29 ms·

A letter about Google AMP

866 points by lainon 9y ago

bryanlarsen 9y ago
Doesn't https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-amp-pages/ https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-... address one of their two demands?
- bagacrap 9y ago
  That is a great article because it sheds light on actual technical reasons for the current behavior. The original article is pretty light on technical details of how to achieve their suggested goals, which is weird because it assumes the user knows/cares about URLs, and that is probably only true of those with more tech savvy.
- wmf 9y ago
  The letter is undated so it could be old and I'm sure they'd prefer if URLs get fixed immediately rather than in a few years. Update: So after Google announces that they're fixing AMP, some people decided to write a letter demanding that Google fix AMP? I guess the next step will be to retroactively take credit for Google's changes.
  - ZoomStop 9y ago
    It's on GitHub also and looks to be from today: https://github.com/amp-letter/amp-letter.github.io https://github.com/amp-letter/amp-letter.github.io
  - strict9 9y ago
    No, it's recent. (last update 2 minutes ago) https://github.com/amp-letter/amp-letter.github.io https://github.com/amp-letter/amp-letter.github.io
  - temp-dude-87844 9y ago
    The letter seemingly dates to 2018-01-09 [1], with the earliest non-content commit, which doesn't include the letter's body, on 2017-11-10, the same day as the domain's registration. I agree it's poor form to not include an origination date in the document itself. [1] https://github.com/amp-letter/amp-letter.github.io/commits/master https://github.com/amp-letter/amp-letter.github.io/commits/m...
- thedz 9y ago
  1. H2 2018 2. Relies on a "web standard" that Google is pushing and is implementing in Chrome (and so far, I think, only confirmed to be in Chrome)
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - jyasskin 9y ago
    We're expecting to follow roughly the same path that SPDY (eventually HTTP/2) took: iterate on some early versions in Chrome to get experience while the format goes through the standardization process, and eventually remove those in favor of the standardized version. You can follow the IETF part of the process at https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yasskin-http-origin-signed-responses-01 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yasskin-http-origin-signed....
- untog 9y ago
  In theory it does, but there are a lot of open questions there (including whether Apple will implement it). I'd say the search engine placement is the bigger of the two issues anyway, as it clearly shows Google putting their thumb on the scale.
- niftich 9y ago
  No. In fact, the solution detailed in that article accomplishes the exact inverse of one of the letter's demands. While the letter wants third-party content not to be surfaced in a wrapping viewport that downplays the fact that it's actually Google's AMP Newsreader, the recent AMP announcement details a planned change where emerging tech [1] will be used to make the URL appear as if the content was directly loaded from the distant origin, because the content being served has been digitally signed by that origin and its serving has been delegated to Google akin to how a run-of-the-mill CDN is delegated the authority to serve content for a domain that's 'spiritually' owned by someone else. However, the recent AMP announcement does address a very frequent complaint about AMP. Just one that's at odds with the one the letter is requesting. [1] https://github.com/WICG/webpackage https://github.com/WICG/webpackage
  - Ajedi32 9y ago
    If the content has to be signed by its true origin, does it matter who's technically serving the content? There could be privacy considerations I suppose, but the standard addresses that already: https://wicg.github.io/webpackage/draft-yasskin-http-origin-signed-responses.html#rfc.section.6 https://wicg.github.io/webpackage/draft-yasskin-http-origin-...
- bobfunk 9y ago
  To me the proposal there is arguably even scarier than what AMP is doing now. It requires changing browsers, to let people distribute Google Hosted Apps on their own domains (as long as Google approves). Sites distributed in this way will get preferential treatment by Google. This is essentially an App store model, similar to Google Play, and the really big danger is that we end up in a place where you either distribute (and host) your website through Google's AMP registry, or you're not actually on the web (in the same way that distributing your Android app as an APK outside of the Play store is not a realistic distribution channel). I hope Firefox, Safari and Edge will resist this.
  - jopsen 9y ago
    > you either distribute (and host) your website through Google's AMP registry As long as anyone can setup their own AMP-like cache and build a search engine similar to Google, that also supports preloading... then I'm not sure it so bad. The proposal GP refers to has a lot of use-cases, it basically makes caching of HTTPS by third-parties possible. At-least to some extent.
    - stfwn 9y ago
      > As long as anyone can setup their own AMP-like cache and build a search engine similar to Google, that also supports preloading... then I'm not sure it so bad. Yes, anyone could build a cache. But can anyone build a cache that can compete with Google's absolutely massive infrastructure and pile of money, not to mention the reach they already have with search? I'd say this is not a discussion on the level of ‘can you build a better product and win from a giant company?’, more like ‘can you build a planet and get everyone to move there?’
      - jopsen 9y ago
        I agree, doing it is a different thing. cloudflare is already doing an AMP-cache. If the specs works out I'm sure other big players might join. But yes, taking on Google search is hard.
      - dx034 9y ago
cosarara97 9y ago
AMP, that thing you have never seen in the wild if you run firefox on your phone.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  AMP pages show up for me when I use Bing in Firefox but not when I use Google.
  - calvin 9y ago
    Bing supports AMP, too. https://blogs.bing.com/search/September-2016/bing-app-joins-the-amp-open-source-effort https://blogs.bing.com/search/September-2016/bing-app-joins-...
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kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
AMP is the solution the internet deserves for not coming up with the solution the internet needed.
- sliverstorm 9y ago
  Post-AMP, it's easy to see why it never got solved before. Many, many detractors commenting along the lines of: I was perfectly able to make my personal website fast; there is no problem, no one needs AMP.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    I mean the detractors are still right. The sites that AMP is relevant for are mostly static content that can be made blazing fast without AMP. The kick in the pants was really Google throwing their weight around something which could have been done in a number of different things. Hell Google could have charged to use their CDN in exchange for totally not favorable ranking and an icon and raked in the cash.
    - sliverstorm 9y ago
      That's why it so perfectly illustrates the problem. The detractors are correct, a website can be made fast without AMP. But that isn't the problem AMP solves. To draw a crude analogy- I don't have a problem with alcohol, I don't drink in excess and that's all there is to it. So clearly, there's no reason for AA or any other detox program to exist.
      - CaptSpify 9y ago
        The problem AMP is trying to solve is very real. The way AMP is trying to solve the problem though, is bullshit. If sites are too large, and load too slow, derank them. That's a much better method than pushing sites to use a shitty lock-in system.
  - baldfat 9y ago
    I don't see it that way. I think AMP was a wake up call to other websites and everyone starting prioritizing speed and responsiveness. Early 2000s we had crappy Flash Websites that took a minute to load. I refused to build websites with Flash and would only build websites that were HTML and JavaScript (I HATED JS back than (Maybe it was just me)). I stopped getting business because that norm was slow websites that were pretty and had animations. After Mobile took off in the early 2010's we had faster connections and those Flash sites worked much faster, except for mobile. Now everything is responsive and 2 or 3 seconds feels like a lifetime. AMP changed the internet in my opinion, and maybe it isn't needed any more.
tabeth 9y ago
I don't see the point of AMP. Why not just give certain sites a little icon/preference if they're faster than XXXms? Glad to see this letter says as much.
- shirian 9y ago
  Well, if one were to buy into the hypothesis that AMP is a way for Google to monopolize content, that would be the reason. At least in search results provided by Google's search.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  Because they did that, for years, and next to nobody changed anything. Fast websites stayed fast, and slow websites stayed slow. They also gave out tons of free "speed test" tools to make it easy for developers to test their speed, and improve it. They even made apache and nginx plugins that would auto-optimize assets as it served them! And still basically nobody used them. Plus it's not just about "faster than XXXms". What is that time measured to? Time to text on the screen? Can they game it by lazy-loading images, then videos, then ads, then 6mb of other javascript and social networking stuff and a comment system and...? You could try a "size limit", but then you penalize asset heavy sites (like high-resolution image sharing sites, or video sites). So their solution was to make a very restrictive system where you are forced to do things "the right way" (for at least one definition of "right"), and to pump that up in the search results. Plugins were made for common blogging and news platforms, and now a portion of the web loads significantly faster for many, and I think that's a win. It's not perfect, but it's at least the first thing that I've seen google try in this area that is actually working. Obviously there is benefit to Google as a company in that now results that are served through their AMP system are faster than those of some of their competitors, and AMP gives them a nice easy way to pull some structured information from an article for things like the carousel or other non-search offerings, but I genuinely don't believe that was the main motivator, seeing as Google has years of examples of failed attempts to "fix" this problem (though maybe I'm just not cynical enough!).
  - tabeth 9y ago
    Why does anyone have to change anything? If a site decides to allocate resources towards content vs. speed is that so bad?
rch 9y ago
I like the idea of an independent system that doesn't require publishers to opt-in to AMP. But in addition to Speed Index, I'd apply a perceptual diff to an ideal content rendering based on AMP-like heuristics.
robtaylor 9y ago
Complaining about google for using their bat and ball in their backyard?
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  Why do people always come out and tell other people that they are wrong for complaining? Complaining is one step to getting a lot of problems solved.
