Thanks for the links--I checked out the AMP event. This quote and after got me thinking: > From a user perspective, they want to see...where is this content co

Thanks for the links--I checked out the AMP event. This quote and after got me thinking: > From a user perspective, they want to see...where is this content coming from? It's interesting because it sounds like he's saying: If the bits are coming from Service Y and not literally "Joe's Closet," we want to show people that this Service Y stuff (like Google's AMP URL for Joe's content) is essentially still Joe's Closet. I'd be more worried for domain registrars in this case than anything. URLs could indeed stop being so meaningful as a faux-ID, because now Joe has much more flexibility and less concern for this or that domain. URL segments to the right of the domain name will be even more of a back-office concern than they are now. And the big infrastructure cats like Google, who "own" the methods by which published things are effectively spread to audiences, get to now "own" the content, but only if you look at "own" through the old URL-based lens. That's interesting because after this change, what does "my own digital real estate" mean? It effectively means that I own an identity or group of identities, and now vendors get to compete for rights to carry or express my identity. URLs were similar but this can remove a deceptive that's-a-scam-site-even-though-my-name-is-in-the-URL part and allow in a Google-owned-domain part. And hopefully there really will be more than one entity that can compete. Right now the scary part is that for example if I'm using AMP to publish news, Google gets to express my "everything ADHD news" by default, because they have so much leverage there. (I did catch myself using !gn a lot this week in DDG...mmmph) Anyway: Remember when you HAD to have a .com to be taken seriously? Wow, "those were the days" comments incoming in the next 5-10 years if this lands well... Still, I don't know if it's "good" or "bad" so much as another layer through which to work with connectivity. > What happens if your “web identity” certificate expires or is revoked/blacklisted? Does your web identity certificate require a separate yearly fee from the domain name? Or maybe more practically: If you have like 100 different hobbies, is a single identity certificate which becomes associated with one of those hobbies going to jack up your chances of getting "found" in some way for the other hobbies? URLs handle this really well. Also, think about some pretty-good-case benefits: Your domain name or URL problems will no longer get in the way of your "stamp of quality" identity, assuming your identity is looked at well _by some content consumer or group of content consumers_. You have always been a brand just by having a name and an objectively-sense-able set of properties. Now the subjective question is deepened--the quality of what you produce and represent.