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I'd love for Google to explain the justification for putting _only_ AMP content in the "Top Stories" carousel. Google needs to either rename the carousel to be

I'd love for Google to explain the justification for putting _only_ AMP content in the "Top Stories" carousel. Google needs to either rename the carousel to be "Top AMP stories" or allow non-AMP stories to appear in the carousel. Isn't the whole purpose of search to prioritize the most relevant content, regardless of the type of HTML used to create it?

ben_jones 8y ago
No the purpose of Google Search is to facilitate selling Ads.
lern_too_spel 8y ago
I'm not Google, but the reason is obvious to anyone who understands AMP. Only AMP can be guaranteed safe to preload through static analysis, and a carousel lets the search results page figure out which pages to preload trivially (the results currently visible in the the carousel).
- realusername 8y ago
  > Only AMP can be guaranteed safe to preload through static analysis No, AMP pages can't be proven safe, because with AMP you can include ads which are a very common vector of malware.(if I understand your comment)
  - lern_too_spel 8y ago
    Ads aren't preloaded in AMP pages. Also, I don't think you understood my comment. I mean safe as in not deanonymizing the user to pages they don't visit. If you preload a non-AMP page, you have deanonymized your user to a third party publisher and the ad servers on that page.
    - realusername 8y ago
      > Ads aren't preloaded in AMP pages. That does not make a big difference. > Also, I don't think you understood my comment. I mean safe as in not deanonymizing the user to pages they don't visit. If you preload a non-AMP page, you have deanonymized your user to a third party publisher and the ad servers on that page. Sorry I still don't get it, with AMP it's exactly the same except that 3rd party is the Google AMP server. You can also load analytics & trackers with AMP as well. There's no privacy in the AMP design goals.
      - underwater 8y ago
        If Google allowed arbitrary pages in the carousel, and then preloaded those pages, then BBC and BuzzFeed could insert trackers that let them know what you searched for even if you never click on a result. This is not true for AMP analytics because Google define the JS and can defer sending analytics events until after the user has clicked on an item in the carousel. Google can either preload content, allow non-AMP pages, protect users from data leakage, but not all three at once. They have chosen to sacrifice non-AMP content.
        realusername 8y ago
        > If Google allowed arbitrary pages in the carousel, and then preloaded those pages, then BBC and BuzzFeed could insert trackers that let them know what you searched for even if you never click on a result. There's nothing you can do with the carousels that they can't do by just parsing the content or meta tags they could have defined. And when you click on the carousel, it could have redirected to their page. And before you talk about the "speed" of preloading like I've seen this argument over and over again on AMP threads, AMP could have defined an HTTP header which would have made the browser understand it's an AMP page and load the cached AMP JS (among other stuff like refusing to load non-AMP content), there's no technical need for an AMP server.
        joegahona 8y ago
        Google can choose to sacrifice non-AMP content. But the header above this feature should read something like "AMP Content," not "Top Stories." The latter strongly implies that those are the most relevant results from the user's web search, but they are not. They are a subset of the most relevant results from the user's web query. A more precise and less misleading heading would be appropriate.
- geofft 8y ago
  > Only AMP can be guaranteed safe to preload through static analysis This isn't how static analysis works. Yes, the halting problem says you can't determine safety of any possible input in a Turing-complete language, and yes, JS is Turing-complete. But it doesn't say you can't determine safety of some inputs. You can write an algorithm that outputs "Yes," "No," and "I don't know" just fine. Google can, if they desire, specify some rules / annotations that would help its analyzer answer "Yes" to more pages. They've chosen not to do that, and instead to only build an analyzer for AMP. Besides, preloading pages is about fetching content, not rendering them, I think.
  - cromwellian 8y ago
    > specify some rules / annotations that would help its analyzer answer "Yes" to more pages Isn't that exactly what AMP is? Whatever "rules" Google specifies will in fact, define a DSL/subset of HTML that can efficiently answer "yes". As people demand more and more capability in this ruleset, eventually you'll end up with something like AMP, only the syntax will be slightly different, but the fact that it is a weird subset of HTML will remain.
    - cyxxon 8y ago
      In a way yes, but isn't one of the "rules" that is has to be cached/re-served from Googles servers as well? That is a rather problematic one, especially wrt antitrust issues...
      - lern_too_spel 8y ago
        No, those rules guarantee that the page is safe to preload. It will also be cached and preloaded by Bing, Baidu, and Cloudflare.