  - jeremy7600 9y ago
    The problem that they use Googles services and are upset by what Google provides? What problem is AMP creating that NEEDS to be solved?
    - CaptSpify 9y ago
      So? Just because you use a company's services doesn't mean you waive your right to complain about the company or the service. Also: The problem AMP is creating is arbitrary lock-in for no good reason. This causes the web ecosystem to become more fragile.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  The web is not Google´s backyard.
  - dymk 9y ago
    google.com's search results, which is where these AMP links are served up, is Google's back yard.
    - bhtru 9y ago
      Naive to assume that the largest portal for the web can't have a detrimental effect on the web. As that's what this is. The clout Google has in driving web standards is both a positive and negative. In the case of AMP the consequences of the trajectory Google is on now can set the precedent for other networks and ultimately lead to further centralization of content.
zaidf 9y ago
I keep telling myself that when someone finally takes Google down, AMP would standout as example of where Google went wrong. Basically, almost every search result I click on now requires THREE clicks: 1. click from the search page to the search result AMP page 2. click on a link on the AMP page to see the original link 3. click on the original link to bring the original search result
- Spivak 9y ago
  https://encrypted.google.com https://encrypted.google.com doesn't serve AMP results. Add it to your browser or access it from ddg.gg with !g bang.
  - knolan 9y ago
    Amp finally helped me make the switch to ddg. I’d completely forgotten about it until I saw this thread.
    - lucb1e 9y ago
      Nice :) I too have ddg as default search engine. I refuse to bookmark (or set as default) google again, so to use it I need to type part of the domain, wait for it to load, and either paste or retype the query. That cost also helps me to stay off of it, even if they have a better search engine. The risks involved with one company owning most of the things one does online, is not worth it.
rsbartram 9y ago
Not sure how or why AMP is better at delivering a better web experience to anyone than a properly and efficiently designed website.
- bagacrap 9y ago
  Pre-loading content.
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    So it doesn't actually solve the problem, it just offloads it elsewhere? For those with data-caps, that would even make it worse.
    - SquareWheel 9y ago
      rel="preload" is intelligent on mobile so as to not waste data. The browser is still in charge - it's only a suggestion from the site.
- SyneRyder 9y ago
  I've actually found that AMP breaks websites on mobile for me (they don't scroll properly & often lock in place while taking forever to load), especially since I switched to Firefox. It took me a while to realize that the little icon on Google News next to the sites that kept breaking for me was the AMP icon. On the bright side, every time it happens, it reminds me that news is rarely worth reading and that I should spend less time on Google News.
  - tandav 9y ago
    My experience: ~2 years ago when amp first was initiially released it was freaking fast. Now I see loading spinners in Google app for a 3-5 seconds.
- marcell 9y ago
  AMP preloads pages before you click them, which means it's much faster than mobile. You could argue that a browser could preload Google search results before you click them, but: (1) those pages could be giant, and loads 10 giant pages would be a bad bandwidth tradeoff and (2) there are privacy implications, since this would leak information about what users are searching for, even if they don't click the results.
prklmn 9y ago
Does AMP open google up to new anti-competitive claims?
- partiallypro 9y ago
  Probably not. Google and Apple both currently get away with things Microsoft could have never even dreamed of in the early 2000s and are not only living to tell the tale...but profiting by leaps and bounds abusing their power. The only excuse each of them has is that technically you have another "choice." Which somehow holds weight now but never did for Microsoft.
deleted 9y ago
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mburst 9y ago
> Instead of granting premium placement in search results only to AMP, provide the same perks to all pages that meet an objective, neutral performance criterion such as Speed Index. Publishers can then use any technical solution of their choice. Hasn't Google gone on record saying that AMP doesn't affect search results given the same page load speed for non-AMP sites?
- zentiggr 9y ago
  Except that AMP pages are often in the band of promoted results that show above the remainder of the search results, at least in the mobile app. And are prominently icon'ed in the desktop results. So yeah, Google's not honest about this.
  - yegle 9y ago
    From my test the AMP icon in Google's search result is gone (Chrome, Android, Incognito tab). Disclaimer: I work for Google but not on AMP product.
    - ec109685 9y ago
      Search for Trump on iOS and you'll see an AMP icon.
      - ehsankia 9y ago
        Is the issue the icon or the carousel being at the top? I just checked and the carousel had both AMP and non-AMP content for me.
  - dontnotice 9y ago
    Google can display the results they want in any fashion they see fit, it's their website/apps and their publishing/curation is protected by the first amendment.
    - seandougall 9y ago
dontnotice 9y ago
It's funny how no one was up in arms when facebook (the leading source of publisher traffic) did their version of accelerated pages. AMP serves a purpose for the end user and it does so well, it loads instantly and doesn't consume much data in the process. As for their "demands": 1. Google already states that AMP pages are ranked higher because they're faster to load. 2. I'm not sure if it's related but they they addressed that only yesterday: https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-amp-pages/ https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-...
- Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
  So are you saying -- all else equal -- that if your webpage can respond just as quickly as an AMP one, that your search rank won't be docked? E.g., your site is just as performant as AMP, but you're not using AMP.
  - dontnotice 9y ago
    Yup, that was in the the blog post announcing AMP, and subsequent press comments. I'm of the persuasion that they can rank and display the results however they please, it's their site after all, so it's a non issue either way.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      I wonder how Google manages the network topology for testing this so that the fact that AMP is served from a Google-local cache does not give it a speed advantage to Google's speed-testing bot beyond any it may have in typical, outside of Google, use.
      - ec109685 9y ago
        Google preferches the amp content.
    - pitaj 9y ago
      I don't care at all about AMP really, but this: > I'm of the persuasion that they can rank and display the results however they please, it's their site after all, so it's a non issue either way. I don't get why anybody says this. Of course they are in control. Nobody can force them to do it differently (maybe the government but whatever). Most people aren't saying that Google has no right to do what they're doing. People are saying that Google _should_ be doing it differently.
rsoto 9y ago
I agree with all the points, but I would add one: Show AMP results for all browsers. AFAIK, only Chrome (and maybe Safari, can't confirm) are shown AMP links in the search results. There is people (like me) who like to support other browsers , or like some addons. I get it, Google: you want your browser to be the most popular. You've done it. Now treat the rest of them like capable pieces of software.
- el_benhameen 9y ago
  I did not know this, but ironically, it's motivating me to switch to Firefox more than any of their recent speed improvements.
- edflsafoiewq 9y ago
  Ahh, that would be why I've never seen one. I was wondering what all this hullabaloo was about.
magicalist 9y ago
> Instead of granting premium placement in search results only to AMP, provide the same perks to all pages that meet an objective, neutral performance criterion such as Speed Index. But who will measure it "objectively" (leaving aside no one agrees on how to universally measure load speed). Googlebot? From what location and what machine types and how often? Should I get search results based on an average of all possible variables or the closest matching my locale and device? What happens when page content changes? What happens when the page sometimes loads slow content (e.g. ads) and sometimes doesn't? What happens when SEOers start cloaking their ad loads or taking advantage of flaws in the benchmark? It's good to have a speed signal in search rankings, but this petition shouldn't pretend that's an objective replacement for something that always displays content first and loads media and third party content async
- the8472 9y ago
  > or taking advantage of flaws in the benchmark? Then you improve your benchmark.
  - klodolph 9y ago
    That's a cat an mouse game that search engines and SEO companies have been playing for years. "Improve your benchmark" only works when you don't have adversaries. Edit: To clarify, "improve your benchmark" is not a viable strategy by itself any more than "put your opponent in checkmate" is a viable strategy. As advice it is unhelpful. You generally have to mitigate flaws in the way you rank pages, keep large parts of the algorithm secret, and attack the economic viability of your adversary's strategies. Rather than going for checkmate, you want your opponent to resign so you can do something else instead. There have been incentives for bad behavior on the web for so long that I don't think we have any hope of coming up with any kind of automated benchmark to tell us which pages have good user experience.
    - electrograv 9y ago
      > "Improve your benchmark" only works when you don't have adversaries. If this were true, then there would exist no search engines consistently capable of finding content highly relevant to the user's query -- as opposed to just returning promoted content, which according to your premise is always winning the adversarial battle. Sure, there is an adversarial element, which means there is a constant 'battle' for 'fairness' among results (or whatever your goals are as a search engine). But in reality, search engines as a whole seem to work rather well at finding what we want. Of course results are biased from adversarial pressures (and that's what we're discussing on this thread), but it does seem possible for "benchmarks" to work well in an adversarial environment.
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calebgilbert 9y ago
I've been around long enough to believe that it's not just paranoia to think that some of the responses on this thread sound like people with Google-specific self-interests ($), if not being paid outright by Google for it, are on here shilling for Google via words and/or votes. I don't see how anyone who wants a free internet defends amp in its current form.
