5 ms·

I abhor it on mobile. I can't navigate away from it easily, it's hard to copy paste annurl to share with others, etc. I wish Chrome had the option to disable it

I abhor it on mobile. I can't navigate away from it easily, it's hard to copy paste annurl to share with others, etc. I wish Chrome had the option to disable it, but of course they don't.

madeofpalk 8y ago
> I can't navigate away from it easily eh? You can't hit 'back'?
- tyingq 8y ago
  It does hijack the back button for carousel loaded pages in a way that's odd. Search for some newsworthy word, say "trump". Click a carousel story. Swipe right (another hijack), and the page loads a story from a competitor to the publisher of the original loaded AMP page. Now, hit the back button. One assumes it would go to the original loaded story, right? Nope, it goes back to Google. Surely that wasn't intentional, right?
  - grogenaut 8y ago
    Going back to google makes sense as my intention is to read the news of the day, not cross reference. Stack behavior would drive me crazy here.
    - tyingq 8y ago
      I suppose, but that sort of reinforces the real purpose of AMP. No publisher in their right mind would give up the top part of their page and enable left/right swipe to navigate to competitors, give up the back button control, etc. It's basically a protection racket. Pay up (in control terms), or get pushed down the search results page. Feels a lot like the old "digg bar" (https://moz.com/ugc/die-diggbar-die-die-should-you-kill-the-digg-bar-on-your-website https://moz.com/ugc/die-diggbar-die-die-should-you-kill-the-...)
      - grogenaut 8y ago
        For me though, they already have. I don't browse via their nav. I spearfish articles and I'm out. I find most news sites navigation and search garbage and have to resort to site: searches
      - criddell 8y ago
        > No publisher in their right mind would give up the top part of their page and enable left/right swipe to navigate to competitors Publishers usually do not make good decisions. That behavior is for users and (IMHO) it's great.
        notahacker 8y ago
        That behaviour is for Google, not for users.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  It constantly breaks the back button and screws up my history.
- AnssiH 8y ago
  They might also mean "go to the non-AMP version", which is my main issue with AMP. I'd like to get the non-AMP page to e.g. see user comments (if any) which are often omitted from the AMP version, or for posting the non-AMP URL to friends or social media. Sometimes there is an easy way to go to non-AMP page, depending on how you got there, but most of the time for me there is not. For example, this article just appeared on my Google feed on my phone, with no way to open the non-AMP version: https://www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/wda7jm/where-does-he-get-those-terrible-toys-an-interview-with-ashens-008 https://www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/wda7jm/where-does-he-... My preferred option would be to have AMP permanently disabled on my phone.
  - freedomben 8y ago
    I couldn't agree more. The problem with AMP is that it isn't possible to disable it. Other than that, I appreciate what Google is trying to do, even if their implementation has a few flaws.
  - yorwba 8y ago
    How to disable AMP permanently on your phone: - stop using Google feed. I can't recommend a one-stop replacement, since I use RSS to follow sites I trust to produce high-quality content and HN to discover new stuff. - stop using other Google products that link to AMP pages. DuckDuckGo is good enough these days. - use Firefox. That in itself might prevent Google search from showing AMP results, if you can't bear to use DDG. At least someone said so two years ago in this thread on Google's product forums https://productforums.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=topic/news/ixPneB4vpGk https://productforums.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=t... - install https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/ in Firefox. It still needs to load the AMP page to grab the canonical URL, but then it redirects to the non-AMP version. You can also add an adblocker like uBlock Origin while you're at it. The ability to install addons is what makes Firefox the best mobile browser in my opinion.
    - emayljames 8y ago
      I just thought of this great Ffox addon that I use too. AMP pages are not real web pages. They are awful.
freedomben 8y ago
I'm agnostic on AMP, but I very much agree with you that they should add the option to disable. Android is all about choice and user empowerment! That's why I love it
- cronix 8y ago
  > Android is all about choice and user empowerment! I disagree, strongly. I believe Android is really more about keeping you in the Google ecosystem. So is AMP, so is Chrome. I'm an Android user, but let's not pretend they are really about "choice and user empowerment." That's just the sales pitch. Every single thing Google creates is to collect information on/from us, because that's their revenue model. Selling our data. If you disagree, compare the ad revenue from all of them. Who's is miles ahead? Why? How? You're giving them your data. A LOT of it.
  - freedomben 8y ago
    Agreed regarding ulterior motives (keeping you in their ecosystem). In the excellent book "In The Plex" by Steven Levy, he talks about Google's motivation of essentially building a browser, mobile OS, etc just to ensure that some other party (like Apple) doesn't cut them out and reduce their search/ad domination. I believe protecting search/ads is at the base of their motives (as is, undeniably, vacuuming up tons of data and mining it for ML purposes). But that said, why do so much for open source? Why not keep big things proprietary? Why sell Chromebooks that can be unlocked, put in dev mode, and flashed with FOSS BIOS implementations? Why allow unlocking the bootloader on Nexus and Pixel phones? There's lots of things they do that clearly aren't for the bottom line or just to trap you in their ecosystem (they do offer versions of basically everything for iOS as well, which makes it easier to switch to iPhone even if you are deep in the Google ecosystem). Some of my argument is emotionally based tho, I will admit. After being trapped in Apple's very proprietary, anti-competitive, you-dont-own-it-we-do system, I find the ability to reclaim some freedom (tho not all, they could do better) very nice. So I think our only real disagreement is likely regarding motives.
    - pdkl95 8y ago

