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HN is utterly incapable of discussing AMP honestly or coherently, so you're hardly going to get many reality-based replies. AMP is offered as a promise to the

HN is utterly incapable of discussing AMP honestly or coherently, so you're hardly going to get many reality-based replies. AMP is offered as a promise to the user, not the publisher. When I see AMP it guarantees that the site has minimally invasive JavaScript (and the scourge of nonsense that comes with many sites now), will load quickly, etc. The site cannot suddenly bait and switch and start mining bitcoin or spamming pop-overs because it has been technically restricted from doing so. So yes, sites can be every bit as fast as AMP. And industrial manufacturers can be every bit as clean as required by regulators if they had no regulation. But they aren't, and they don't. We need an HTML Lite as a mode in the browser that winnows down the enormous featureset of HTML. Not for all content, but for that content where text is king.

consumer451 8y ago
I like AMPages when they are served by the content creator, but I hate AMPages when they are served on Google's CDN. Honest question: would the author of the linked article have experienced the same issues if the users had actually visited his own site's AMPages?
- nate 8y ago
  Author here. No, not at all. Well not the first two problems. The extra chrome is just when google is hosting it, and the blank pages only occurred in testing from the CDN.
Godel_unicode 8y ago
> HTML Lite Couldn't agree more with this. People approximate it with e.g. noscript, it would be awesome to have a standard which describes a minimal HTML Lite spec though. Edit: It would be awesome as another option in the link context menu: open in new tab, open in incognito tab, open in lite tab
- hammock 8y ago
  Maybe roll back to an old browser?
  - adtac 8y ago
    Along with all the security risks? Or do I get to choose just the good parts? :)
- macandcheese 8y ago
  Reader Mode on Safari maybe?
- endorphone 8y ago
  Having this enforced by the browser as a mode would be brilliant. The HTML stack has grown enormous, with it the potential for a abuse and misuse. If you are just looking for a digital version of paper, so to speak, 95% of that is simply completely unnecessary. Right now the AMP CDN enforces the restrictions of AMP (you can't simply pretend it conforms to AMP to Google and then feed the client something else) which is something that is fundamentally misunderstood when this is discussed on HN. AMP is a protection and guarantee of behavior for the user, it is not for the publisher, it is not for the developer. Google has a profound vested interest in trying to maintain people's interest in the web, especially in the face of various alternative walled gardens like Facebook feeds, Apple News, etc.
  - realusername 8y ago
    there's NOTHING technically requiring google to serve AMP from their own domain. None of the benefits you cited answered that. AMP could just be another standard where the basic lib is preloaded.
    - endorphone 8y ago
      I feel like this conversation, like all AMP conversations, is going in circles, spittle-filled comments denoted by unnecessary angry screeds of all caps. Yes, right now there is a technical need for an intermediary because it guarantees AMP is actually AMP. It is trivial for a page to say it's AMP, load the AMP standard library, and then do everything disallowed by AMP. There is absolutely nothing preventing that but that intermediary rejecting non-compliant content. Now of course we've talked about an HTML Light and that would be the browser enforcing that limited sandbox. It could send a relevant cookie and then reject content that steps outside the bounds. But we don't have that right now.
      - realusername 8y ago
        > Yes, right now there is a technical need for an intermediary because it guarantees AMP is actually AMP. It is trivial for a page to say it's AMP, load the AMP standard library, and then do everything disallowed by AMP. There is absolutely nothing preventing that but that intermediary rejecting non-compliant content. That's because the standard is not well defined. If you had a doctype just for AMP at the top, that would work. I don't see any technical reason why google's servers are necessary. I see a business reason for Google of course but there's nothing technically that makes sense. > Now of course we've talked about an HTML Light and that would be the browser enforcing that limited sandbox. It could send a relevant cookie and then reject content that steps outside the bounds. But we don't have that right now. Well, AMP could be just that if it was standardized.
- genericid 8y ago
  Good idea. As a starting point, let's define "HTML Lite" as "HTML without Javascript". Then "HTML Fat" and "HTML Light" could even be served as one document. If you execute the Javascript, you get the fat version. Else, you get the light version. If you use Javascript not just to improve the behaviour but also to display content at all, you can provide fallback content that is only displayed in light mode. The fallback content is marked by a special tag. Let's call it `noscript`. My point is: Making it easier to serve sane and lightweight HTML will not help fix the problem. Publishers don't want to do that, they like all that crap. If we want them to make sane web pages, we must force them.
kodablah 8y ago