- jedberg 9y ago
  There are lots of reasons to love AMP. If you look at my profile you'll see that I have no monetary connection to Google. As a consumer, I love AMP. I always preference for the AMP pages because I know they'll be fast and that they will most likely load even when I'm on really bad internet. As a content producer I'm not a huge fan, for all the reasons outlined in the letter. But for people who only consume, I can see why they would be big fans of AMP.
  - calebgilbert 9y ago
    Well, you and them can keep loving them until Google and Facebook are the internet. Everyone has played Monopoly - we know how this story ends.
    - cromwellian 9y ago
      Before AMP was introduced, News was increasingly being siloed on Apple News and FB Instant Articles. The story was going to end with Apple News/FaceBook sucking up all of the publishers. The publishers could theoretically have all fixed it themselves, but they weren't, and increasingly native news apps were winning over the web. AMP was a collaboration with publishers to keep content on the Web. It's an open source project, and is implemented not only by Google, but by Bing, Baidu, even CloudFlare has an implementation. Google successfully organized the publishers and got them to fix the problems that many people claim they would have fixed by just doing it themselves, but that wasn't happening, user experience was becoming horrible, and rather than fix their sites, they were basically giving in to Instant Articles. AMP kept news on the web instead of in the App Store. AMP is supported by most major browsers, requires no proprietary browser extensions, is just HTML, implemented by multiple search engines and CDNs, and is an open spec and source project. I'm not really sure why so many people are losing their shit over it. It's based on standard web technologies. I understand the UI issues, but those look like they're getting fixed.
tboyd47 9y ago
I support this completely and I would go one step further. We need a search engine that is free of CPM-monetization practices. It has become clear that Google is driving the web intentionally in a profit-maximizing direction at the expense of users and ordinary developers. Move ad blocking to the indexing layer. Create a corner of the web that is naturally fast and user-friendly again without resorting to corporate-defined subsets of well-documented open web technologies.
- ariwilson 9y ago
  I have no idea what this comment means. Do you want to block all websites that have ads on them from Google?
  - tboyd47 9y ago
    I mean block websites that monetize using CPM, which would incidentally be the vast majority of ads served using DoubleClick's ad marketplace. These also tend to be the ads caught with ad blockers, since CPM requires technical artifacts like iframes that are easy to spot. Sorry, I'm trying to be as succinct as possible, but I've come to see the advent of ad blockers, intrusive ads, pervasive tracking, client-heavy web practices, and clickbait as a single phenomenon that has its roots in the rise of CPM as the primary pricing mechanism for advertising.
    - davidcbc 9y ago
      I'm sure that your search engine with no websites on it will be a huge success.
      - tboyd47 9y ago
        Do you know another way out of the Googernet ad matrix? http://www.businessinsider.com/google-saved-an-estimated-887-million-by-paying-adblock-plus-to-show-its-ads-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-saved-an-estimated-887...
wetpaws 9y ago
Google amp is a blessing on mobile, I don't give a damn't about site owners.
- andrewmcwatters 9y ago
  No one seems to be up in arms about slow websites. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If AMP and others exist, there's a reason, and it might be more useful to respond to that than to respond to AMP.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    There is a reason. Google gives it preferential treatment. That’s not a reason that matters to me at all.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Native apps and disabled JavaScript are a blessing on mobile.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Thousand times this. Half of the reason we're in this mess is on-line advertising. The other half is that lots of companies think it's a great idea for everything to require constant data exchange with the cloud.
- hartator 9y ago
  Except when you want the original link.
  - dymk 9y ago
    Every Google AMP link that I've clicked on has a button in the top right corner which displays the original link. It's very easy to copy from, and isn't hidden at all.
    - MBCook 9y ago
krisives 9y ago
AMP is borderline MITM.
- jopsen 9y ago
  then you didn't read yesterdays announcement: https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-amp-pages/ https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-... Look at the underlying specs... They are talking about bundling web packages and signing them with TLS certificates, so that anyone can distribute them... and the browser can still verify the origin.
asdjasldkjkljd 9y ago
They should add additional weight to their ranking algorithm for fast sites; anyone who's worked with a sales and marketing team knows how much they'll freak out if pagerank drops. They'll basically throw their firstborn into a well for higher pagerank.
andrewmcwatters 9y ago
Then make another search engine, don't complain about using Google technology in Google's search engine, on Google's browser.
- Old_Thrashbarg 9y ago
  You could use that argument to argue against any regulation of any monopoly. "You don't like that Comcast is going to decide what sites you can see? Then make your own ISP" "You don't like that the water company is pricing people out of drinking water? Make your own water utility" "You don't like that Golden Gate jacked their prices? Build your own bridge" BTW, those examples aren't exaggerations. I imagine they're all no less difficult than making a new search engine to compete with Google.
sliverstorm 9y ago
Has no one yet tried forking AMP and simply removing all the Google? Call it OpAMP. You might not get into the carousel right off the bat, but if you get the ball rolling you'd have actual leverage instead of writing open letters on the internet.
- manigandham 9y ago
  Because it's much less work to just make fast pages using the HTML we already have. The problem is that fast isn't what google wants, they want their special HTML fork called AMP.
Old_Thrashbarg 9y ago
Google registered a domain just to host a letter?
zeep 9y ago
I switched to duckduckgo a few months ago and it has been the first time that I felt that I was not missing something... I tried to switch a few other times before that and the results were of much lower quality...
mikeytown2 9y ago
I'll be giving a talk about what you can do to get your site to load faster without using AMP in Portland, Oregon on February 4th. https://pnwdrupalsummit.org/2018/sessions/how-get-perfect-100-google-pagespeed-insights-what-might-happen-if-you-dont https://pnwdrupalsummit.org/2018/sessions/how-get-perfect-10... Long story short 100/100 with page speed is possible with most sites; further optimize for Speed Index by using rel="preload" for assets above the fold. What else am I missing?
- wmf 9y ago
  You're missing the lightning icon.
  - mikeytown2 9y ago
    So by not using AMP, Google search result pages will not display the lightning icon next to the link to your domain? Is this what you mean?
    - wmf 9y ago
      Yes, and thus your boss won't pay you to optimize anything if he doesn't get the lightning bolt.
- kuschku 9y ago
  A page with 100/100 page speed (such as my quasseldroid.info) still won't get any of the benefits an AMP page would get - such as the carousel, or the icon.
- ec109685 9y ago
  You can beat google preloading an amp page before the user clicks?
mmanfrin 9y ago
My work firewall blocks this site; can someone paste the letter's contents?
- scott_karana 9y ago
  (URLs not copied, sorry) A letter about Google AMP We are a community of individuals who have a significant interest in the development and health of the World Wide Web (“the Web”), and we are deeply concerned about Accelerated Mobile Pages (“AMP”), a Google project that purportedly seeks to improve the user experience of the Web. In fact, AMP keeps users within Google’s domain and diverts traffic away from other websites for the benefit of Google. At a scale of billions of users, this has the effect of further reinforcing Google’s dominance of the Web. We acknowledge the problem of Web pages being slow to load, relative to alternative, proprietary technologies such as Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. Publishers (especially in news media) have long faced difficult choices and poor incentives, leading to bad decisions and compromises, and ultimately to terrible user experiences. Search engines are in a powerful position to wield influence to solve this problem. However, Google has chosen to create a premium position at the top of their search results (for articles) and a “lightning” icon (for all types of content), which are only accessible to publishers that use a Google-controlled technology, served by Google from their infrastructure, on a Google URL, and placed within a Google controlled user experience. (source) The AMP format is not in itself, a problem, but two aspects of its implementation reinforce the position of Google as a de facto standard platform for content, as Google seeks to drive uptake of AMP with content creators: Content that “opts in” to AMP and the associated hosting within Google’s domain is granted preferential search promotion, including (for news articles) a position above all other results. When a user navigates from Google to a piece of content Google has recommended, they are, unwittingly, remaining within Google’s ecosystem. If Google’s objective with AMP is indeed to improve user experience on the Web, then we suggest some simple changes that would do that while still allowing the Web to remain dynamic, competitive and consumer-oriented: Instead of granting premium placement in search results only to AMP, provide the same perks to all pages that meet an objective, neutral performance criterion such as Speed Index. Publishers can then use any technical solution of their choice. Do not display third-party content within a Google page unless it is clear to the user that they are looking at a Google product. It is perfectly acceptable for Google to launch a “news reader”, but it is not acceptable to display a page that carries only third party branding on what is actually a Google URL, nor to require that third party to use Google’s hosting in order to appear in search results. We don’t want to stop Google’s development of AMP, and these changes do not require that. We also applaud search engines that give ranking preference to fast-loading pages. AMP can remain one of a range of technologies that give publishers high quality options for delivering Web pages quickly and making users happy. However, publishers should not be compelled by Google’s search dominance to put their content under a Google umbrella. The Web is not Google, and should not be just Google. Sincerely, AS INDIVIDUALS <long list of names>
zzmp 9y ago
This letter just seems to affirm that Google made a good business decision with AMP.