  - lern_too_spel 8y ago
    AMP doesn't allow arbitrary JS. It only allows a fixed set of components. That's what makes it amenable to (trivial) static analysis -- just verify that the page contains only the elements allowed by AMP.
- codedokode 8y ago
  Cannot this problem be solved by producing a text-only version of the page using Firefox's reading mode algorithm that removes everything except the article text? This way publishers don't have to invest resources in making a second version of their site.
  - Godel_unicode 8y ago
    Good luck browsing news stories with video content or image slideshows. Also publisher analytics, advertising, and all the other basic staples of web journalism. But yes, if you completely change everything about the business model of online news, reader mode might be viable.
    - dmitriid 8y ago
      Let me introduce you to USA Today European Experience: https://eu.usatoday.com https://eu.usatoday.com It’s possible to create a non-bloated fast news website. Neither publishers nor Google are interested in that.
      - Godel_unicode 8y ago
        > Neither publishers nor Google are interested in that. See previous comment about the way the online news business works.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      > *Also publisher analytics, advertising, and all the other basic staples of web journalism. But yes, if you completely change everything about the business model of online news (...). Yes, this is the solution and should be the ultimate goal to fight for. Those "staples" are precisely what's ruining the web journalism, and the Internet at large.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
justinph 8y ago
I've asked the AMP team exactly this and they punted and demurred on the subject and said they have some vague plans to some day make it also contain sites that are as fast as AMP. The AMP team will tell you that they are concerned with making the web faster, and it's the _search_ team that controls the carousel. Which is all well and good, but I can tell you that the _only_ reason any publisher is doing AMP is because they want the placement in the carousel and better search results. As far as I can tell, google has no intention of ever allowing non-amp content they can't re-serve from their cache and add whatever analytics and tracking they want to from being ranked highly. AMP is a tactic to let them track the most lucrative mobile web users and take control away from publishers of original content.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- devoply 8y ago
  There should be a law!
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    There should be, but there won't be, at least not anytime soon. This is still the wild west. Google is the corrupt sheriff whose task is to keep the place relatively safe and productive and is politically clear to enrich himself by his position, as no one else is going to pay him and no one important cares. Give it another fifty years and the web will finish civilizing.
    - john-radio 8y ago
      > Give it another fifty years I see you have not been following the CO2 news.
    - jacobolus 8y ago
      Does “civilizing” mean “entirely taken over by feudal lords instead of just mostly”?
snek 8y ago
The reason I have gotten from google employees is that the top stories carousel preloads content, and that in order to preload content without leaking a user's searches, google needs to serve their own cached version of a page. in order to make sure that cached version of a page isn't doing anything tricky, they need to heavily limit what it can do. it's not about making the internet faster, it's about making it easy for google's stupid scroller.
- codedokode 8y ago
  Another thing might be that this way Google can observe user's behaviour: how much time they spent reading the article, what part did they read carefully etc. which is only possible if the user stays on Google's domain.
  - thrwwysearcheng 8y ago
    Throwaway for a Google search engineer here. I can tell you we aren’t interested in that at search as a signal, but publishers who are interested can run their own analytics through our platform. I’m not aware of any that do it to that level of granular detail.
    - brazzledazzle 8y ago
      It would seem odd for Google to focus on that level of detail unless they’re producing the content. They know what you searched for, what content is on the page and if/when you came back to Google. How long you spent on a specific paragraph or image doesn’t seem like it would help Google improve search or target ads better.
      - indigo945 8y ago
        It does help with improving search, though, because you now have data that shows that the words in that paragraph are somehow closely related to the search term. This is relevant data to feed into the ML models.
- 8y ago
jeromebaek 8y ago
What do you think? :-) it's obvious, it's capitalism, isn't it?
petre 8y ago
They're looking at another antitrust case in the EU.
- tjpnz 8y ago
  It certainly smells of the shady shit Microsoft was doing back in the day.
3xblah 8y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12542782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12542782 AMP is search engine "paid placement" reborn. The "payment" is letting Google serve the pages and do the user tracking.

