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AMP is, to begin with, Google exerting its market power to extend its control over others’ content. Facebook is doing it, so Google has to. As a consumer, I ac

AMP is, to begin with, Google exerting its market power to extend its control over others’ content. Facebook is doing it, so Google has to. As a consumer, I actually love AMP. Everytime I click a news link on mobile and am taken to AMP, I'm relieved to be free from the extremely distracting original websites. Google has done a lot of exciting work on open standards like JSON-LD [0] and Microdata [1] to bring a better experience to both Google search results and Gmail. I love clicking the inline "Confirm subscription" button [2] instead of opening emails from Mailchimp and searching for a link. I'm not that scared of the future becoming locked into Google. I believe they'll improve upon and create better standards for emails. Most things aren't entirely altruistic, and that's OK. Gmail being an early adopter to these standards is a good enough reason for them. [0]: https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/formats/json-ld https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/formats... [1]: https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/formats/microdata https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/formats... [2]: https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/one-click-action https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/one-cli...

bdhess 9y ago
We have the exact opposite opinion then. I moved to DuckDuckGo on iOS because I thought the AMP formatted Google search results were so user-hostile. Maybe they’ve fixed the bizarre scrolling and overly sensitive links by now, but I see no reason to find out, because I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.
- tejasmanohar 9y ago
  For what it's worth, I only use my phone seriously when I'm out and about, and a lot of times, my internet connection isn't the best, e.g. while in metro
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    This is true for me too, but I still find that using AMP pages on Android is basically nonfunctional. They load fast, but scrolling is shoddy and every single linking function (back button, hyperlink, and new tab alike) is a mess. If I want to load a single page with dense content, view it without scrolling much, and close the tab, AMP makes my mobile experience better. If I want to do anything else, AMP on Android starts to interfere with basic functionality. Which is a pretty sad story for a Google CDN on a Google browser on a Google OS.
- kyrra 9y ago
  I know the scrolling issues we're bugs in webkit. Google (I believe) started to employ a webkit dev to fix the problems.
  - bdhess 9y ago
    I’ve heard that before. It’s still fair to blame Google for the whole fiasco. Especially since the non-AMP versions had always worked fine.
    - lern_too_spel 9y ago
      Why not blame Apple for building a buggy browser that you have no choice but to use? Stop buying buggy user-hostile phones. AMP pages work perfectly fine in Firefox for Android.
      - davepeck 9y ago
        Let’s say you’re an engineer about to roll out a feature to (literally) a billion users. Through testing, you know your feature is busted for the ~14.5% of your users who use Safari. But it’s not your fault! Apple should fix it. Quick quiz: do you release a feature that is broken for 145M users, which brokenness they might plausibly encounter multiple times a day? In a typical organization, the answer would probably be an unambiguous “no”. Without passing judgment, I find the fact that Google decided to ship anyway to be a useful indicator of their beliefs, culture, and priorities.
        lern_too_spel 9y ago
        You could turn that around and ask why Apple didn't bother to fix something that was causing pain for some of their users and continued not to fix it after it was causing pain for most of their users. Google made a bad engineering decision, but I would place most of the blame on Apple. It's the same for IE and web applications that didn't work in that browser. Luckily, people (for the most part) stopped using IE. We can only hope that iOS Safari will share that fate.
- ehsankia 9y ago
  It doesn't matter how you "feel", I know for a matter of fact, objectively and measurably, that my load times have gotten significantly faster, and that AMP has achieved what thousands of sites have failed to do. So feel free to call it names and bring up feelings, but what I care about is the actual objective experience I'm getting.
  - thesagan 9y ago
    That's being a bit obtuse. Of course it matters how it feels, however you look at it! Such as if a loading bar makes something feel better as it loads - then good!
    - ehsankia 9y ago
      That's not quite what I was talking about. I was responding specifically to: > I see no reason to find out, because I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. The person was basically saying "I don't feel like checking how good AMP is, I'm just going to blindly dismiss it"
  - tejasmanohar 9y ago
    While I agree with your opinion that AMP is fast, perceived performance is certainly a thing. Read into it :-)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- codazoda 9y ago
  There are still UX problems on Android too. I tend to open links in a new window and then close the one I'm looking at when I'm done with it. This experience is totally broken with Amp pages in mobile Chrome. Uhg.
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    When AMP was announced, I was excited about it specifically for my phone - it's where I care most about loading speeds. These days, I actively avoid AMP links on Android. It's such a hideously buggy, functionality-disabling system on my phone that it's not worth loading those pages at any speed.
- tripzilch 9y ago
  Honestly if AMP is such a nice format, how hard can it be to just format the content in plain HTML+CSS and let the browser do the scrolling and UI bits? Only if that doesn't work pleasantly, then you get to complain about the browser not doing its job properly. (this remark aimed at some other replies in this subthread) It's probably not hard at all, it's just that Google's priorities are currently at "fuck you" especially if you try to avoid being tracked.
BinaryIdiot 9y ago
As a consumer I like the speed of AMP but hate the usability of it (ever try sharing a link? ugh). As a developer and a content creator? I absolutely hate it. Not only is my content hosted outside of my control but they give them a visual weighting in Google search results. So now, if I want my content to have the best chance to be seen, I have to use AMP. I wish they would have just made AMP a framework or build system that out spit out optimized web pages. Instead they force us to use their CDN which also has multiple trust issues.
wruza 9y ago
I don’t like how usual ios controls stop to work with amp, e.g. scroll to top by tapping on time; back button works[-ed] wrongly. Also there is annoying amp bar at the top that pops up constantly when I scroll. They can’t distinguish between swipe-and-stop and swipe-and-letitscroll in browser, so it doesn’t work as safari header bar. Better they completely faked dns/cert in some wat and presented me copied content from their amp cache. I don’t check sources anyway.