rockdiesel 9y ago
Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I would suggest removing, or at least adding 'nofollow', to all the personal hyperlinks at the bottom of the letter to make it look less like SEO spam. It devalues the letter, in my opinion, because I see them as people signing the letter for the sole purpose of promoting themselves. But like I said...maybe I'm being too cynical.
- betenoire 9y ago
  Half of those appear to be twitter handles. So yeah, you are probably being too cynical ;)
jak1192 9y ago
When you navigate to an AMP site there is a very clear icon at the top to click and go to the site's actual domain. I don't understand what this letter is so upset about - if they have such a problem, they should build their own search engine.
Andrex 9y ago
I would normally never do this, but over the past couple weeks I've been drafting a blog post proposing an open AMP alternative called Particle. You can read it here: https://andrewrabon.com/particle-a-proposal-for-tinier-html-and-css-1760ca148722 https://andrewrabon.com/particle-a-proposal-for-tinier-html-... [Draft] Would anyone here be interested in seeing the blog post completed and/or helping me build it out? If so drop me a line at andrewrabon at gmail. :) I also want feedback on if my ideas are actually solving a problem, and are doing so in the correct way. I only recently joined a news publisher so I'm not 100% cognizant of the issues at play.
- wmf 9y ago
  The real issue is incentives; that's what you need to work on.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  Sounds like extra work that websites would need to do in order to adopt. If there was a way to say automatically remove the javascript and other html extensions and the automatically serve the site via particle, then that would facilitate adoption.
  - Andrex 9y ago
    Hm, maybe have a <link rel> to the Particle version and switch over to that with a browser extension?
- lemagedurage 9y ago
  Why not leave the css out for extra performance?
shp0ngle 9y ago
I like what Twitter does with AMP. If a page has AMP version, it redirects mobile users to AMP version, but on that page, not on its own cached version.
rocky1138 9y ago
Honestly, let's all of us web developers make an agreement together that we'll focus on plain text and intelligently-compressed images rather than JavaScript and auto-playing videos in our projects moving forward and recommend that we do the same where we work. People are trusting us to help them with technical decisions and we have a responsibility to make sure the web is accessible to as many people as possible. Our opinions have tremendous sway, even though it might not feel like it. The web really started to go sideways when we followed the trend away from Progressive Enhancement. Let's get back to basics, pure and simple.
- bigblind 9y ago
  When thinking about progressive enhancement, it's debatable what your baseline should be. I'm not sure I agree we should take plain text as the baseline. There's a development cost to everything. I genuinely believe you can create a better experience with a JavaScript-powered app/site, where the server doesn't have to re-render the entire page when someone interacts withit to show new content, and developing server-side rendering so that the same page can be rendered by the server, as well as constructed by JavaScript on the client, with content from an API, takes a lot of time. Even though it'd make it more accessible to clients who have JavaScript disabled, or where rendering the page client-side takes longer than rendering it on the server and sending it as a whole. I completely agree about unnecessary annoyances such as auto-playing video, or load-blocking ads. #perfmatters.
  - rocky1138 9y ago
    A close baseline is Hacker News. The site works perfectly without JavaScript but is a bit faster (don't have to wait for page refreshes on upvote) if you enable it. If Hacker News had a more responsive stylesheet, it would definitely be something we could hold up as an example.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
Google is a for-profit corp. How are these proposed changes in Google's self-interest?
- kuschku 9y ago
  Google was just fined 3 billion EUR for the advantage they gave to Google Shopping in their search, it is very much expected that if they continue with AMP, the same will happen again.
_jomo 9y ago
I was wondering when Google serves content via AMP because it never happened to me. I mostly use DuckDuckGo but occasionally use Google when I'm not satisfied with the results. Turns out when you use Firefox on Android, Google serves a different (older?) version of the Google search that doesn't link to AMP. Is AMP opt-in for site owners? Or is it determined by page load speed? It didn't use AMP for my website, but it also loads faster than google.com ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
mauthsdki 9y ago
It's a controlled and censored internet ghetto by google. Google keep black list on every conservative worker?? How sick is that!
coding123 9y ago
It's sad that only Google is getting punished when Amazon owns a major portion of sales. Facebook is increasingly becoming the "home page" of small businesses all over the world. Etsy is now the ONLY place people can sell small hand-made art pieces. Ebay is the only marketplace to sell wholesale items on. None of these platforms value add much that can't be built into whatever the next web becomes... But no organization is as powerful as a single one of them. So Google is allowed to do this as long as all these other companies do what they are doing. I think what happened is that all the other disruptions were done to companies that don't know something could be better - they were not technologists, programmers, etc.. This letter is written by technologists, developers, so they know what google has done to steal the market. But no one here wants to apply the same logic to the other ones.
- geofft 9y ago
  Er, if having a public petition about you is "being punished," those other companies have definitely been punished too.
debt 9y ago
It is odd all that everyone talks about the blockchain and the one problem no one talks about that it could solve is journalism. News committed to an anonymous blockchain, immutable and potentially monitizable seems pretty interesting but maybe not as lucrative as other ideas. Because AMP isn’t about ads or speed, it’s about editorial control. The same goes for Facebook and Apple. I don’t care how many press releases they put out denying it.
ehnto 9y ago
I do not believe page speed should play a role in search rankings at all. It has nothing to do with the content and the person with the correct and most relevant content doesn't always have the relevant skills or a DevOps specialist handy to meet the requirements. This only helps the heavy handed SEO optimized sites with deep pockets and time to kill get yet another edge. The article with the best insight isn't likely to be the one with the perfecly optimized website. I understand that pagespeed effects end user experience when they hit a website, however that's not what I searched for. I did not search "fastest website with okay knowledge about dogs" I asked for "website with the best knowledge about dogs". I want Google to be able to show me the most awesome page about dogs. The most in depth and relevant information. That niche dog blogger who is so passionate that they spend all their time researching dogs. I don't want "10 cool facts about dogs by Buzzfeed".
- Zalastax 9y ago
  It's good if it plays some role when the content quality is similar between results. Some pages are so slow or obnoxious that I'd almost rather not get the information at all, than dreadfully waiting for ads and pop-up-modals to load. Perhaps ranking is the wrong tool, but it would be nice if I could know that a site is bloated before clicking the link. AMP lets me know that.
  - repsilat 9y ago
    I agree. And if the speed metric is well-designed, and if making not-slow pages is easy enough (and it really is) then the Nash equilibrium is "Everyone gets the most relevant page and it loads quickly."
- katastic 9y ago
  There's a huge difference between sites that load in ".1 seconds vs 1 seconds" and sites that load in 15 seconds, and download 300 different tracking pixels.
- appedus 9y ago
  I absolutely agree with you. Speed shouldn't play any role in ranking. However in regards to relevancy RankBrain is going to eventually train itself to push the most relevant/respected results. Will have to wait and watch how it spans out.
Animats 9y ago
Resistance is futile. Google is the web now. There are people who don't realize that gmail connects to a bigger world of email.
ibdf 9y ago
...
inian 9y ago
I have constantly heard that they can't reliably measure the performance of a website unless it is AMP. I don't buy this argument at all. Google already has mentioned to using site speed for as a minor ranking factor, why can't they use the same methodology for putting websites in the carousell too? Also, they have Real user data for over a million websites - https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/12/crux https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/12/crux This is a way better indicator of site speed as opposed to if the site is AMP or not. Would be so cool if Google used this data as a pre condition to put sites into the carousell!
ttctciyf 9y ago
Personally, speaking as a search user, all I want from Google regards AMP is a setting that disables it in search results. Google's results ordering is already sufficiently "optimized" away from my needs that as often as not I end up in 'verbatim' mode or on page 3 of the results before I get near what I'm looking for, so an extra layer of SEO-gameable "user convenience" isn't likely to make my google experience that much worse. Since the presence of AMP results is based on device detection, it seems a search setting removing them would be a simple matter. Google's unwillingness to provide it speaks volumes about their actual intent, IMO.
- Lio 9y ago
  This is exactly my position on this also and the reason that I've moved to DuckDuckGo on my mobile in place of Google even though I much prefer Google as a search engine.
  - ttctciyf 9y ago
    Thanks to Spivak, who mentions in another comment here [1] that "https://encrypted.google.com https://encrypted.google.com doesn't serve AMP results" my phone now has a new default search! 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16108896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16108896
Dolores12 9y ago
If google makes a copy of original content and it doesn't hold copyright, why nobody sued them for breach of copyright?
deftturtle 9y ago
Page loads < 600ms on mobile are a non-issue. All of the RTT talk and TTFB is not worth the tradeoff. If we can have this paradise where all content is prefetched and served/encrypted from Google to only save a fraction of a second, it isn't worth the sacrifice of freedom. I'll take 500ms page loads any day when the content comes from the true origin. I don't want 60ms responses from a Google server when I'm trying to use the internet. Why not just make google the internet?? There's power and freedom to be had when publishers aren't tied to a tech behemoth.