Pardon my naivete, but Google validates whether a site is AMP-eligible by validating it conforms to its requirements, right? Can the Google bot that crawls the site not perform this same validation? I mean they can bait and switch the title of the page, the content, etc too but we don't require a Google proxy to make sure they don't. Can anyone else build a proxy that gives the same AMP guarantees and gets the same ranking benefits? More than a promise to the user, AMP is a promise to everyone where the bits are coming from. Google is going to get in trouble stewarding their gateway into the internet in this fashion with these rules. Rules about slow page load times can be seen as universal. Rules about using a Google proxy however are just begging for political intervention. As someone with a small business, I'm upset that these companies, under the guise of helping users, are giving reasons for these liberal governments to act. It negatively affects me when these inevitable regulations come down because companies like Google can't remain provider-neutral. Arg! > We need an HTML Lite as a mode in the browser that winnows down the enormous featureset of HTML. Not for all content, but for that content where text is king. I concur here and have been thinking about this recently especially in the context of web browsing in the terminal. But it has to be driven by user adoption, not rules written on the walls of a few companies' gardens. In the meantime, I would ask that the search engine not give preference to their proxy over anyone else's but instead define the guidelines that we can all reasonably meet.
- klodolph 8y ago
  > Can the Google bot that crawls the site not perform this same validation? From what I am aware, in practice there are a large number of sites which provide different content or different behavior in response to the GoogleBot user-agent.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    And yet we are still OK with its results everywhere else right?
    - dumbfounder 8y ago
      The benefits are nebulous in other instances. Here they are much more concrete, and thus will undoubtedly (in my mind) be abused to a much higher degree.
kevingadd 8y ago
We need an HTML lite but AMP doesn't get us anywhere close to it because it's a custom dialect of HTML driven by a bunch of proprietary Javascript. The google search spider enforcing a 'lite' subset would have gotten us closer, if not there entirely. We know they can do it because the spider runs JavaScript, they could examine loaded content and measure time to first content. They don't because it's way more effective to get content providers into a walled garden where they can be monetized.
Endy 8y ago
Re: "HTML Lite" - I think there's already a pretty solid solution. Hand-coded HTML 3 without any CSS, ECMAScript, or other dynamic elements. That always worked pretty well for me, and pages that could load acceptably on 28.8 would be absolutely mind-blowingly fast now. Of course, that would put the power of web design back in the hands of the average user rather than exclusively designers and devs. Because of that, I don't think we'll ever see that becoming an option again. Or, based on the browser I use when I care about speed, can we design pages around the constraints of Lynx/Links/eLinks? The CSS layouts work when called for, menus work in text-mode, but without images, *.js, and all the other Web annoyances, everything loads quick even on the worst connections.
- endorphone 8y ago
  The concept of HTML Lite is about restrictions that the source is forced to live within. As with AMP, it would not be an honor system. It would not be something that maybe that random link would conform to, but way more likely it wouldn't. If I were looking for song lyrics, or a recipe, or schedule information, etc, I would be browsing in HTML Lite mode. I don't want popovers, subscribe now boxes, animated bullshit, etc. My root post is sitting in the negatives right now, and I own that and embrace it because it is how discussions about AMP always go on HN. A bunch of web developers herd in to tell us how terrible AMP is while the web gets more and more bloated, more and more destructive and tragedy of the commons, and we all layer on various shoehorned, half-assed solutions to fight back (e.g. Ad blockers, nuisance blockers, tracking blockers, etc).
  - Endy 8y ago
    Well, I'll say this much about AMP and how it is: I actively avoid it; but then again, I don't use GMail, I search with DDG or Exalead most of the time, etc. I like the idea, I hate the implementation. I don't like a single corporation determining the course of the Web. I like the idea of a constrained standard. Then again, I also like the unrealistic idea of a single monolithic standard. When I got into making webpages, you had HTML and that was it. Then they said, "well, if you want to do some cool stuff, use CSS in addition to HTML". And now, they're trying to make it so that creating a website without using CSS or JS is completely impossible. Really, what you're saying you want just links back to what I suggested - disable remote CSS (preferably also inline but that's a pipe-dream), disable JavaScript, disable images, and turn your content blocker on full blast. Either that or just use Links. It works for me and blocks all the crud so I can get the content I actually want. The only thing I'd like to do with Links is to change the terminal colors it uses (which I don't think I can do in Windows - if you know how please do tell me). HTML was a fine language for what it does, and it still serves as a very solid core for a Web made of pure content. Only a Web made up of utter corporate nonsense needs scripting.
int_19h 8y ago
Well, speaking as a web user, I hate AMP, and actively avoid websites where there's no other option. The reasons? Most of all, I don't like how they break the Back button in strange ways (I still haven't figured out how exactly it's supposed to operate, but it's certainly not working as it usually does in a web browser). And I don't like that all URLs are showing up as Google. In abstract, I also don't like the notion of giving Google that much power. Even if what you say makes sense, and regulation is necessary, a private company doing it is the worst of both worlds - they are not accountable to the rest of us, and they have their own goals that contradict the public good.
fudoo 8y ago
AMP promises me that the site won't load.