ben_jones 8y ago

No the purpose of Google Search is to facilitate selling Ads.

lern_too_spel 8y ago

I'm not Google, but the reason is obvious to anyone who understands AMP. Only AMP can be guaranteed safe to preload through static analysis, and a carousel lets the search results page figure out which pages to preload trivially (the results currently visible in the the carousel).

realusername 8y ago
> Only AMP can be guaranteed safe to preload through static analysis No, AMP pages can't be proven safe, because with AMP you can include ads which are a very common vector of malware.(if I understand your comment)
- lern_too_spel 8y ago
  Ads aren't preloaded in AMP pages. Also, I don't think you understood my comment. I mean safe as in not deanonymizing the user to pages they don't visit. If you preload a non-AMP page, you have deanonymized your user to a third party publisher and the ad servers on that page.
  - realusername 8y ago
    > Ads aren't preloaded in AMP pages. That does not make a big difference. > Also, I don't think you understood my comment. I mean safe as in not deanonymizing the user to pages they don't visit. If you preload a non-AMP page, you have deanonymized your user to a third party publisher and the ad servers on that page. Sorry I still don't get it, with AMP it's exactly the same except that 3rd party is the Google AMP server. You can also load analytics & trackers with AMP as well. There's no privacy in the AMP design goals.
    - underwater 8y ago
      If Google allowed arbitrary pages in the carousel, and then preloaded those pages, then BBC and BuzzFeed could insert trackers that let them know what you searched for even if you never click on a result. This is not true for AMP analytics because Google define the JS and can defer sending analytics events until after the user has clicked on an item in the carousel. Google can either preload content, allow non-AMP pages, protect users from data leakage, but not all three at once. They have chosen to sacrifice non-AMP content.
      - realusername 8y ago
        > If Google allowed arbitrary pages in the carousel, and then preloaded those pages, then BBC and BuzzFeed could insert trackers that let them know what you searched for even if you never click on a result. There's nothing you can do with the carousels that they can't do by just parsing the content or meta tags they could have defined. And when you click on the carousel, it could have redirected to their page. And before you talk about the "speed" of preloading like I've seen this argument over and over again on AMP threads, AMP could have defined an HTTP header which would have made the browser understand it's an AMP page and load the cached AMP JS (among other stuff like refusing to load non-AMP content), there's no technical need for an AMP server.
      - joegahona 8y ago
        Google can choose to sacrifice non-AMP content. But the header above this feature should read something like "AMP Content," not "Top Stories." The latter strongly implies that those are the most relevant results from the user's web search, but they are not. They are a subset of the most relevant results from the user's web query. A more precise and less misleading heading would be appropriate.
geofft 8y ago
> Only AMP can be guaranteed safe to preload through static analysis This isn't how static analysis works. Yes, the halting problem says you can't determine safety of any possible input in a Turing-complete language, and yes, JS is Turing-complete. But it doesn't say you can't determine safety of some inputs. You can write an algorithm that outputs "Yes," "No," and "I don't know" just fine. Google can, if they desire, specify some rules / annotations that would help its analyzer answer "Yes" to more pages. They've chosen not to do that, and instead to only build an analyzer for AMP. Besides, preloading pages is about fetching content, not rendering them, I think.
- cromwellian 8y ago
  > specify some rules / annotations that would help its analyzer answer "Yes" to more pages Isn't that exactly what AMP is? Whatever "rules" Google specifies will in fact, define a DSL/subset of HTML that can efficiently answer "yes". As people demand more and more capability in this ruleset, eventually you'll end up with something like AMP, only the syntax will be slightly different, but the fact that it is a weird subset of HTML will remain.
  - cyxxon 8y ago
    In a way yes, but isn't one of the "rules" that is has to be cached/re-served from Googles servers as well? That is a rather problematic one, especially wrt antitrust issues...
    - lern_too_spel 8y ago
      No, those rules guarantee that the page is safe to preload. It will also be cached and preloaded by Bing, Baidu, and Cloudflare.
- lern_too_spel 8y ago
  AMP doesn't allow arbitrary JS. It only allows a fixed set of components. That's what makes it amenable to (trivial) static analysis -- just verify that the page contains only the elements allowed by AMP.
codedokode 8y ago
Cannot this problem be solved by producing a text-only version of the page using Firefox's reading mode algorithm that removes everything except the article text? This way publishers don't have to invest resources in making a second version of their site.
- Godel_unicode 8y ago
  Good luck browsing news stories with video content or image slideshows. Also publisher analytics, advertising, and all the other basic staples of web journalism. But yes, if you completely change everything about the business model of online news, reader mode might be viable.
  - dmitriid 8y ago
    Let me introduce you to USA Today European Experience: https://eu.usatoday.com https://eu.usatoday.com It’s possible to create a non-bloated fast news website. Neither publishers nor Google are interested in that.
    - Godel_unicode 8y ago
      > Neither publishers nor Google are interested in that. See previous comment about the way the online news business works.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > *Also publisher analytics, advertising, and all the other basic staples of web journalism. But yes, if you completely change everything about the business model of online news (...). Yes, this is the solution and should be the ultimate goal to fight for. Those "staples" are precisely what's ruining the web journalism, and the Internet at large.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