866 points by lainon 9y ago

Doesn't https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-amp-pages/ https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-... address one of their two demands?

bagacrap 9y ago
That is a great article because it sheds light on actual technical reasons for the current behavior. The original article is pretty light on technical details of how to achieve their suggested goals, which is weird because it assumes the user knows/cares about URLs, and that is probably only true of those with more tech savvy.
wmf 9y ago
The letter is undated so it could be old and I'm sure they'd prefer if URLs get fixed immediately rather than in a few years. Update: So after Google announces that they're fixing AMP, some people decided to write a letter demanding that Google fix AMP? I guess the next step will be to retroactively take credit for Google's changes.
- ZoomStop 9y ago
  It's on GitHub also and looks to be from today: https://github.com/amp-letter/amp-letter.github.io https://github.com/amp-letter/amp-letter.github.io
- strict9 9y ago
  No, it's recent. (last update 2 minutes ago) https://github.com/amp-letter/amp-letter.github.io https://github.com/amp-letter/amp-letter.github.io
- temp-dude-87844 9y ago
  The letter seemingly dates to 2018-01-09 [1], with the earliest non-content commit, which doesn't include the letter's body, on 2017-11-10, the same day as the domain's registration. I agree it's poor form to not include an origination date in the document itself. [1] https://github.com/amp-letter/amp-letter.github.io/commits/master https://github.com/amp-letter/amp-letter.github.io/commits/m...
thedz 9y ago
1. H2 2018 2. Relies on a "web standard" that Google is pushing and is implementing in Chrome (and so far, I think, only confirmed to be in Chrome)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jyasskin 9y ago
  We're expecting to follow roughly the same path that SPDY (eventually HTTP/2) took: iterate on some early versions in Chrome to get experience while the format goes through the standardization process, and eventually remove those in favor of the standardized version. You can follow the IETF part of the process at https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yasskin-http-origin-signed-responses-01 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yasskin-http-origin-signed....
untog 9y ago
In theory it does, but there are a lot of open questions there (including whether Apple will implement it). I'd say the search engine placement is the bigger of the two issues anyway, as it clearly shows Google putting their thumb on the scale.
niftich 9y ago
No. In fact, the solution detailed in that article accomplishes the exact inverse of one of the letter's demands. While the letter wants third-party content not to be surfaced in a wrapping viewport that downplays the fact that it's actually Google's AMP Newsreader, the recent AMP announcement details a planned change where emerging tech [1] will be used to make the URL appear as if the content was directly loaded from the distant origin, because the content being served has been digitally signed by that origin and its serving has been delegated to Google akin to how a run-of-the-mill CDN is delegated the authority to serve content for a domain that's 'spiritually' owned by someone else. However, the recent AMP announcement does address a very frequent complaint about AMP. Just one that's at odds with the one the letter is requesting. [1] https://github.com/WICG/webpackage https://github.com/WICG/webpackage
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  If the content has to be signed by its true origin, does it matter who's technically serving the content? There could be privacy considerations I suppose, but the standard addresses that already: https://wicg.github.io/webpackage/draft-yasskin-http-origin-signed-responses.html#rfc.section.6 https://wicg.github.io/webpackage/draft-yasskin-http-origin-...
bobfunk 9y ago
To me the proposal there is arguably even scarier than what AMP is doing now. It requires changing browsers, to let people distribute Google Hosted Apps on their own domains (as long as Google approves). Sites distributed in this way will get preferential treatment by Google. This is essentially an App store model, similar to Google Play, and the really big danger is that we end up in a place where you either distribute (and host) your website through Google's AMP registry, or you're not actually on the web (in the same way that distributing your Android app as an APK outside of the Play store is not a realistic distribution channel). I hope Firefox, Safari and Edge will resist this.
- jopsen 9y ago
  > you either distribute (and host) your website through Google's AMP registry As long as anyone can setup their own AMP-like cache and build a search engine similar to Google, that also supports preloading... then I'm not sure it so bad. The proposal GP refers to has a lot of use-cases, it basically makes caching of HTTPS by third-parties possible. At-least to some extent.
  - stfwn 9y ago
    > As long as anyone can setup their own AMP-like cache and build a search engine similar to Google, that also supports preloading... then I'm not sure it so bad. Yes, anyone could build a cache. But can anyone build a cache that can compete with Google's absolutely massive infrastructure and pile of money, not to mention the reach they already have with search? I'd say this is not a discussion on the level of ‘can you build a better product and win from a giant company?’, more like ‘can you build a planet and get everyone to move there?’
    - jopsen 9y ago
      I agree, doing it is a different thing. cloudflare is already doing an AMP-cache. If the specs works out I'm sure other big players might join. But yes, taking on Google search is hard.
    - dx034 9y ago

cosarara97 9y ago

AMP, that thing you have never seen in the wild if you run firefox on your phone.

lern_too_spel 9y ago
AMP pages show up for me when I use Bing in Firefox but not when I use Google.
- calvin 9y ago
  Bing supports AMP, too. https://blogs.bing.com/search/September-2016/bing-app-joins-the-amp-open-source-effort https://blogs.bing.com/search/September-2016/bing-app-joins-...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago

AMP is the solution the internet deserves for not coming up with the solution the internet needed.

sliverstorm 9y ago
Post-AMP, it's easy to see why it never got solved before. Many, many detractors commenting along the lines of: I was perfectly able to make my personal website fast; there is no problem, no one needs AMP.
- Spivak 9y ago
  I mean the detractors are still right. The sites that AMP is relevant for are mostly static content that can be made blazing fast without AMP. The kick in the pants was really Google throwing their weight around something which could have been done in a number of different things. Hell Google could have charged to use their CDN in exchange for totally not favorable ranking and an icon and raked in the cash.
  - sliverstorm 9y ago
    That's why it so perfectly illustrates the problem. The detractors are correct, a website can be made fast without AMP. But that isn't the problem AMP solves. To draw a crude analogy- I don't have a problem with alcohol, I don't drink in excess and that's all there is to it. So clearly, there's no reason for AA or any other detox program to exist.
    - CaptSpify 9y ago
      The problem AMP is trying to solve is very real. The way AMP is trying to solve the problem though, is bullshit. If sites are too large, and load too slow, derank them. That's a much better method than pushing sites to use a shitty lock-in system.
- baldfat 9y ago
  I don't see it that way. I think AMP was a wake up call to other websites and everyone starting prioritizing speed and responsiveness. Early 2000s we had crappy Flash Websites that took a minute to load. I refused to build websites with Flash and would only build websites that were HTML and JavaScript (I HATED JS back than (Maybe it was just me)). I stopped getting business because that norm was slow websites that were pretty and had animations. After Mobile took off in the early 2010's we had faster connections and those Flash sites worked much faster, except for mobile. Now everything is responsive and 2 or 3 seconds feels like a lifetime. AMP changed the internet in my opinion, and maybe it isn't needed any more.

tabeth 9y ago

I don't see the point of AMP. Why not just give certain sites a little icon/preference if they're faster than XXXms? Glad to see this letter says as much.

shirian 9y ago
Well, if one were to buy into the hypothesis that AMP is a way for Google to monopolize content, that would be the reason. At least in search results provided by Google's search.
Klathmon 9y ago
Because they did that, for years, and next to nobody changed anything. Fast websites stayed fast, and slow websites stayed slow. They also gave out tons of free "speed test" tools to make it easy for developers to test their speed, and improve it. They even made apache and nginx plugins that would auto-optimize assets as it served them! And still basically nobody used them. Plus it's not just about "faster than XXXms". What is that time measured to? Time to text on the screen? Can they game it by lazy-loading images, then videos, then ads, then 6mb of other javascript and social networking stuff and a comment system and...? You could try a "size limit", but then you penalize asset heavy sites (like high-resolution image sharing sites, or video sites). So their solution was to make a very restrictive system where you are forced to do things "the right way" (for at least one definition of "right"), and to pump that up in the search results. Plugins were made for common blogging and news platforms, and now a portion of the web loads significantly faster for many, and I think that's a win. It's not perfect, but it's at least the first thing that I've seen google try in this area that is actually working. Obviously there is benefit to Google as a company in that now results that are served through their AMP system are faster than those of some of their competitors, and AMP gives them a nice easy way to pull some structured information from an article for things like the carousel or other non-search offerings, but I genuinely don't believe that was the main motivator, seeing as Google has years of examples of failed attempts to "fix" this problem (though maybe I'm just not cynical enough!).
- tabeth 9y ago
  Why does anyone have to change anything? If a site decides to allocate resources towards content vs. speed is that so bad?

rch 9y ago

I like the idea of an independent system that doesn't require publishers to opt-in to AMP. But in addition to Speed Index, I'd apply a perceptual diff to an ideal content rendering based on AMP-like heuristics.

robtaylor 9y ago

Complaining about google for using their bat and ball in their backyard?

