5 ms·

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.
- lucb1e 9y ago
  > 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. This is wrong. Google can proxy the traffic like they do with Gmail, negating that privacy issue. I was typing a comment in which I said that I'd prefer your privacy risk (where I leak info to random sites that I might want to visit anyway) over the current privacy issue (all sites using AMP leaking data about me to Google), but it's worse than that: the risk you identify is easily mitigated by proxying the content. The other risk you mention is not as easily mitigated. Proxying might help in part, because then the servers can be selective and/or stop at a certain point. Another idea is to only preload the HTML, and perhaps a limited number of resources smaller than a certain size (mainly css and small-size images, since JS is usually not used in styling, so preloading html and css should give a first, static impression before the rest can be loaded). All of this would have been better than any part of what they chose. I can see only two reasons for Google not to choose this: (1) more control over the web (this I think is true) and (2) more tracking (this I think a few people within Google might see as a nice side-effect, even if the vast majority of employees has only good intentions, so I don't think it was a driving reason but it probably contributed).
  - ec109685 9y ago
    Google can't serve anything that they proxy on a google domain, so they need something like cdn.ampproject.org to cache the content. They also need to guarantee the content will behave properly when cached, hance the AMP format.
criddell 9y ago
It isn't. It was a response to all of the bloated, slow websites that were becoming the norm.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  It's funny you use the word "were" here. This is still the case.
- rcheu 9y ago
  This is inaccurate, the preloading that AMP on Google Search does is a significant advantage over anything you can do with current web technologies.
notatoad 9y ago
it isn't, but in practice a properly and efficiently designed website is hard to find. And in order for a site like google to be able to surface properly and efficiently designed websites, they need to have some set of rules to differentiate between a properly and efficiently designed site and one that isnt. And that is the simplest definition of AMP: a set of rules to define an efficiently presented news article. and then the continuation of that is that if a news article follows those rules, it is cache-able and google can give it a significant speed boost by serving it from their cache.
ferongr 9y ago
Almost noone builds such sites.
- kybernetikos 9y ago
  You're right, but it's also true that some exist. * Idle Words http://www.idlewords.com/ http://www.idlewords.com/ (while we're on this topic, http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm is worth reading) * Programming In the 21st Century http://prog21.dadgum.com/ http://prog21.dadgum.com/ Are both extremely fast, filled with interesting content and amazingly manage this without loading any javascript from a google domain.

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.

lucb1e 9y ago
> 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. This is wrong. Google can proxy the traffic like they do with Gmail, negating that privacy issue. I was typing a comment in which I said that I'd prefer your privacy risk (where I leak info to random sites that I might want to visit anyway) over the current privacy issue (all sites using AMP leaking data about me to Google), but it's worse than that: the risk you identify is easily mitigated by proxying the content. The other risk you mention is not as easily mitigated. Proxying might help in part, because then the servers can be selective and/or stop at a certain point. Another idea is to only preload the HTML, and perhaps a limited number of resources smaller than a certain size (mainly css and small-size images, since JS is usually not used in styling, so preloading html and css should give a first, static impression before the rest can be loaded). All of this would have been better than any part of what they chose. I can see only two reasons for Google not to choose this: (1) more control over the web (this I think is true) and (2) more tracking (this I think a few people within Google might see as a nice side-effect, even if the vast majority of employees has only good intentions, so I don't think it was a driving reason but it probably contributed).
- ec109685 9y ago
  Google can't serve anything that they proxy on a google domain, so they need something like cdn.ampproject.org to cache the content. They also need to guarantee the content will behave properly when cached, hance the AMP format.

criddell 9y ago

It isn't. It was a response to all of the bloated, slow websites that were becoming the norm.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago
It's funny you use the word "were" here. This is still the case.
rcheu 9y ago
This is inaccurate, the preloading that AMP on Google Search does is a significant advantage over anything you can do with current web technologies.

notatoad 9y ago

it isn't, but in practice a properly and efficiently designed website is hard to find. And in order for a site like google to be able to surface properly and efficiently designed websites, they need to have some set of rules to differentiate between a properly and efficiently designed site and one that isnt. And that is the simplest definition of AMP: a set of rules to define an efficiently presented news article. and then the continuation of that is that if a news article follows those rules, it is cache-able and google can give it a significant speed boost by serving it from their cache.

ferongr 9y ago

Almost noone builds such sites.

kybernetikos 9y ago
You're right, but it's also true that some exist. * Idle Words http://www.idlewords.com/ http://www.idlewords.com/ (while we're on this topic, http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm is worth reading) * Programming In the 21st Century http://prog21.dadgum.com/ http://prog21.dadgum.com/ Are both extremely fast, filled with interesting content and amazingly manage this without loading any javascript from a google domain.