10 ms·

> literally nobody wants it > as 50% of their web traffic through AMP > forced down our throats without our consent Who, precisely, is forcing publishers to

> literally nobody wants it > as 50% of their web traffic through AMP > forced down our throats without our consent Who, precisely, is forcing publishers to use AMP?

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Google is, by giving AMP-enabled pages preferential placement in Google Search results. If your business lives and dies by web traffic, it's not optional. Bear in mind, publishers hate AMP as much as everyone else: It forbids them to do what they want with their website. AMP is the technology nobody wanted and nobody asked for, users and publishers alike.
- panarky 8y ago
  > Google is, by giving AMP-enabled pages preferential placement in Google Search results That claim is gonna need evidence, and I've seen no evidence so far. Please provide it if you've got it. Google does prefer sites that are fast to sites that are slow, ceteris paribus. So if AMP sites are faster, maybe they get upranked due to performance, but not just because they're AMP. So if a publisher doesn't like AMP they don't have to use it, they just need to make their sites faster on mobile.
- tomp 8y ago
  I think you're conflating 2 things. User do want AMP-like technologies. I want the browser to restrict the publishers as much as possible (while keeping their sites "useful" for some definition of the word - static markup such as text, images and some background/styling is definitely useful) - I actively do that by preventing them from auto-playing videos, using adblocking, etc. However, Google-controlled AMP is a travesty. I don't want to view websites on Google. I want the original URLs, I want to be able to bookmark it and share it, I want to be able to go to the non-mobile website etc. Keep AMP, banish Google.
  - altmind 8y ago
    Users want fast loading speed, not specifically AMP. And quite often fast loading speed can be achieved by merely removing the bloat from your pages.
  - panarky 8y ago
    > Keep AMP, banish Google Cloudflare != Google
    - tomp 8y ago
      Well it only works in Google Chrome so...
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    Short of some kind of large user survey—which would be difficult because I doubt many users actually know what AMP is—we're never going to know whether users want it. Personally, I don't want to get a gimped version of a web page, I want the real thing. Yes some websites suck, but at least I'm getting the definitive copy. AMP versions often miss content or have weird layouts. Sadly, I also really like Google Search—their results are much better than Bing or Duck Duck Go in my experience—so I don't have a choice in the matter.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    First: This doesn't remove you viewing websites on Google. It gives you the original URLs, but they're still being served by Google. In short, this is enabling Google to lie to you about where the website is coming from, it doesn't banish Google. Secondly: We have restricted views and formats for websites already, and they're far superior to AMP. Things like RSS, which most websites support already and I use daily, and Reader View available in both Firefox and Edge, which strips out everything but the core page content. These already exist, are superior to AMP, except in one key area: AMP is built to serve Google Ads, whereas RSS and Reader View strip them out. AMP is not a good technology for users, AMP is a technology to protect Google and give them more control over the web.
    - 8y ago
ketzo 8y ago
IIRC, there were reports that Google was ranking non-AMP pages lower than their identical-but-AMP-cached counterparts. And page rank to a webmaster is EVERYTHING. I don't care how devoted you are to Internet freedoms, if your boss sees your articles slipping down the page, you're in hot water.
- ehsankia 8y ago
  I've seen no proof of this happening, other than when the non-AMP version had strictly worse page score due to actually having worse performance.
  - SquareWheel 8y ago
    The ranking part is nonsense; AMP has never affected organic scores. However the "amp carousel" was real, and had SEO implications. I'm not sure if it still exists.
    - playpause 8y ago
      > AMP has never affected organic scores Are you sure? It seems to me that AMP pages totally dominate the results. And Google explicitly says they consider performance, which means they have come up with some metrics they consider to represent performance, one of which could effectively be "is it AMP?". AMP pages do have automatic performance advantages: Google often prefetches the content before you've tapped it, and they render the content inline instead of navigating you to it.
      - SquareWheel 8y ago
        Yes, I'm pretty sure. Google has been explicit about that fact. I'd also argue they've been somewhat disingenuous by only focusing on organics and ignoring the carousal though. As for their metrics on page speed, they've had objective measurements for some time. Lighthouse is their go-to solution now for measuring a website's speed. As for AMP's ability to be pre-fetched and rendered, this benefit doesn't show in Lighthouse and only from search. For that reason I would bet it isn't included as a ranking factor either. But of course that's the "secret sauce", so we can only go off of their word.
tyingq 8y ago
"Who, precisely, is forcing publishers to use AMP?" Google rolls out their carousel, pushing everything else down the fold. Then they roll out AMP. Then only AMP results go in the carousel. So, it's optional if you don't mind losing the traffic.

