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AMP limits what the page can do, and allows Google to safely serve content through a cache. So Google can preload and prerender the page in an iframe. As a resu

AMP limits what the page can do, and allows Google to safely serve content through a cache. So Google can preload and prerender the page in an iframe. As a result clicks on the carousel are literally instant. That can't be done safely with a regular HTML page.

warent 8y ago
I can't help but wonder what problem they're solving for. Is there a huge market of people clamoring to make webpages load faster than they already do?
- yathern 8y ago
  Yes. In many areas where phones are the main tool used to access the internet, and coverage is primarily still 3G. Not defending AMP - but making pages load faster is still something people want and need.
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    For a lot of niches usage is > 50% mobile already.
- Godel_unicode 8y ago
  Yes.
- taytus 8y ago
  There are billions of people with capped data plans and where 200kb/s is the standard.
  - dmitriid 8y ago
    There are no AMP pages that weigh less than 1MB. However, since Google aggressively preloads most of that data while you search, it gives you the illusion of AMP pages being lightweight. Non-AMP pages? Oh, Google will happily penalize them even if they perform better.
    - danso 8y ago
      I did a mobile Google search for "Trump" to bring up the top news section on Google, and was able to find sites (generally non TV-news sites which aren't doing video with every story) that weighed less than 1MB: USA Today (582KB, first item in the top news section) https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/3431466002 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/3431466002 Vox (486KB) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2019/4/10/18305175/trump-border-immigration-military-texas https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy... The New Yorker (565KB) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/news/current/william-barr-goes-full-trump/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/news/current/...
      - geezerjay 8y ago
        Unless those articles are packed with raster infographics that's pretty bloated just to send a couple of pages worth of text. I meam, why exactly are 500kb of cruft is being served to present 5kb worth of data?
      - rymate1234 8y ago
        The EU experience of USA today weighs on at 248KB and that's without AMP So even if the AMP Pages are small, they're still much larger than the page ought to be
        v7p1Qbt1im 8y ago
        Sure. But USA Today EU is not really a fair example. You can‘t really expect publishers to serve absolutely no ads and tracking at all. Unless you want them to die. There are initiatives like Apple News+ and Subscribe with Google but they are not mainstream yet. And individual subscriber options for news portals are way to cumbersome (and perceived as too expensive) for users.
        rymate1234 8y ago
        I agree, but the solution is for ad companies to improve so you don't need tons of JavaScript to display an advert. Why can't they be done server side, rather than handled by client side JavaScript? A lot of web apps now employ SSR, so having the adverts use SSR should considerably speed them up
  - oarsinsync 8y ago
    I don’t appreciate Google preloading pages that I didn’t ask for, resulting in my limited data allowance being wasted.
- tzakrajs 8y ago
  Yeah, I am sure there is some sort of KPI tracking engagement which helped to inform this behavior.
- systemBuilder 8y ago
  As a former SRE for Google who cared for AMPHTML FROM BIRTH, NOBODY IS FORCING YOU TO USE AMP. In return for free hosting of the web content the publisher agrees to use the AMP format/subset. The whole point of the project was to stop walled gardens, like BBC app, like CNN app,etc., which arose because of crappy slow web pages! That was killing the searchable mobile web! AMP is to enable mobile search! The motivation is in the first page of every dang design doc for AMP at Google! You might be really surprised to learn that your supposed plan for world domination is run on a shoestring and a low priority at Google!
  - justAnotherNET 8y ago
    AMP is a disgusting attack on the open web, and you should be ashamed for being a part of it. You're supposed to be a search engine, not a content "curator". I really wish this kind of arrogance wasn't typical Google behavior, but here we are.
  - millstone 8y ago
