the right way to go about it. It also has the side-effect that all AMP pages must look fairly similar and 'on brand' for Google - which I doubt is an accident.
- lllr_finger 9y ago
  What's the right way then? When I worked at a media conglomerate, AMP was the only thing that reigned in and enraged the biz-dev and ad-ops departments. I'm still proud that my AMP launch partner pages are out there and serving up content really fast. I hate that it took this to provide that experience, but I prefer it to the FB and AAPL walled garden syndication approach for business and tech reasons.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    The right way: influencing ranking by load times for some exemplar (and easily replicable) device and inter-actability events. That way, sites like HN are boosted to the top, while sites which take 10 seconds for their JS frameworks and ads to load before showing text on the screen are penalized.
    - SquareWheel 9y ago
      Page load speeds are a ranking factor.
      - falcolas 9y ago
        Why add a special ranking for amp pages, if page speed is already a major factor? It would seem like the reality is that page speed is not an important factor, and that re-tuning that factor would have been a better solution if Google's primary concern was for the health of the open web; not just Google's ecosystem.
        SquareWheel 9y ago
        >Why add a special ranking for amp pages, if page speed is already a major factor? I touched on this confusion elsewhere in this thread, but AMP is actually not a ranking factor. The carousel is a vertical which has been integrated into the page. However, I do agree with you. It's confusing to end-users when it's described as a non-ranking factor because it still appears on the search page. It just doesn't influence organic search. I would also like to see page speed become even more important, as performance is very important to user satisfaction. I spend a lot of time trying to minimize bits wherever possible. It's not just pure loading times either, but perceived speed too. Small effects like animations can make a page feel faster, even if it's technically slower.
        kemayo 9y ago
        Mind you, it's at the top, which I think matters regardless of whether it's technically in the search results. It's an implicit "use AMP and we'll show you first" statement.
drawkbox 9y ago
Why is it Google's job to make your site fast? Google is overstepping their bounds by reducing standards to make their search better ultimately. Very similar to Microsoft in their IE4 overstepping days, led to years of stagnation and problems. Google is actively picking winners and losers based on whether they bend to how Google wants you to make your sites, a bigger encroachment than Microsoft ever made. Businesses don't take on products unless it has a revenue impact to them or control impact. - Do you think AMP is purely just to improve speeds or to get a further grip on content? - Do you believe the business reasons are just to make sites fast? How much is Google costing content creation businesses to implement ANOTHER standard? My guess is Google is going to force AMP into HTML6 or into standard bodies as well like they did with HTTP/2 and how they are now using Chrome like Microsoft used IE to kill common standards and make up their own using their power to force people to use it. AMP is reminiscent of AOL's markup sandbox / terrible browser and Facebook's early specialized markup FBML, both maintained some control but eventually were long drawn out losses. How long until Google starts recompressing images and changing your content? If AMP didn't influence search results in Google would people implement AMP? No as it costs money to change and add new per company standards. AMP is another smell that Google is going too far in control. AMP does make sites faster, but good content sites already know how to do that and they should win in the open market not having to attach on to Google specific (sorry I mean "community" wink) standards. Google regularly now kills common internet standards, offers an alternative that is only their standard, very late 90s Microsoft of them. I love Google but AMP is the first thing that really bothers me because you have to do it now to compete, not because it is necessarily better.

gregable 9y ago

The look-and-feel argument is a misunderstanding of AMP. What you probably notice are pages generated by the Wordpress AMP plugin, which does not implement much in the way of different templates. AMP has some severe constraints on javascript, but is pretty non-constrained on HTML and CSS. Nearly all HTML5 tags and attributes are supported, including non-standard tags like <big>. It even allows super-non-standard tags like "<o:p>" which was part of an old microsoft word export-to-html feature. Take a look at some of the examples on https://www.ampstart.com/ https://www.ampstart.com/ http://ampproject.org/ http://ampproject.org/ is AMP and https://daily.spiegel.de/ https://daily.spiegel.de/ is AMP. These look very different.