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The difference between "stealing traffic" and the "Google Search Mobile is a captive newsreader" is nuanced. It's surprising and upsetting to people when they

The difference between "stealing traffic" and the "Google Search Mobile is a captive newsreader" is nuanced. It's surprising and upsetting to people when they find out that in Google Search Mobile, their attempt to navigate to an AMP-lightning-marked search result doesn't result in a navigation to the target site, while an attempt to navigate to a non-AMP search result does go to the target site, as one would damn well expect. It's upsetting, because the designers of Google Search Mobile have gone through great lengths to hide the fact that the navigation didn't occur, and have adopted UI elements that intentionally try to mimic familiar navigation cues from browsers, rather than playing up the fact that they're viewing proxied content in a wrapping frame. On the other hand, the 'stealing traffic' critique is memetic from a catchy title by a much-revised blog post, and seems to genuinely be upset that bytes that would ordinarily be transferred between the end user and the article's originating host stop short of of the distant origin [1], and get served from a Google-owned CDN instead. It's a technically unsound mishmash of complaints, most probably deriving from the aforementioned behavior of the Google Search Mobile page, but imbued with the subtext that Google is exploiting publishers by providing a CDN. That's absurd. Maybe Google's exploiting publishers with its captive newsreader, but not by providing a CDN. [1] https://www.alexkras.com/google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile-traffic/ https://www.alexkras.com/google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile-...

MrStonedOne 8y ago
Stealing traffic also means stealing information about how many hits a page has if such is recorded via the webserver logs. Honestly third party websites serving a proxy/cdn/transparent cache of a website is something that should require affirmative consent from either side of the party. Something Google is not getting, and as such stealing traffic is an acceptable critique. It also reduces the security of the website by allowing users to get used to it being hosted from a google search page. SEO an imposter website that shows the same fake ui border and phish logins, the user wouldn't notice as it looks absolutely normal. (Something I might make a grey hat attempt at just because it's likely the only way to get google to stop doing it.)
- niftich 8y ago
  The publisher of the AMP content can configure hooks into their analytics solution [1]. These events can fire during any AMP pageview. Given this, I'm not convinced they'll mourn the lack of httpd logs. The typical practice for CDNs is that only the publisher consents; the CDN assumes responsibility for routing and serving the content (and has the private key for the origin's cert, to masquerade as them), and the requester doesn't get a choice. This isn't whataboutism, just an observation that CDNs are always the choice of the content originator, and never the content requester, who possesses few tools to convincingly tell the two apart. [1] https://www.ampproject.org/docs/analytics/analytics_amp https://www.ampproject.org/docs/analytics/analytics_amp
  - lucideer 8y ago
    I think the main point here from an analytics perspective is that, even if you don't choose to use Google Analytics or opt for any other service from Google, if you implement the (allegedly non-Google) AMP specification, Google gets to analyse your users while they browse your content, even after they've clicked away from the Google results page and are—for all intents and purposes—browsing a non-Google property. This is in contravention of both user and publisher expectations, and is non-optional for both parties.
alangibson 8y ago
Google is not 'providing' a CDN. Google is inserting a CDN between its search and my servers on its own initiative and without asking me how I felt about it.
- thedevilslawyer 8y ago
  > without asking me how I felt about it If you enabled AMP, they asked and you answered.
lucideer 8y ago
> It's a technically unsound mishmash of complaints, most probably deriving from the aforementioned behavior of the Google Search Mobile page, but imbued with the subtext that Google is exploiting publishers by providing a CDN. That's absurd. Maybe Google's exploiting publishers with its captive newsreader, but not by providing a CDN. Sorry if I'm missing some vital sentence in your analysis, but I can't see where you explain what exactly is absurd about it? How is Google's AMP cache not stealing traffic from the origin site? This is exactly what they're doing from a technical perspective: this seems to me to be an unambiguous fact.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > How is Google's AMP cache not stealing traffic from the origin site? Traffic is a cost. Advertising impressions have value, and usually correlate to traffic, and analytics associated with the traffic has value, but AMP is designed to allow content owners to control and benefit from advertising, and recieve analytics, even though the content is served from a third-party cache (which Google isn't the only party operating.) What is the operator of the original site losing aside from costs associated with serving traffic?

MrStonedOne 8y ago

Stealing traffic also means stealing information about how many hits a page has if such is recorded via the webserver logs. Honestly third party websites serving a proxy/cdn/transparent cache of a website is something that should require affirmative consent from either side of the party. Something Google is not getting, and as such stealing traffic is an acceptable critique. It also reduces the security of the website by allowing users to get used to it being hosted from a google search page. SEO an imposter website that shows the same fake ui border and phish logins, the user wouldn't notice as it looks absolutely normal. (Something I might make a grey hat attempt at just because it's likely the only way to get google to stop doing it.)

niftich 8y ago
The publisher of the AMP content can configure hooks into their analytics solution [1]. These events can fire during any AMP pageview. Given this, I'm not convinced they'll mourn the lack of httpd logs. The typical practice for CDNs is that only the publisher consents; the CDN assumes responsibility for routing and serving the content (and has the private key for the origin's cert, to masquerade as them), and the requester doesn't get a choice. This isn't whataboutism, just an observation that CDNs are always the choice of the content originator, and never the content requester, who possesses few tools to convincingly tell the two apart. [1] https://www.ampproject.org/docs/analytics/analytics_amp https://www.ampproject.org/docs/analytics/analytics_amp
- lucideer 8y ago
  I think the main point here from an analytics perspective is that, even if you don't choose to use Google Analytics or opt for any other service from Google, if you implement the (allegedly non-Google) AMP specification, Google gets to analyse your users while they browse your content, even after they've clicked away from the Google results page and are—for all intents and purposes—browsing a non-Google property. This is in contravention of both user and publisher expectations, and is non-optional for both parties.

alangibson 8y ago

Google is not 'providing' a CDN. Google is inserting a CDN between its search and my servers on its own initiative and without asking me how I felt about it.

thedevilslawyer 8y ago
> without asking me how I felt about it If you enabled AMP, they asked and you answered.

lucideer 8y ago

> It's a technically unsound mishmash of complaints, most probably deriving from the aforementioned behavior of the Google Search Mobile page, but imbued with the subtext that Google is exploiting publishers by providing a CDN. That's absurd. Maybe Google's exploiting publishers with its captive newsreader, but not by providing a CDN. Sorry if I'm missing some vital sentence in your analysis, but I can't see where you explain what exactly is absurd about it? How is Google's AMP cache not stealing traffic from the origin site? This is exactly what they're doing from a technical perspective: this seems to me to be an unambiguous fact.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> How is Google's AMP cache not stealing traffic from the origin site? Traffic is a cost. Advertising impressions have value, and usually correlate to traffic, and analytics associated with the traffic has value, but AMP is designed to allow content owners to control and benefit from advertising, and recieve analytics, even though the content is served from a third-party cache (which Google isn't the only party operating.) What is the operator of the original site losing aside from costs associated with serving traffic?