> literally nobody wants it > as 50% of their web traffic through AMP > forced down our throats without our consent Who, precisely, is forcing publishers to use AMP?

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

Google is, by giving AMP-enabled pages preferential placement in Google Search results. If your business lives and dies by web traffic, it's not optional. Bear in mind, publishers hate AMP as much as everyone else: It forbids them to do what they want with their website. AMP is the technology nobody wanted and nobody asked for, users and publishers alike.

panarky 8y ago
> Google is, by giving AMP-enabled pages preferential placement in Google Search results That claim is gonna need evidence, and I've seen no evidence so far. Please provide it if you've got it. Google does prefer sites that are fast to sites that are slow, ceteris paribus. So if AMP sites are faster, maybe they get upranked due to performance, but not just because they're AMP. So if a publisher doesn't like AMP they don't have to use it, they just need to make their sites faster on mobile.
tomp 8y ago
I think you're conflating 2 things. User do want AMP-like technologies. I want the browser to restrict the publishers as much as possible (while keeping their sites "useful" for some definition of the word - static markup such as text, images and some background/styling is definitely useful) - I actively do that by preventing them from auto-playing videos, using adblocking, etc. However, Google-controlled AMP is a travesty. I don't want to view websites on Google. I want the original URLs, I want to be able to bookmark it and share it, I want to be able to go to the non-mobile website etc. Keep AMP, banish Google.
- altmind 8y ago
  Users want fast loading speed, not specifically AMP. And quite often fast loading speed can be achieved by merely removing the bloat from your pages.
- panarky 8y ago
  > Keep AMP, banish Google Cloudflare != Google
  - tomp 8y ago
    Well it only works in Google Chrome so...
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  Short of some kind of large user survey—which would be difficult because I doubt many users actually know what AMP is—we're never going to know whether users want it. Personally, I don't want to get a gimped version of a web page, I want the real thing. Yes some websites suck, but at least I'm getting the definitive copy. AMP versions often miss content or have weird layouts. Sadly, I also really like Google Search—their results are much better than Bing or Duck Duck Go in my experience—so I don't have a choice in the matter.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  First: This doesn't remove you viewing websites on Google. It gives you the original URLs, but they're still being served by Google. In short, this is enabling Google to lie to you about where the website is coming from, it doesn't banish Google. Secondly: We have restricted views and formats for websites already, and they're far superior to AMP. Things like RSS, which most websites support already and I use daily, and Reader View available in both Firefox and Edge, which strips out everything but the core page content. These already exist, are superior to AMP, except in one key area: AMP is built to serve Google Ads, whereas RSS and Reader View strip them out. AMP is not a good technology for users, AMP is a technology to protect Google and give them more control over the web.
  - 8y ago

ketzo 8y ago

IIRC, there were reports that Google was ranking non-AMP pages lower than their identical-but-AMP-cached counterparts. And page rank to a webmaster is EVERYTHING. I don't care how devoted you are to Internet freedoms, if your boss sees your articles slipping down the page, you're in hot water.

ehsankia 8y ago
I've seen no proof of this happening, other than when the non-AMP version had strictly worse page score due to actually having worse performance.
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  The ranking part is nonsense; AMP has never affected organic scores. However the "amp carousel" was real, and had SEO implications. I'm not sure if it still exists.
  - playpause 8y ago
    > AMP has never affected organic scores Are you sure? It seems to me that AMP pages totally dominate the results. And Google explicitly says they consider performance, which means they have come up with some metrics they consider to represent performance, one of which could effectively be "is it AMP?". AMP pages do have automatic performance advantages: Google often prefetches the content before you've tapped it, and they render the content inline instead of navigating you to it.
    - SquareWheel 8y ago
      Yes, I'm pretty sure. Google has been explicit about that fact. I'd also argue they've been somewhat disingenuous by only focusing on organics and ignoring the carousal though. As for their metrics on page speed, they've had objective measurements for some time. Lighthouse is their go-to solution now for measuring a website's speed. As for AMP's ability to be pre-fetched and rendered, this benefit doesn't show in Lighthouse and only from search. For that reason I would bet it isn't included as a ranking factor either. But of course that's the "secret sauce", so we can only go off of their word.

tyingq 8y ago

"Who, precisely, is forcing publishers to use AMP?" Google rolls out their carousel, pushing everything else down the fold. Then they roll out AMP. Then only AMP results go in the carousel. So, it's optional if you don't mind losing the traffic.