CaptSpify 9y ago
Why do people always come out and tell other people that they are wrong for complaining? Complaining is one step to getting a lot of problems solved.
- jeremy7600 9y ago
  The problem that they use Googles services and are upset by what Google provides? What problem is AMP creating that NEEDS to be solved?
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    So? Just because you use a company's services doesn't mean you waive your right to complain about the company or the service. Also: The problem AMP is creating is arbitrary lock-in for no good reason. This causes the web ecosystem to become more fragile.
jacquesm 9y ago
The web is not Google´s backyard.
- dymk 9y ago
  google.com's search results, which is where these AMP links are served up, is Google's back yard.
  - bhtru 9y ago
    Naive to assume that the largest portal for the web can't have a detrimental effect on the web. As that's what this is. The clout Google has in driving web standards is both a positive and negative. In the case of AMP the consequences of the trajectory Google is on now can set the precedent for other networks and ultimately lead to further centralization of content.

zaidf 9y ago

I keep telling myself that when someone finally takes Google down, AMP would standout as example of where Google went wrong. Basically, almost every search result I click on now requires THREE clicks: 1. click from the search page to the search result AMP page 2. click on a link on the AMP page to see the original link 3. click on the original link to bring the original search result

Spivak 9y ago
https://encrypted.google.com https://encrypted.google.com doesn't serve AMP results. Add it to your browser or access it from ddg.gg with !g bang.
- knolan 9y ago
  Amp finally helped me make the switch to ddg. I’d completely forgotten about it until I saw this thread.
  - lucb1e 9y ago
    Nice :) I too have ddg as default search engine. I refuse to bookmark (or set as default) google again, so to use it I need to type part of the domain, wait for it to load, and either paste or retype the query. That cost also helps me to stay off of it, even if they have a better search engine. The risks involved with one company owning most of the things one does online, is not worth it.

rsbartram 9y ago

Not sure how or why AMP is better at delivering a better web experience to anyone than a properly and efficiently designed website.

bagacrap 9y ago
Pre-loading content.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  So it doesn't actually solve the problem, it just offloads it elsewhere? For those with data-caps, that would even make it worse.
  - SquareWheel 9y ago
    rel="preload" is intelligent on mobile so as to not waste data. The browser is still in charge - it's only a suggestion from the site.
SyneRyder 9y ago
I've actually found that AMP breaks websites on mobile for me (they don't scroll properly & often lock in place while taking forever to load), especially since I switched to Firefox. It took me a while to realize that the little icon on Google News next to the sites that kept breaking for me was the AMP icon. On the bright side, every time it happens, it reminds me that news is rarely worth reading and that I should spend less time on Google News.
- tandav 9y ago
  My experience: ~2 years ago when amp first was initiially released it was freaking fast. Now I see loading spinners in Google app for a 3-5 seconds.
marcell 9y ago
AMP preloads pages before you click them, which means it's much faster than mobile. You could argue that a browser could preload Google search results before you click them, but: (1) those pages could be giant, and loads 10 giant pages would be a bad bandwidth tradeoff and (2) there are privacy implications, since this would leak information about what users are searching for, even if they don't click the results.

prklmn 9y ago

Does AMP open google up to new anti-competitive claims?

partiallypro 9y ago
Probably not. Google and Apple both currently get away with things Microsoft could have never even dreamed of in the early 2000s and are not only living to tell the tale...but profiting by leaps and bounds abusing their power. The only excuse each of them has is that technically you have another "choice." Which somehow holds weight now but never did for Microsoft.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mburst 9y ago

> Instead of granting premium placement in search results only to AMP, provide the same perks to all pages that meet an objective, neutral performance criterion such as Speed Index. Publishers can then use any technical solution of their choice. Hasn't Google gone on record saying that AMP doesn't affect search results given the same page load speed for non-AMP sites?

zentiggr 9y ago
Except that AMP pages are often in the band of promoted results that show above the remainder of the search results, at least in the mobile app. And are prominently icon'ed in the desktop results. So yeah, Google's not honest about this.
- yegle 9y ago
  From my test the AMP icon in Google's search result is gone (Chrome, Android, Incognito tab). Disclaimer: I work for Google but not on AMP product.
  - ec109685 9y ago
    Search for Trump on iOS and you'll see an AMP icon.
    - ehsankia 9y ago
      Is the issue the icon or the carousel being at the top? I just checked and the carousel had both AMP and non-AMP content for me.
- dontnotice 9y ago
  Google can display the results they want in any fashion they see fit, it's their website/apps and their publishing/curation is protected by the first amendment.
  - seandougall 9y ago

dontnotice 9y ago

It's funny how no one was up in arms when facebook (the leading source of publisher traffic) did their version of accelerated pages. AMP serves a purpose for the end user and it does so well, it loads instantly and doesn't consume much data in the process. As for their "demands": 1. Google already states that AMP pages are ranked higher because they're faster to load. 2. I'm not sure if it's related but they they addressed that only yesterday: https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-amp-pages/ https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-...

Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
So are you saying -- all else equal -- that if your webpage can respond just as quickly as an AMP one, that your search rank won't be docked? E.g., your site is just as performant as AMP, but you're not using AMP.
- dontnotice 9y ago
  Yup, that was in the the blog post announcing AMP, and subsequent press comments. I'm of the persuasion that they can rank and display the results however they please, it's their site after all, so it's a non issue either way.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    I wonder how Google manages the network topology for testing this so that the fact that AMP is served from a Google-local cache does not give it a speed advantage to Google's speed-testing bot beyond any it may have in typical, outside of Google, use.
    - ec109685 9y ago
      Google preferches the amp content.
  - pitaj 9y ago
    I don't care at all about AMP really, but this: > I'm of the persuasion that they can rank and display the results however they please, it's their site after all, so it's a non issue either way. I don't get why anybody says this. Of course they are in control. Nobody can force them to do it differently (maybe the government but whatever). Most people aren't saying that Google has no right to do what they're doing. People are saying that Google _should_ be doing it differently.

rsoto 9y ago

I agree with all the points, but I would add one: Show AMP results for all browsers. AFAIK, only Chrome (and maybe Safari, can't confirm) are shown AMP links in the search results. There is people (like me) who like to support other browsers , or like some addons. I get it, Google: you want your browser to be the most popular. You've done it. Now treat the rest of them like capable pieces of software.

el_benhameen 9y ago
I did not know this, but ironically, it's motivating me to switch to Firefox more than any of their recent speed improvements.
edflsafoiewq 9y ago
Ahh, that would be why I've never seen one. I was wondering what all this hullabaloo was about.

magicalist 9y ago

> Instead of granting premium placement in search results only to AMP, provide the same perks to all pages that meet an objective, neutral performance criterion such as Speed Index. But who will measure it "objectively" (leaving aside no one agrees on how to universally measure load speed). Googlebot? From what location and what machine types and how often? Should I get search results based on an average of all possible variables or the closest matching my locale and device? What happens when page content changes? What happens when the page sometimes loads slow content (e.g. ads) and sometimes doesn't? What happens when SEOers start cloaking their ad loads or taking advantage of flaws in the benchmark? It's good to have a speed signal in search rankings, but this petition shouldn't pretend that's an objective replacement for something that always displays content first and loads media and third party content async

the8472 9y ago
> or taking advantage of flaws in the benchmark? Then you improve your benchmark.
- klodolph 9y ago
  That's a cat an mouse game that search engines and SEO companies have been playing for years. "Improve your benchmark" only works when you don't have adversaries. Edit: To clarify, "improve your benchmark" is not a viable strategy by itself any more than "put your opponent in checkmate" is a viable strategy. As advice it is unhelpful. You generally have to mitigate flaws in the way you rank pages, keep large parts of the algorithm secret, and attack the economic viability of your adversary's strategies. Rather than going for checkmate, you want your opponent to resign so you can do something else instead. There have been incentives for bad behavior on the web for so long that I don't think we have any hope of coming up with any kind of automated benchmark to tell us which pages have good user experience.
  - electrograv 9y ago
    > "Improve your benchmark" only works when you don't have adversaries. If this were true, then there would exist no search engines consistently capable of finding content highly relevant to the user's query -- as opposed to just returning promoted content, which according to your premise is always winning the adversarial battle. Sure, there is an adversarial element, which means there is a constant 'battle' for 'fairness' among results (or whatever your goals are as a search engine). But in reality, search engines as a whole seem to work rather well at finding what we want. Of course results are biased from adversarial pressures (and that's what we're discussing on this thread), but it does seem possible for "benchmarks" to work well in an adversarial environment.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

calebgilbert 9y ago

I've been around long enough to believe that it's not just paranoia to think that some of the responses on this thread sound like people with Google-specific self-interests ($), if not being paid outright by Google for it, are on here shilling for Google via words and/or votes. I don't see how anyone who wants a free internet defends amp in its current form.