consumer451 8y ago

I like AMPages when they are served by the content creator, but I hate AMPages when they are served on Google's CDN. Honest question: would the author of the linked article have experienced the same issues if the users had actually visited his own site's AMPages?

nate 8y ago
Author here. No, not at all. Well not the first two problems. The extra chrome is just when google is hosting it, and the blank pages only occurred in testing from the CDN.

Godel_unicode 8y ago

> HTML Lite Couldn't agree more with this. People approximate it with e.g. noscript, it would be awesome to have a standard which describes a minimal HTML Lite spec though. Edit: It would be awesome as another option in the link context menu: open in new tab, open in incognito tab, open in lite tab

hammock 8y ago
Maybe roll back to an old browser?
- adtac 8y ago
  Along with all the security risks? Or do I get to choose just the good parts? :)
macandcheese 8y ago
Reader Mode on Safari maybe?
endorphone 8y ago
Having this enforced by the browser as a mode would be brilliant. The HTML stack has grown enormous, with it the potential for a abuse and misuse. If you are just looking for a digital version of paper, so to speak, 95% of that is simply completely unnecessary. Right now the AMP CDN enforces the restrictions of AMP (you can't simply pretend it conforms to AMP to Google and then feed the client something else) which is something that is fundamentally misunderstood when this is discussed on HN. AMP is a protection and guarantee of behavior for the user, it is not for the publisher, it is not for the developer. Google has a profound vested interest in trying to maintain people's interest in the web, especially in the face of various alternative walled gardens like Facebook feeds, Apple News, etc.
- realusername 8y ago
  there's NOTHING technically requiring google to serve AMP from their own domain. None of the benefits you cited answered that. AMP could just be another standard where the basic lib is preloaded.
  - endorphone 8y ago
    I feel like this conversation, like all AMP conversations, is going in circles, spittle-filled comments denoted by unnecessary angry screeds of all caps. Yes, right now there is a technical need for an intermediary because it guarantees AMP is actually AMP. It is trivial for a page to say it's AMP, load the AMP standard library, and then do everything disallowed by AMP. There is absolutely nothing preventing that but that intermediary rejecting non-compliant content. Now of course we've talked about an HTML Light and that would be the browser enforcing that limited sandbox. It could send a relevant cookie and then reject content that steps outside the bounds. But we don't have that right now.
    - realusername 8y ago
      > Yes, right now there is a technical need for an intermediary because it guarantees AMP is actually AMP. It is trivial for a page to say it's AMP, load the AMP standard library, and then do everything disallowed by AMP. There is absolutely nothing preventing that but that intermediary rejecting non-compliant content. That's because the standard is not well defined. If you had a doctype just for AMP at the top, that would work. I don't see any technical reason why google's servers are necessary. I see a business reason for Google of course but there's nothing technically that makes sense. > Now of course we've talked about an HTML Light and that would be the browser enforcing that limited sandbox. It could send a relevant cookie and then reject content that steps outside the bounds. But we don't have that right now. Well, AMP could be just that if it was standardized.
genericid 8y ago
Good idea. As a starting point, let's define "HTML Lite" as "HTML without Javascript". Then "HTML Fat" and "HTML Light" could even be served as one document. If you execute the Javascript, you get the fat version. Else, you get the light version. If you use Javascript not just to improve the behaviour but also to display content at all, you can provide fallback content that is only displayed in light mode. The fallback content is marked by a special tag. Let's call it `noscript`. My point is: Making it easier to serve sane and lightweight HTML will not help fix the problem. Publishers don't want to do that, they like all that crap. If we want them to make sane web pages, we must force them.

