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I honestly love amp pages. They load in rural areas unlike other bloated pages. When you've got good service they load quick without annoying popups / ads. If

I honestly love amp pages. They load in rural areas unlike other bloated pages. When you've got good service they load quick without annoying popups / ads. If people hate amp, maybe it’s time to adjust the web standards to enable amp experience with the html6 web. (Disclaimer, I do work at Google)

dx034 9y ago
Same for me, if I'm in the tube or in an area with weak coverage I only click on AMP links (and Facebook equivalent) whenever possible. That way I can search and load the result in the ~15-20 sec time window where I have wifi. (I don't work at Google or Facebook or wherever)
pcwalton 9y ago
> If people hate amp, maybe it’s time to adjust the web standards to enable amp experience with the html6 web. What does that mean exactly?
- strictnein 9y ago
  Web 4.0
  - lucb1e 9y ago
    Is that supposed to be enlightening / a thing, or is this another buzzword to mix in with HTML6 (which I've never heard of either)?
    - strictnein 9y ago
      It's supposed to be nonsense.
- tree_of_item 9y ago
  I think it means a future revision of the web could explicitly identify a subset like AMP, to encourage web developers to target it without Google being involved. One advantage of a setup like this would be the possibility to instruct your browser to reject any non-AMP pages (or make them click to play, or otherwise indicate them), if you were on rural internet and didn't even want to bother loading a slow page.
sangnoir 9y ago
Just yesterday an HNer was saying they are in Puerto Rico and the vast majority of pages won't load due to bandwidth restrictions - except for HN and one other site I'm forgetting. I would bet you AMP pages would load fine for them. HN loves to hate on page bloat and AMP, confusingly. I have noticed HNers conflate AMP the standard and Google Search's caching behaviour and/or ranking of AMP pages. I love the former, and not the latter. They really ought to make it possible for mobile search users to opt-out of getting AMP results.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  How is it confusing? I hate page bloat because it's slow. I hate AMP as it's an obvious, extremely damaging, land grab.
  - sangnoir 9y ago
    I went on to differentiate between AMP the standard and Google's search result and serving from Google's cache (the "land grab" aspect). Dismissing both is throwing the baby out with the bathwater IMO - I'll get behind anyone who's encouraging trim pages - such as adhering to the AMP standard.
    - pwinnski 9y ago
      I haven't seen anybody hating on making pages "adhere to the AMP standard." When people express loathing of AMP, we're objecting to exactly what this article describes: an expansive and dishonest land grab by Google. It is reasonable and correct to hate both web page bloat and Google's so-called "solution" that breaks the web.
- bhauer 9y ago
  > HN loves to hate on page bloat and AMP, confusingly. I'm not one to write much about AMP, but I don't see why simultaneously disliking page bloat and AMP is confusing. I simultaneously dislike (or like) many pairs of things that are apparently at odds with one another. The charitable reading of those of us who dislike AMP and page bloat simultaneously is that we want developers (and, importantly, the people who give direction to those developers) to economize on their own. Stop adding every hip third-party script, social sharing widget, tracking library, and framework to your otherwise simple webapp. It's quite easy to trim the fat from a webapp; you just need the organizational conviction to do so. AMP is a trojan horse, in more ways than one. One good: It uses a compelling marketing message to deliver much-needed trimming. But two things are obvious to most developers: (a) it's not necessary to adopt AMP to make your app trim and (b) AMP comes with a lot of baggage. So the message from HN is: there are better options, and they're not even technically difficult.
exodust 9y ago
I'm not sure what "enable amp experience with the html6 web" means, but surely you like non-amp pages too, particularly the ones well designed and lightweight code. I'm just hearing about amp tonight and trying to understand what it is. Why are people saying it ruins the URL? Does it change the website address to a google URL? Why are people criticising it saying "hosted not cached"? I gather the caching works similar to Akamai, with a configurable TTL on file types for the origin server?
- recursive 9y ago
  I also like the fact that I know in advance that an AMP page will be fast. Non-AMP is a mixed bag, but mostly slow and crappy.
- kemayo 9y ago
  If you do a search on Google, and click on an AMP result you'll find yourself at a URL like: https://www.google.com/amp/wccftech.com/wikipedia-updated-its-app-with-full-ios-11-support-for-the-latest-iphone-and-ipads/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/wccftech.com/wikipedia-updated-it... This is because the way Google gets those lightning-fast results for AMP pages is to rehost them onto their own server and background-load them while you're viewing the search page. It's even a reasonable position -- they want to do the background-loading safely, so having known-good content helps them. People are calling this rehosting because, well, your content is hosted on Google's servers, in a very visible way to anyone who sees the URL. If you share it, that's the URL that goes to other people rather than the canonical one. That said, non-Google browser makers have been doing things to mitigate this. iOS Safari notices when you're trying to share an AMP URL and figures out the canonical one for you to share instead. (I hear Firefox does this, too, on Android as well.) It's a bit silly that the major browsers are all adding in Google-AMP-specific hacks like this, though.
  - SquareWheel 9y ago
    >It's a bit silly that the major browsers are all adding in Google-AMP-specific hacks like this, though. Isn't copying the canonical URL the correct behavior? I've just checked and the AMP page you linked has the correct canonical tag set.
detaro 9y ago
> If people hate amp, maybe it’s time to adjust the web standards to enable amp experience with the html6 web. AMP is build on top of the web standards. It does nothing technical a normal webpage can't do. It's almost purely a political thing: It helps push these technologies by framing it as this cool and important new thing from Google (which many responsible for websites feel like they have to follow for SEO etc) instead of simply good engineering, which is a boring thing that nobody cares about if marketing wants to add another set of javascript to a site. In turn, it kind of punishes websites that already are efficient when they do not use AMP to achieve that.
scarface74 9y ago
Pages load fast without bloat in iOS thanks to both the reader view and iOS's built in support of content blockers. What are the chances that Google will allow for third party content blockers and a reader view in Chrome that blocks all ads including theirs in Android? And the pages aren't hosted by Google.
- chickenbane 9y ago
  On Android I love using Firefox Focus, which blocks ads and analytics trackers. It's my default browser, although I still use Chrome when I want the logged-in experience. What are the chances that Apple would allow me to change the default browser on iOS?
  - scarface74 9y ago
    That’s not a complete solution. Any app with a built in web view will still use Chrome and still not support ad blocking. An app that uses the Safari View Controller as a built in web view (like my RSS reader and all of the built in apps), will still support content blockers and use the same set of cookies as the main browser. The apps do not have access to your web session like they do in a traditional web view.
- baddox 9y ago
  Incidentally, can you recommend a good iOS content blocker? I never looked into them beyond a week or so after the feature first launched, and I wasn't impressed by their effectiveness early on.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    I'm using 1Blocker. (not an affiliate link) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1blocker/id1025729002?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1blocker/id1025729002?mt=8
    - baddox 9y ago
      Awesome, I’ll check it out.
manigandham 9y ago
I like fast pages too, like HN. No AMP necessary. Make site load speed a significant factor in search results ranking and the entire web would get faster without the duplicate work of maintaining AMP pages. Also let's not forget that Google's Doubleclick (the most popular adserver) is the biggest and slowest component of most pages on the internet.
- antisthenes 9y ago
  The original Doubleclick (pre-purchase) is what made me get Adblock initially in the first place. If some of you remember it, it was just another level of awful compared to regular ads and even pop-ups.
lucb1e 9y ago
I don't have any such issues and my phone doesn't even support 4g. A lot of the time it's still reasonable on EDGE. And besides, I'm still for expanding 3g coverage instead of starting to experiment with / roll out 5g as they are... we don't need new tech (in this regard), we need to roll shit out and do shit properly.