jedberg 9y ago
There are lots of reasons to love AMP. If you look at my profile you'll see that I have no monetary connection to Google. As a consumer, I love AMP. I always preference for the AMP pages because I know they'll be fast and that they will most likely load even when I'm on really bad internet. As a content producer I'm not a huge fan, for all the reasons outlined in the letter. But for people who only consume, I can see why they would be big fans of AMP.
- calebgilbert 9y ago
  Well, you and them can keep loving them until Google and Facebook are the internet. Everyone has played Monopoly - we know how this story ends.
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    Before AMP was introduced, News was increasingly being siloed on Apple News and FB Instant Articles. The story was going to end with Apple News/FaceBook sucking up all of the publishers. The publishers could theoretically have all fixed it themselves, but they weren't, and increasingly native news apps were winning over the web. AMP was a collaboration with publishers to keep content on the Web. It's an open source project, and is implemented not only by Google, but by Bing, Baidu, even CloudFlare has an implementation. Google successfully organized the publishers and got them to fix the problems that many people claim they would have fixed by just doing it themselves, but that wasn't happening, user experience was becoming horrible, and rather than fix their sites, they were basically giving in to Instant Articles. AMP kept news on the web instead of in the App Store. AMP is supported by most major browsers, requires no proprietary browser extensions, is just HTML, implemented by multiple search engines and CDNs, and is an open spec and source project. I'm not really sure why so many people are losing their shit over it. It's based on standard web technologies. I understand the UI issues, but those look like they're getting fixed.

tboyd47 9y ago

I support this completely and I would go one step further. We need a search engine that is free of CPM-monetization practices. It has become clear that Google is driving the web intentionally in a profit-maximizing direction at the expense of users and ordinary developers. Move ad blocking to the indexing layer. Create a corner of the web that is naturally fast and user-friendly again without resorting to corporate-defined subsets of well-documented open web technologies.

ariwilson 9y ago
I have no idea what this comment means. Do you want to block all websites that have ads on them from Google?
- tboyd47 9y ago
  I mean block websites that monetize using CPM, which would incidentally be the vast majority of ads served using DoubleClick's ad marketplace. These also tend to be the ads caught with ad blockers, since CPM requires technical artifacts like iframes that are easy to spot. Sorry, I'm trying to be as succinct as possible, but I've come to see the advent of ad blockers, intrusive ads, pervasive tracking, client-heavy web practices, and clickbait as a single phenomenon that has its roots in the rise of CPM as the primary pricing mechanism for advertising.
  - davidcbc 9y ago
    I'm sure that your search engine with no websites on it will be a huge success.
    - tboyd47 9y ago
      Do you know another way out of the Googernet ad matrix? http://www.businessinsider.com/google-saved-an-estimated-887-million-by-paying-adblock-plus-to-show-its-ads-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-saved-an-estimated-887...

wetpaws 9y ago

Google amp is a blessing on mobile, I don't give a damn't about site owners.

andrewmcwatters 9y ago
No one seems to be up in arms about slow websites. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If AMP and others exist, there's a reason, and it might be more useful to respond to that than to respond to AMP.
- MBCook 9y ago
  There is a reason. Google gives it preferential treatment. That’s not a reason that matters to me at all.
pjmlp 9y ago
Native apps and disabled JavaScript are a blessing on mobile.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Thousand times this. Half of the reason we're in this mess is on-line advertising. The other half is that lots of companies think it's a great idea for everything to require constant data exchange with the cloud.
hartator 9y ago
Except when you want the original link.
- dymk 9y ago
  Every Google AMP link that I've clicked on has a button in the top right corner which displays the original link. It's very easy to copy from, and isn't hidden at all.
  - MBCook 9y ago

krisives 9y ago

AMP is borderline MITM.

jopsen 9y ago
then you didn't read yesterdays announcement: https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-amp-pages/ https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/improving-urls-for-... Look at the underlying specs... They are talking about bundling web packages and signing them with TLS certificates, so that anyone can distribute them... and the browser can still verify the origin.

asdjasldkjkljd 9y ago

They should add additional weight to their ranking algorithm for fast sites; anyone who's worked with a sales and marketing team knows how much they'll freak out if pagerank drops. They'll basically throw their firstborn into a well for higher pagerank.

andrewmcwatters 9y ago

Then make another search engine, don't complain about using Google technology in Google's search engine, on Google's browser.

Old_Thrashbarg 9y ago
You could use that argument to argue against any regulation of any monopoly. "You don't like that Comcast is going to decide what sites you can see? Then make your own ISP" "You don't like that the water company is pricing people out of drinking water? Make your own water utility" "You don't like that Golden Gate jacked their prices? Build your own bridge" BTW, those examples aren't exaggerations. I imagine they're all no less difficult than making a new search engine to compete with Google.

sliverstorm 9y ago

Has no one yet tried forking AMP and simply removing all the Google? Call it OpAMP. You might not get into the carousel right off the bat, but if you get the ball rolling you'd have actual leverage instead of writing open letters on the internet.

manigandham 9y ago
Because it's much less work to just make fast pages using the HTML we already have. The problem is that fast isn't what google wants, they want their special HTML fork called AMP.

Old_Thrashbarg 9y ago

Google registered a domain just to host a letter?

zeep 9y ago

I switched to duckduckgo a few months ago and it has been the first time that I felt that I was not missing something... I tried to switch a few other times before that and the results were of much lower quality...

mikeytown2 9y ago

I'll be giving a talk about what you can do to get your site to load faster without using AMP in Portland, Oregon on February 4th. https://pnwdrupalsummit.org/2018/sessions/how-get-perfect-100-google-pagespeed-insights-what-might-happen-if-you-dont https://pnwdrupalsummit.org/2018/sessions/how-get-perfect-10... Long story short 100/100 with page speed is possible with most sites; further optimize for Speed Index by using rel="preload" for assets above the fold. What else am I missing?

wmf 9y ago
You're missing the lightning icon.
- mikeytown2 9y ago
  So by not using AMP, Google search result pages will not display the lightning icon next to the link to your domain? Is this what you mean?
  - wmf 9y ago
    Yes, and thus your boss won't pay you to optimize anything if he doesn't get the lightning bolt.
kuschku 9y ago
A page with 100/100 page speed (such as my quasseldroid.info) still won't get any of the benefits an AMP page would get - such as the carousel, or the icon.
ec109685 9y ago
You can beat google preloading an amp page before the user clicks?

mmanfrin 9y ago

My work firewall blocks this site; can someone paste the letter's contents?

scott_karana 9y ago
(URLs not copied, sorry) A letter about Google AMP We are a community of individuals who have a significant interest in the development and health of the World Wide Web (“the Web”), and we are deeply concerned about Accelerated Mobile Pages (“AMP”), a Google project that purportedly seeks to improve the user experience of the Web. In fact, AMP keeps users within Google’s domain and diverts traffic away from other websites for the benefit of Google. At a scale of billions of users, this has the effect of further reinforcing Google’s dominance of the Web. We acknowledge the problem of Web pages being slow to load, relative to alternative, proprietary technologies such as Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. Publishers (especially in news media) have long faced difficult choices and poor incentives, leading to bad decisions and compromises, and ultimately to terrible user experiences. Search engines are in a powerful position to wield influence to solve this problem. However, Google has chosen to create a premium position at the top of their search results (for articles) and a “lightning” icon (for all types of content), which are only accessible to publishers that use a Google-controlled technology, served by Google from their infrastructure, on a Google URL, and placed within a Google controlled user experience. (source) The AMP format is not in itself, a problem, but two aspects of its implementation reinforce the position of Google as a de facto standard platform for content, as Google seeks to drive uptake of AMP with content creators: Content that “opts in” to AMP and the associated hosting within Google’s domain is granted preferential search promotion, including (for news articles) a position above all other results. When a user navigates from Google to a piece of content Google has recommended, they are, unwittingly, remaining within Google’s ecosystem. If Google’s objective with AMP is indeed to improve user experience on the Web, then we suggest some simple changes that would do that while still allowing the Web to remain dynamic, competitive and consumer-oriented: Instead of granting premium placement in search results only to AMP, provide the same perks to all pages that meet an objective, neutral performance criterion such as Speed Index. Publishers can then use any technical solution of their choice. Do not display third-party content within a Google page unless it is clear to the user that they are looking at a Google product. It is perfectly acceptable for Google to launch a “news reader”, but it is not acceptable to display a page that carries only third party branding on what is actually a Google URL, nor to require that third party to use Google’s hosting in order to appear in search results. We don’t want to stop Google’s development of AMP, and these changes do not require that. We also applaud search engines that give ranking preference to fast-loading pages. AMP can remain one of a range of technologies that give publishers high quality options for delivering Web pages quickly and making users happy. However, publishers should not be compelled by Google’s search dominance to put their content under a Google umbrella. The Web is not Google, and should not be just Google. Sincerely, AS INDIVIDUALS <long list of names>

zzmp 9y ago

This letter just seems to affirm that Google made a good business decision with AMP.

rockdiesel 9y ago

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I would suggest removing, or at least adding 'nofollow', to all the personal hyperlinks at the bottom of the letter to make it look less like SEO spam. It devalues the letter, in my opinion, because I see them as people signing the letter for the sole purpose of promoting themselves. But like I said...maybe I'm being too cynical.

betenoire 9y ago
Half of those appear to be twitter handles. So yeah, you are probably being too cynical ;)

jak1192 9y ago

When you navigate to an AMP site there is a very clear icon at the top to click and go to the site's actual domain. I don't understand what this letter is so upset about - if they have such a problem, they should build their own search engine.