justinph 8y ago

I've asked the AMP team exactly this and they punted and demurred on the subject and said they have some vague plans to some day make it also contain sites that are as fast as AMP. The AMP team will tell you that they are concerned with making the web faster, and it's the _search_ team that controls the carousel. Which is all well and good, but I can tell you that the _only_ reason any publisher is doing AMP is because they want the placement in the carousel and better search results. As far as I can tell, google has no intention of ever allowing non-amp content they can't re-serve from their cache and add whatever analytics and tracking they want to from being ranked highly. AMP is a tactic to let them track the most lucrative mobile web users and take control away from publishers of original content.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
devoply 8y ago
There should be a law!
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  There should be, but there won't be, at least not anytime soon. This is still the wild west. Google is the corrupt sheriff whose task is to keep the place relatively safe and productive and is politically clear to enrich himself by his position, as no one else is going to pay him and no one important cares. Give it another fifty years and the web will finish civilizing.
  - john-radio 8y ago
    > Give it another fifty years I see you have not been following the CO2 news.
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    Does “civilizing” mean “entirely taken over by feudal lords instead of just mostly”?

snek 8y ago

The reason I have gotten from google employees is that the top stories carousel preloads content, and that in order to preload content without leaking a user's searches, google needs to serve their own cached version of a page. in order to make sure that cached version of a page isn't doing anything tricky, they need to heavily limit what it can do. it's not about making the internet faster, it's about making it easy for google's stupid scroller.

codedokode 8y ago
Another thing might be that this way Google can observe user's behaviour: how much time they spent reading the article, what part did they read carefully etc. which is only possible if the user stays on Google's domain.
- thrwwysearcheng 8y ago
  Throwaway for a Google search engineer here. I can tell you we aren’t interested in that at search as a signal, but publishers who are interested can run their own analytics through our platform. I’m not aware of any that do it to that level of granular detail.
  - brazzledazzle 8y ago
    It would seem odd for Google to focus on that level of detail unless they’re producing the content. They know what you searched for, what content is on the page and if/when you came back to Google. How long you spent on a specific paragraph or image doesn’t seem like it would help Google improve search or target ads better.
    - indigo945 8y ago
      It does help with improving search, though, because you now have data that shows that the words in that paragraph are somehow closely related to the search term. This is relevant data to feed into the ML models.
8y ago

jeromebaek 8y ago

What do you think? :-) it's obvious, it's capitalism, isn't it?

petre 8y ago

They're looking at another antitrust case in the EU.

tjpnz 8y ago
It certainly smells of the shady shit Microsoft was doing back in the day.

3xblah 8y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12542782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12542782 AMP is search engine "paid placement" reborn. The "payment" is letting Google serve the pages and do the user tracking.