dx034 9y ago

Same for me, if I'm in the tube or in an area with weak coverage I only click on AMP links (and Facebook equivalent) whenever possible. That way I can search and load the result in the ~15-20 sec time window where I have wifi. (I don't work at Google or Facebook or wherever)

pcwalton 9y ago

> If people hate amp, maybe it’s time to adjust the web standards to enable amp experience with the html6 web. What does that mean exactly?

strictnein 9y ago
Web 4.0
- lucb1e 9y ago
  Is that supposed to be enlightening / a thing, or is this another buzzword to mix in with HTML6 (which I've never heard of either)?
  - strictnein 9y ago
    It's supposed to be nonsense.
tree_of_item 9y ago
I think it means a future revision of the web could explicitly identify a subset like AMP, to encourage web developers to target it without Google being involved. One advantage of a setup like this would be the possibility to instruct your browser to reject any non-AMP pages (or make them click to play, or otherwise indicate them), if you were on rural internet and didn't even want to bother loading a slow page.

sangnoir 9y ago

Just yesterday an HNer was saying they are in Puerto Rico and the vast majority of pages won't load due to bandwidth restrictions - except for HN and one other site I'm forgetting. I would bet you AMP pages would load fine for them. HN loves to hate on page bloat and AMP, confusingly. I have noticed HNers conflate AMP the standard and Google Search's caching behaviour and/or ranking of AMP pages. I love the former, and not the latter. They really ought to make it possible for mobile search users to opt-out of getting AMP results.

mattmanser 9y ago
How is it confusing? I hate page bloat because it's slow. I hate AMP as it's an obvious, extremely damaging, land grab.
- sangnoir 9y ago
  I went on to differentiate between AMP the standard and Google's search result and serving from Google's cache (the "land grab" aspect). Dismissing both is throwing the baby out with the bathwater IMO - I'll get behind anyone who's encouraging trim pages - such as adhering to the AMP standard.
  - pwinnski 9y ago
    I haven't seen anybody hating on making pages "adhere to the AMP standard." When people express loathing of AMP, we're objecting to exactly what this article describes: an expansive and dishonest land grab by Google. It is reasonable and correct to hate both web page bloat and Google's so-called "solution" that breaks the web.
bhauer 9y ago
> HN loves to hate on page bloat and AMP, confusingly. I'm not one to write much about AMP, but I don't see why simultaneously disliking page bloat and AMP is confusing. I simultaneously dislike (or like) many pairs of things that are apparently at odds with one another. The charitable reading of those of us who dislike AMP and page bloat simultaneously is that we want developers (and, importantly, the people who give direction to those developers) to economize on their own. Stop adding every hip third-party script, social sharing widget, tracking library, and framework to your otherwise simple webapp. It's quite easy to trim the fat from a webapp; you just need the organizational conviction to do so. AMP is a trojan horse, in more ways than one. One good: It uses a compelling marketing message to deliver much-needed trimming. But two things are obvious to most developers: (a) it's not necessary to adopt AMP to make your app trim and (b) AMP comes with a lot of baggage. So the message from HN is: there are better options, and they're not even technically difficult.