    Wow, a "shoestring low priority" project gets top search result placement, a custom icon callout, and cannot be disabled. What do the high-pri projects get?
    - majewsky 8y ago
      High-prio projects get to be a requirement for commenting on Youtube.
    - systemBuilder 8y ago
      Those moves were meant to stop mobile search from dying. You may not believe it, but you really haven't a clue of how bad things looked for Google when they conceived of AMP to stop the bleeding of open searchable content into walled gardens apps, and proprietary HTML replacements (yeah i'm talking YOU, Facebook.). If you want all news to come from unsearchable single website apps, go ahead, kill AMPHTML, the only open alternative.
      - 8y ago
- krageon 8y ago
  You should try loading "the modern web" over a not great but passable phone connection (ie 3G maximum) on a non-flagship phone. Nearly every normal website you will have an exceedingly bad time on. That's what AMP claims to solve. Far be it from me to claim they succeeded or that they are doing it in the right way, but I think pretending the problem doesn't exist at all is disingenuous.
  - StreamBright 8y ago
    Why not fixing “the moder web” then?
    - r3bl 8y ago
      Because convincing all the website owners to do anything (even if it clearly benefits everyone) is an impossible task. See HTTPS adoption.
      - radus 8y ago
        Isn't https over the hump in most of the world?
      - StreamBright 8y ago
        HTTPS adoption: https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.thenewstack.io/media/2018/04/253fa7e9-ssl.png https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.thenewstack.io/media/2018... Great example. You just proved my point that it is possible to have positive change in large communities.
        r3bl 8y ago
        I'm not sure that graph shows what you think it shows. That graph shows that there's an obnoxiously large number of websites that don't support something that there's zero reason not to support. It costs $0 and takes maybe half an hour to implement, browsers are screaming "not secure" to each visitor, and one in five websites still don't support it. "Make websites faster", on top of being vague, is way more difficult to implement.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  Yes have you seen as lot of websites these days
ehnto 8y ago
I can serve content in miliseconds after the network request has been made. Near enough to appear instant to my users. I have caches too. You can't help the network request if it has to be made when the user clicks but there is nothing stopping browsers from preloading my site and nothing stopping google from noting that my site could be preloaded when it crawls it. Limiting ranking influence to sites with the AMP structure is an option Google has decided to make and not an inherent restriction in the technologies at play. The technology behind AMP is very cool mind you, I just find it being an exclusive ranking factor to be an unecessary pressure to use their technology when many other technologies could work just as well. Google is a major force in the way people make websites and they are being very heavy handed in this instance.
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  > nothing stopping google from noting that my site could be preloaded There's a whole host of security problems with trying to see if an arbitrary site can be preloaded. Logging, tracking, etc, not to mention more nefarious tricks like mining Bitcoin in the background. Maybe Google could try to detect those things, but then you just end up in a cat and mouse game. A "safe" subset of html and js that can't do those bad things is much, much easier to analyze. One such subset is AMP.
  - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
    A safe subset of html that they can analyze could be summarized in a document and ranking things higher that conform to that subset. That is not what AMP is.
    - jefftk 8y ago
      That is exactly what AMP is attempting to be. It's a subset of HTML and CSS which guarantees that the site can be preloaded in a privacy-preserving way. There are a lot of things sites want to do that can't be done in pure HTML and CSS and allowing full use of JS would be incompatible with this goal, so that gap is filled with open source libraries. (Disclosure: I work at Google on Ads, and I work with the AMP folks a bunch. Speaking for myself, not the company.)
feanaro 8y ago
Suppose that this is true and that there is no way to achieve this without AMP. Are we going to route the whole web through Google's server so that pages are rendered faster? This is getting silly.