Andrex 9y ago

I would normally never do this, but over the past couple weeks I've been drafting a blog post proposing an open AMP alternative called Particle. You can read it here: https://andrewrabon.com/particle-a-proposal-for-tinier-html-and-css-1760ca148722 https://andrewrabon.com/particle-a-proposal-for-tinier-html-... [Draft] Would anyone here be interested in seeing the blog post completed and/or helping me build it out? If so drop me a line at andrewrabon at gmail. :) I also want feedback on if my ideas are actually solving a problem, and are doing so in the correct way. I only recently joined a news publisher so I'm not 100% cognizant of the issues at play.

wmf 9y ago
The real issue is incentives; that's what you need to work on.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
Sounds like extra work that websites would need to do in order to adopt. If there was a way to say automatically remove the javascript and other html extensions and the automatically serve the site via particle, then that would facilitate adoption.
- Andrex 9y ago
  Hm, maybe have a <link rel> to the Particle version and switch over to that with a browser extension?
lemagedurage 9y ago
Why not leave the css out for extra performance?

shp0ngle 9y ago

I like what Twitter does with AMP. If a page has AMP version, it redirects mobile users to AMP version, but on that page, not on its own cached version.

rocky1138 9y ago

Honestly, let's all of us web developers make an agreement together that we'll focus on plain text and intelligently-compressed images rather than JavaScript and auto-playing videos in our projects moving forward and recommend that we do the same where we work. People are trusting us to help them with technical decisions and we have a responsibility to make sure the web is accessible to as many people as possible. Our opinions have tremendous sway, even though it might not feel like it. The web really started to go sideways when we followed the trend away from Progressive Enhancement. Let's get back to basics, pure and simple.

bigblind 9y ago
When thinking about progressive enhancement, it's debatable what your baseline should be. I'm not sure I agree we should take plain text as the baseline. There's a development cost to everything. I genuinely believe you can create a better experience with a JavaScript-powered app/site, where the server doesn't have to re-render the entire page when someone interacts withit to show new content, and developing server-side rendering so that the same page can be rendered by the server, as well as constructed by JavaScript on the client, with content from an API, takes a lot of time. Even though it'd make it more accessible to clients who have JavaScript disabled, or where rendering the page client-side takes longer than rendering it on the server and sending it as a whole. I completely agree about unnecessary annoyances such as auto-playing video, or load-blocking ads. #perfmatters.
- rocky1138 9y ago
  A close baseline is Hacker News. The site works perfectly without JavaScript but is a bit faster (don't have to wait for page refreshes on upvote) if you enable it. If Hacker News had a more responsive stylesheet, it would definitely be something we could hold up as an example.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

Google is a for-profit corp. How are these proposed changes in Google's self-interest?

kuschku 9y ago
Google was just fined 3 billion EUR for the advantage they gave to Google Shopping in their search, it is very much expected that if they continue with AMP, the same will happen again.

_jomo 9y ago

I was wondering when Google serves content via AMP because it never happened to me. I mostly use DuckDuckGo but occasionally use Google when I'm not satisfied with the results. Turns out when you use Firefox on Android, Google serves a different (older?) version of the Google search that doesn't link to AMP. Is AMP opt-in for site owners? Or is it determined by page load speed? It didn't use AMP for my website, but it also loads faster than google.com ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

mauthsdki 9y ago

It's a controlled and censored internet ghetto by google. Google keep black list on every conservative worker?? How sick is that!

coding123 9y ago

It's sad that only Google is getting punished when Amazon owns a major portion of sales. Facebook is increasingly becoming the "home page" of small businesses all over the world. Etsy is now the ONLY place people can sell small hand-made art pieces. Ebay is the only marketplace to sell wholesale items on. None of these platforms value add much that can't be built into whatever the next web becomes... But no organization is as powerful as a single one of them. So Google is allowed to do this as long as all these other companies do what they are doing. I think what happened is that all the other disruptions were done to companies that don't know something could be better - they were not technologists, programmers, etc.. This letter is written by technologists, developers, so they know what google has done to steal the market. But no one here wants to apply the same logic to the other ones.

geofft 9y ago
Er, if having a public petition about you is "being punished," those other companies have definitely been punished too.

debt 9y ago

It is odd all that everyone talks about the blockchain and the one problem no one talks about that it could solve is journalism. News committed to an anonymous blockchain, immutable and potentially monitizable seems pretty interesting but maybe not as lucrative as other ideas. Because AMP isn’t about ads or speed, it’s about editorial control. The same goes for Facebook and Apple. I don’t care how many press releases they put out denying it.

ehnto 9y ago

I do not believe page speed should play a role in search rankings at all. It has nothing to do with the content and the person with the correct and most relevant content doesn't always have the relevant skills or a DevOps specialist handy to meet the requirements. This only helps the heavy handed SEO optimized sites with deep pockets and time to kill get yet another edge. The article with the best insight isn't likely to be the one with the perfecly optimized website. I understand that pagespeed effects end user experience when they hit a website, however that's not what I searched for. I did not search "fastest website with okay knowledge about dogs" I asked for "website with the best knowledge about dogs". I want Google to be able to show me the most awesome page about dogs. The most in depth and relevant information. That niche dog blogger who is so passionate that they spend all their time researching dogs. I don't want "10 cool facts about dogs by Buzzfeed".

Zalastax 9y ago
It's good if it plays some role when the content quality is similar between results. Some pages are so slow or obnoxious that I'd almost rather not get the information at all, than dreadfully waiting for ads and pop-up-modals to load. Perhaps ranking is the wrong tool, but it would be nice if I could know that a site is bloated before clicking the link. AMP lets me know that.
- repsilat 9y ago
  I agree. And if the speed metric is well-designed, and if making not-slow pages is easy enough (and it really is) then the Nash equilibrium is "Everyone gets the most relevant page and it loads quickly."
katastic 9y ago
There's a huge difference between sites that load in ".1 seconds vs 1 seconds" and sites that load in 15 seconds, and download 300 different tracking pixels.
appedus 9y ago
I absolutely agree with you. Speed shouldn't play any role in ranking. However in regards to relevancy RankBrain is going to eventually train itself to push the most relevant/respected results. Will have to wait and watch how it spans out.

Animats 9y ago

Resistance is futile. Google is the web now. There are people who don't realize that gmail connects to a bigger world of email.

ibdf 9y ago

...

inian 9y ago

I have constantly heard that they can't reliably measure the performance of a website unless it is AMP. I don't buy this argument at all. Google already has mentioned to using site speed for as a minor ranking factor, why can't they use the same methodology for putting websites in the carousell too? Also, they have Real user data for over a million websites - https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/12/crux https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/12/crux This is a way better indicator of site speed as opposed to if the site is AMP or not. Would be so cool if Google used this data as a pre condition to put sites into the carousell!

ttctciyf 9y ago

Personally, speaking as a search user, all I want from Google regards AMP is a setting that disables it in search results. Google's results ordering is already sufficiently "optimized" away from my needs that as often as not I end up in 'verbatim' mode or on page 3 of the results before I get near what I'm looking for, so an extra layer of SEO-gameable "user convenience" isn't likely to make my google experience that much worse. Since the presence of AMP results is based on device detection, it seems a search setting removing them would be a simple matter. Google's unwillingness to provide it speaks volumes about their actual intent, IMO.

Lio 9y ago
This is exactly my position on this also and the reason that I've moved to DuckDuckGo on my mobile in place of Google even though I much prefer Google as a search engine.
- ttctciyf 9y ago
  Thanks to Spivak, who mentions in another comment here [1] that "https://encrypted.google.com https://encrypted.google.com doesn't serve AMP results" my phone now has a new default search! 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16108896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16108896

Dolores12 9y ago

If google makes a copy of original content and it doesn't hold copyright, why nobody sued them for breach of copyright?

deftturtle 9y ago

Page loads < 600ms on mobile are a non-issue. All of the RTT talk and TTFB is not worth the tradeoff. If we can have this paradise where all content is prefetched and served/encrypted from Google to only save a fraction of a second, it isn't worth the sacrifice of freedom. I'll take 500ms page loads any day when the content comes from the true origin. I don't want 60ms responses from a Google server when I'm trying to use the internet. Why not just make google the internet?? There's power and freedom to be had when publishers aren't tied to a tech behemoth.