exodust 9y ago

I'm not sure what "enable amp experience with the html6 web" means, but surely you like non-amp pages too, particularly the ones well designed and lightweight code. I'm just hearing about amp tonight and trying to understand what it is. Why are people saying it ruins the URL? Does it change the website address to a google URL? Why are people criticising it saying "hosted not cached"? I gather the caching works similar to Akamai, with a configurable TTL on file types for the origin server?

recursive 9y ago
I also like the fact that I know in advance that an AMP page will be fast. Non-AMP is a mixed bag, but mostly slow and crappy.
kemayo 9y ago
If you do a search on Google, and click on an AMP result you'll find yourself at a URL like: https://www.google.com/amp/wccftech.com/wikipedia-updated-its-app-with-full-ios-11-support-for-the-latest-iphone-and-ipads/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/wccftech.com/wikipedia-updated-it... This is because the way Google gets those lightning-fast results for AMP pages is to rehost them onto their own server and background-load them while you're viewing the search page. It's even a reasonable position -- they want to do the background-loading safely, so having known-good content helps them. People are calling this rehosting because, well, your content is hosted on Google's servers, in a very visible way to anyone who sees the URL. If you share it, that's the URL that goes to other people rather than the canonical one. That said, non-Google browser makers have been doing things to mitigate this. iOS Safari notices when you're trying to share an AMP URL and figures out the canonical one for you to share instead. (I hear Firefox does this, too, on Android as well.) It's a bit silly that the major browsers are all adding in Google-AMP-specific hacks like this, though.
- SquareWheel 9y ago
  >It's a bit silly that the major browsers are all adding in Google-AMP-specific hacks like this, though. Isn't copying the canonical URL the correct behavior? I've just checked and the AMP page you linked has the correct canonical tag set.

detaro 9y ago

> If people hate amp, maybe it’s time to adjust the web standards to enable amp experience with the html6 web. AMP is build on top of the web standards. It does nothing technical a normal webpage can't do. It's almost purely a political thing: It helps push these technologies by framing it as this cool and important new thing from Google (which many responsible for websites feel like they have to follow for SEO etc) instead of simply good engineering, which is a boring thing that nobody cares about if marketing wants to add another set of javascript to a site. In turn, it kind of punishes websites that already are efficient when they do not use AMP to achieve that.

scarface74 9y ago

Pages load fast without bloat in iOS thanks to both the reader view and iOS's built in support of content blockers. What are the chances that Google will allow for third party content blockers and a reader view in Chrome that blocks all ads including theirs in Android? And the pages aren't hosted by Google.

chickenbane 9y ago
On Android I love using Firefox Focus, which blocks ads and analytics trackers. It's my default browser, although I still use Chrome when I want the logged-in experience. What are the chances that Apple would allow me to change the default browser on iOS?
- scarface74 9y ago
  That’s not a complete solution. Any app with a built in web view will still use Chrome and still not support ad blocking. An app that uses the Safari View Controller as a built in web view (like my RSS reader and all of the built in apps), will still support content blockers and use the same set of cookies as the main browser. The apps do not have access to your web session like they do in a traditional web view.
baddox 9y ago
Incidentally, can you recommend a good iOS content blocker? I never looked into them beyond a week or so after the feature first launched, and I wasn't impressed by their effectiveness early on.
- scarface74 9y ago
  I'm using 1Blocker. (not an affiliate link) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1blocker/id1025729002?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1blocker/id1025729002?mt=8
  - baddox 9y ago
    Awesome, I’ll check it out.

manigandham 9y ago

I like fast pages too, like HN. No AMP necessary. Make site load speed a significant factor in search results ranking and the entire web would get faster without the duplicate work of maintaining AMP pages. Also let's not forget that Google's Doubleclick (the most popular adserver) is the biggest and slowest component of most pages on the internet.

antisthenes 9y ago
The original Doubleclick (pre-purchase) is what made me get Adblock initially in the first place. If some of you remember it, it was just another level of awful compared to regular ads and even pop-ups.

lucb1e 9y ago

I don't have any such issues and my phone doesn't even support 4g. A lot of the time it's still reasonable on EDGE. And besides, I'm still for expanding 3g coverage instead of starting to experiment with / roll out 5g as they are... we don't need new tech (in this regard), we need to roll shit out and do shit properly.