warent 8y ago

I can't help but wonder what problem they're solving for. Is there a huge market of people clamoring to make webpages load faster than they already do?

yathern 8y ago
Yes. In many areas where phones are the main tool used to access the internet, and coverage is primarily still 3G. Not defending AMP - but making pages load faster is still something people want and need.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  For a lot of niches usage is > 50% mobile already.
Godel_unicode 8y ago
Yes.
taytus 8y ago
There are billions of people with capped data plans and where 200kb/s is the standard.
- dmitriid 8y ago
  There are no AMP pages that weigh less than 1MB. However, since Google aggressively preloads most of that data while you search, it gives you the illusion of AMP pages being lightweight. Non-AMP pages? Oh, Google will happily penalize them even if they perform better.
  - danso 8y ago
    I did a mobile Google search for "Trump" to bring up the top news section on Google, and was able to find sites (generally non TV-news sites which aren't doing video with every story) that weighed less than 1MB: USA Today (582KB, first item in the top news section) https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/3431466002 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/3431466002 Vox (486KB) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2019/4/10/18305175/trump-border-immigration-military-texas https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy... The New Yorker (565KB) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/news/current/william-barr-goes-full-trump/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/news/current/...
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      Unless those articles are packed with raster infographics that's pretty bloated just to send a couple of pages worth of text. I meam, why exactly are 500kb of cruft is being served to present 5kb worth of data?
    - rymate1234 8y ago
      The EU experience of USA today weighs on at 248KB and that's without AMP So even if the AMP Pages are small, they're still much larger than the page ought to be
      - v7p1Qbt1im 8y ago
        Sure. But USA Today EU is not really a fair example. You can‘t really expect publishers to serve absolutely no ads and tracking at all. Unless you want them to die. There are initiatives like Apple News+ and Subscribe with Google but they are not mainstream yet. And individual subscriber options for news portals are way to cumbersome (and perceived as too expensive) for users.
        rymate1234 8y ago
        I agree, but the solution is for ad companies to improve so you don't need tons of JavaScript to display an advert. Why can't they be done server side, rather than handled by client side JavaScript? A lot of web apps now employ SSR, so having the adverts use SSR should considerably speed them up
- oarsinsync 8y ago
  I don’t appreciate Google preloading pages that I didn’t ask for, resulting in my limited data allowance being wasted.
tzakrajs 8y ago
Yeah, I am sure there is some sort of KPI tracking engagement which helped to inform this behavior.
systemBuilder 8y ago
As a former SRE for Google who cared for AMPHTML FROM BIRTH, NOBODY IS FORCING YOU TO USE AMP. In return for free hosting of the web content the publisher agrees to use the AMP format/subset. The whole point of the project was to stop walled gardens, like BBC app, like CNN app,etc., which arose because of crappy slow web pages! That was killing the searchable mobile web! AMP is to enable mobile search! The motivation is in the first page of every dang design doc for AMP at Google! You might be really surprised to learn that your supposed plan for world domination is run on a shoestring and a low priority at Google!
- justAnotherNET 8y ago
  AMP is a disgusting attack on the open web, and you should be ashamed for being a part of it. You're supposed to be a search engine, not a content "curator". I really wish this kind of arrogance wasn't typical Google behavior, but here we are.
- millstone 8y ago
  Wow, a "shoestring low priority" project gets top search result placement, a custom icon callout, and cannot be disabled. What do the high-pri projects get?
  - majewsky 8y ago
    High-prio projects get to be a requirement for commenting on Youtube.
  - systemBuilder 8y ago
    Those moves were meant to stop mobile search from dying. You may not believe it, but you really haven't a clue of how bad things looked for Google when they conceived of AMP to stop the bleeding of open searchable content into walled gardens apps, and proprietary HTML replacements (yeah i'm talking YOU, Facebook.). If you want all news to come from unsearchable single website apps, go ahead, kill AMPHTML, the only open alternative.
    - 8y ago
krageon 8y ago
You should try loading "the modern web" over a not great but passable phone connection (ie 3G maximum) on a non-flagship phone. Nearly every normal website you will have an exceedingly bad time on. That's what AMP claims to solve. Far be it from me to claim they succeeded or that they are doing it in the right way, but I think pretending the problem doesn't exist at all is disingenuous.
- StreamBright 8y ago
  Why not fixing “the moder web” then?
  - r3bl 8y ago
    Because convincing all the website owners to do anything (even if it clearly benefits everyone) is an impossible task. See HTTPS adoption.
    - radus 8y ago
      Isn't https over the hump in most of the world?
    - StreamBright 8y ago
      HTTPS adoption: https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.thenewstack.io/media/2018/04/253fa7e9-ssl.png https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.thenewstack.io/media/2018... Great example. You just proved my point that it is possible to have positive change in large communities.
      - r3bl 8y ago
        I'm not sure that graph shows what you think it shows. That graph shows that there's an obnoxiously large number of websites that don't support something that there's zero reason not to support. It costs $0 and takes maybe half an hour to implement, browsers are screaming "not secure" to each visitor, and one in five websites still don't support it. "Make websites faster", on top of being vague, is way more difficult to implement.
C1sc0cat 8y ago
Yes have you seen as lot of websites these days

ehnto 8y ago

I can serve content in miliseconds after the network request has been made. Near enough to appear instant to my users. I have caches too. You can't help the network request if it has to be made when the user clicks but there is nothing stopping browsers from preloading my site and nothing stopping google from noting that my site could be preloaded when it crawls it. Limiting ranking influence to sites with the AMP structure is an option Google has decided to make and not an inherent restriction in the technologies at play. The technology behind AMP is very cool mind you, I just find it being an exclusive ranking factor to be an unecessary pressure to use their technology when many other technologies could work just as well. Google is a major force in the way people make websites and they are being very heavy handed in this instance.

joshuamorton 8y ago
> nothing stopping google from noting that my site could be preloaded There's a whole host of security problems with trying to see if an arbitrary site can be preloaded. Logging, tracking, etc, not to mention more nefarious tricks like mining Bitcoin in the background. Maybe Google could try to detect those things, but then you just end up in a cat and mouse game. A "safe" subset of html and js that can't do those bad things is much, much easier to analyze. One such subset is AMP.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  A safe subset of html that they can analyze could be summarized in a document and ranking things higher that conform to that subset. That is not what AMP is.
  - jefftk 8y ago
    That is exactly what AMP is attempting to be. It's a subset of HTML and CSS which guarantees that the site can be preloaded in a privacy-preserving way. There are a lot of things sites want to do that can't be done in pure HTML and CSS and allowing full use of JS would be incompatible with this goal, so that gap is filled with open source libraries. (Disclosure: I work at Google on Ads, and I work with the AMP folks a bunch. Speaking for myself, not the company.)

feanaro 8y ago

Suppose that this is true and that there is no way to achieve this without AMP. Are we going to route the whole web through Google's server so that pages are rendered faster? This is getting silly.