I abhor it on mobile. I can't navigate away from it easily, it's hard to copy paste annurl to share with others, etc. I wish Chrome had the option to disable it, but of course they don't.

madeofpalk 8y ago

> I can't navigate away from it easily eh? You can't hit 'back'?

tyingq 8y ago
It does hijack the back button for carousel loaded pages in a way that's odd. Search for some newsworthy word, say "trump". Click a carousel story. Swipe right (another hijack), and the page loads a story from a competitor to the publisher of the original loaded AMP page. Now, hit the back button. One assumes it would go to the original loaded story, right? Nope, it goes back to Google. Surely that wasn't intentional, right?
- grogenaut 8y ago
  Going back to google makes sense as my intention is to read the news of the day, not cross reference. Stack behavior would drive me crazy here.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    I suppose, but that sort of reinforces the real purpose of AMP. No publisher in their right mind would give up the top part of their page and enable left/right swipe to navigate to competitors, give up the back button control, etc. It's basically a protection racket. Pay up (in control terms), or get pushed down the search results page. Feels a lot like the old "digg bar" (https://moz.com/ugc/die-diggbar-die-die-should-you-kill-the-digg-bar-on-your-website https://moz.com/ugc/die-diggbar-die-die-should-you-kill-the-...)
    - grogenaut 8y ago
      For me though, they already have. I don't browse via their nav. I spearfish articles and I'm out. I find most news sites navigation and search garbage and have to resort to site: searches
    - criddell 8y ago
      > No publisher in their right mind would give up the top part of their page and enable left/right swipe to navigate to competitors Publishers usually do not make good decisions. That behavior is for users and (IMHO) it's great.
      - notahacker 8y ago
        That behaviour is for Google, not for users.
ryanwaggoner 8y ago
It constantly breaks the back button and screws up my history.
AnssiH 8y ago
They might also mean "go to the non-AMP version", which is my main issue with AMP. I'd like to get the non-AMP page to e.g. see user comments (if any) which are often omitted from the AMP version, or for posting the non-AMP URL to friends or social media. Sometimes there is an easy way to go to non-AMP page, depending on how you got there, but most of the time for me there is not. For example, this article just appeared on my Google feed on my phone, with no way to open the non-AMP version: https://www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/wda7jm/where-does-he-get-those-terrible-toys-an-interview-with-ashens-008 https://www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/wda7jm/where-does-he-... My preferred option would be to have AMP permanently disabled on my phone.
- freedomben 8y ago
  I couldn't agree more. The problem with AMP is that it isn't possible to disable it. Other than that, I appreciate what Google is trying to do, even if their implementation has a few flaws.
- yorwba 8y ago
  How to disable AMP permanently on your phone: - stop using Google feed. I can't recommend a one-stop replacement, since I use RSS to follow sites I trust to produce high-quality content and HN to discover new stuff. - stop using other Google products that link to AMP pages. DuckDuckGo is good enough these days. - use Firefox. That in itself might prevent Google search from showing AMP results, if you can't bear to use DDG. At least someone said so two years ago in this thread on Google's product forums https://productforums.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=topic/news/ixPneB4vpGk https://productforums.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=t... - install https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/ in Firefox. It still needs to load the AMP page to grab the canonical URL, but then it redirects to the non-AMP version. You can also add an adblocker like uBlock Origin while you're at it. The ability to install addons is what makes Firefox the best mobile browser in my opinion.
  - emayljames 8y ago
    I just thought of this great Ffox addon that I use too. AMP pages are not real web pages. They are awful.

freedomben 8y ago

I'm agnostic on AMP, but I very much agree with you that they should add the option to disable. Android is all about choice and user empowerment! That's why I love it

cronix 8y ago
> Android is all about choice and user empowerment! I disagree, strongly. I believe Android is really more about keeping you in the Google ecosystem. So is AMP, so is Chrome. I'm an Android user, but let's not pretend they are really about "choice and user empowerment." That's just the sales pitch. Every single thing Google creates is to collect information on/from us, because that's their revenue model. Selling our data. If you disagree, compare the ad revenue from all of them. Who's is miles ahead? Why? How? You're giving them your data. A LOT of it.
- freedomben 8y ago
  Agreed regarding ulterior motives (keeping you in their ecosystem). In the excellent book "In The Plex" by Steven Levy, he talks about Google's motivation of essentially building a browser, mobile OS, etc just to ensure that some other party (like Apple) doesn't cut them out and reduce their search/ad domination. I believe protecting search/ads is at the base of their motives (as is, undeniably, vacuuming up tons of data and mining it for ML purposes). But that said, why do so much for open source? Why not keep big things proprietary? Why sell Chromebooks that can be unlocked, put in dev mode, and flashed with FOSS BIOS implementations? Why allow unlocking the bootloader on Nexus and Pixel phones? There's lots of things they do that clearly aren't for the bottom line or just to trap you in their ecosystem (they do offer versions of basically everything for iOS as well, which makes it easier to switch to iPhone even if you are deep in the Google ecosystem). Some of my argument is emotionally based tho, I will admit. After being trapped in Apple's very proprietary, anti-competitive, you-dont-own-it-we-do system, I find the ability to reclaim some freedom (tho not all, they could do better) very nice. So I think our only real disagreement is likely regarding motives.
  - pdkl95 8y ago