bdhess 9y ago

We have the exact opposite opinion then. I moved to DuckDuckGo on iOS because I thought the AMP formatted Google search results were so user-hostile. Maybe they’ve fixed the bizarre scrolling and overly sensitive links by now, but I see no reason to find out, because I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.

tejasmanohar 9y ago
For what it's worth, I only use my phone seriously when I'm out and about, and a lot of times, my internet connection isn't the best, e.g. while in metro
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  This is true for me too, but I still find that using AMP pages on Android is basically nonfunctional. They load fast, but scrolling is shoddy and every single linking function (back button, hyperlink, and new tab alike) is a mess. If I want to load a single page with dense content, view it without scrolling much, and close the tab, AMP makes my mobile experience better. If I want to do anything else, AMP on Android starts to interfere with basic functionality. Which is a pretty sad story for a Google CDN on a Google browser on a Google OS.
kyrra 9y ago
I know the scrolling issues we're bugs in webkit. Google (I believe) started to employ a webkit dev to fix the problems.
- bdhess 9y ago
  I’ve heard that before. It’s still fair to blame Google for the whole fiasco. Especially since the non-AMP versions had always worked fine.
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    Why not blame Apple for building a buggy browser that you have no choice but to use? Stop buying buggy user-hostile phones. AMP pages work perfectly fine in Firefox for Android.
    - davepeck 9y ago
      Let’s say you’re an engineer about to roll out a feature to (literally) a billion users. Through testing, you know your feature is busted for the ~14.5% of your users who use Safari. But it’s not your fault! Apple should fix it. Quick quiz: do you release a feature that is broken for 145M users, which brokenness they might plausibly encounter multiple times a day? In a typical organization, the answer would probably be an unambiguous “no”. Without passing judgment, I find the fact that Google decided to ship anyway to be a useful indicator of their beliefs, culture, and priorities.
      - lern_too_spel 9y ago
        You could turn that around and ask why Apple didn't bother to fix something that was causing pain for some of their users and continued not to fix it after it was causing pain for most of their users. Google made a bad engineering decision, but I would place most of the blame on Apple. It's the same for IE and web applications that didn't work in that browser. Luckily, people (for the most part) stopped using IE. We can only hope that iOS Safari will share that fate.
ehsankia 9y ago
It doesn't matter how you "feel", I know for a matter of fact, objectively and measurably, that my load times have gotten significantly faster, and that AMP has achieved what thousands of sites have failed to do. So feel free to call it names and bring up feelings, but what I care about is the actual objective experience I'm getting.
- thesagan 9y ago
  That's being a bit obtuse. Of course it matters how it feels, however you look at it! Such as if a loading bar makes something feel better as it loads - then good!
  - ehsankia 9y ago
    That's not quite what I was talking about. I was responding specifically to: > I see no reason to find out, because I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. The person was basically saying "I don't feel like checking how good AMP is, I'm just going to blindly dismiss it"
- tejasmanohar 9y ago
  While I agree with your opinion that AMP is fast, perceived performance is certainly a thing. Read into it :-)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
codazoda 9y ago
There are still UX problems on Android too. I tend to open links in a new window and then close the one I'm looking at when I'm done with it. This experience is totally broken with Amp pages in mobile Chrome. Uhg.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  When AMP was announced, I was excited about it specifically for my phone - it's where I care most about loading speeds. These days, I actively avoid AMP links on Android. It's such a hideously buggy, functionality-disabling system on my phone that it's not worth loading those pages at any speed.
tripzilch 9y ago
Honestly if AMP is such a nice format, how hard can it be to just format the content in plain HTML+CSS and let the browser do the scrolling and UI bits? Only if that doesn't work pleasantly, then you get to complain about the browser not doing its job properly. (this remark aimed at some other replies in this subthread) It's probably not hard at all, it's just that Google's priorities are currently at "fuck you" especially if you try to avoid being tracked.

BinaryIdiot 9y ago

As a consumer I like the speed of AMP but hate the usability of it (ever try sharing a link? ugh). As a developer and a content creator? I absolutely hate it. Not only is my content hosted outside of my control but they give them a visual weighting in Google search results. So now, if I want my content to have the best chance to be seen, I have to use AMP. I wish they would have just made AMP a framework or build system that out spit out optimized web pages. Instead they force us to use their CDN which also has multiple trust issues.

wruza 9y ago

I don’t like how usual ios controls stop to work with amp, e.g. scroll to top by tapping on time; back button works[-ed] wrongly. Also there is annoying amp bar at the top that pops up constantly when I scroll. They can’t distinguish between swipe-and-stop and swipe-and-letitscroll in browser, so it doesn’t work as safari header bar. Better they completely faked dns/cert in some wat and presented me copied content from their amp cache. I don’t check sources anyway.