kodablah 8y ago

Pardon my naivete, but Google validates whether a site is AMP-eligible by validating it conforms to its requirements, right? Can the Google bot that crawls the site not perform this same validation? I mean they can bait and switch the title of the page, the content, etc too but we don't require a Google proxy to make sure they don't. Can anyone else build a proxy that gives the same AMP guarantees and gets the same ranking benefits? More than a promise to the user, AMP is a promise to everyone where the bits are coming from. Google is going to get in trouble stewarding their gateway into the internet in this fashion with these rules. Rules about slow page load times can be seen as universal. Rules about using a Google proxy however are just begging for political intervention. As someone with a small business, I'm upset that these companies, under the guise of helping users, are giving reasons for these liberal governments to act. It negatively affects me when these inevitable regulations come down because companies like Google can't remain provider-neutral. Arg! > We need an HTML Lite as a mode in the browser that winnows down the enormous featureset of HTML. Not for all content, but for that content where text is king. I concur here and have been thinking about this recently especially in the context of web browsing in the terminal. But it has to be driven by user adoption, not rules written on the walls of a few companies' gardens. In the meantime, I would ask that the search engine not give preference to their proxy over anyone else's but instead define the guidelines that we can all reasonably meet.

klodolph 8y ago
> Can the Google bot that crawls the site not perform this same validation? From what I am aware, in practice there are a large number of sites which provide different content or different behavior in response to the GoogleBot user-agent.
- kodablah 8y ago
  And yet we are still OK with its results everywhere else right?
  - dumbfounder 8y ago
    The benefits are nebulous in other instances. Here they are much more concrete, and thus will undoubtedly (in my mind) be abused to a much higher degree.

kevingadd 8y ago

We need an HTML lite but AMP doesn't get us anywhere close to it because it's a custom dialect of HTML driven by a bunch of proprietary Javascript. The google search spider enforcing a 'lite' subset would have gotten us closer, if not there entirely. We know they can do it because the spider runs JavaScript, they could examine loaded content and measure time to first content. They don't because it's way more effective to get content providers into a walled garden where they can be monetized.

Endy 8y ago

Re: "HTML Lite" - I think there's already a pretty solid solution. Hand-coded HTML 3 without any CSS, ECMAScript, or other dynamic elements. That always worked pretty well for me, and pages that could load acceptably on 28.8 would be absolutely mind-blowingly fast now. Of course, that would put the power of web design back in the hands of the average user rather than exclusively designers and devs. Because of that, I don't think we'll ever see that becoming an option again. Or, based on the browser I use when I care about speed, can we design pages around the constraints of Lynx/Links/eLinks? The CSS layouts work when called for, menus work in text-mode, but without images, *.js, and all the other Web annoyances, everything loads quick even on the worst connections.

endorphone 8y ago
The concept of HTML Lite is about restrictions that the source is forced to live within. As with AMP, it would not be an honor system. It would not be something that maybe that random link would conform to, but way more likely it wouldn't. If I were looking for song lyrics, or a recipe, or schedule information, etc, I would be browsing in HTML Lite mode. I don't want popovers, subscribe now boxes, animated bullshit, etc. My root post is sitting in the negatives right now, and I own that and embrace it because it is how discussions about AMP always go on HN. A bunch of web developers herd in to tell us how terrible AMP is while the web gets more and more bloated, more and more destructive and tragedy of the commons, and we all layer on various shoehorned, half-assed solutions to fight back (e.g. Ad blockers, nuisance blockers, tracking blockers, etc).
- Endy 8y ago
  Well, I'll say this much about AMP and how it is: I actively avoid it; but then again, I don't use GMail, I search with DDG or Exalead most of the time, etc. I like the idea, I hate the implementation. I don't like a single corporation determining the course of the Web. I like the idea of a constrained standard. Then again, I also like the unrealistic idea of a single monolithic standard. When I got into making webpages, you had HTML and that was it. Then they said, "well, if you want to do some cool stuff, use CSS in addition to HTML". And now, they're trying to make it so that creating a website without using CSS or JS is completely impossible. Really, what you're saying you want just links back to what I suggested - disable remote CSS (preferably also inline but that's a pipe-dream), disable JavaScript, disable images, and turn your content blocker on full blast. Either that or just use Links. It works for me and blocks all the crud so I can get the content I actually want. The only thing I'd like to do with Links is to change the terminal colors it uses (which I don't think I can do in Windows - if you know how please do tell me). HTML was a fine language for what it does, and it still serves as a very solid core for a Web made of pure content. Only a Web made up of utter corporate nonsense needs scripting.

int_19h 8y ago

Well, speaking as a web user, I hate AMP, and actively avoid websites where there's no other option. The reasons? Most of all, I don't like how they break the Back button in strange ways (I still haven't figured out how exactly it's supposed to operate, but it's certainly not working as it usually does in a web browser). And I don't like that all URLs are showing up as Google. In abstract, I also don't like the notion of giving Google that much power. Even if what you say makes sense, and regulation is necessary, a private company doing it is the worst of both worlds - they are not accountable to the rest of us, and they have their own goals that contradict the public good.

fudoo 8y ago

AMP promises me that the site won't load.