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Seriously, I just don't get these hateful comments on Hacker News regarding AMP. It helps websites load fast on mobile, and users really appreciate when website

Seriously, I just don't get these hateful comments on Hacker News regarding AMP. It helps websites load fast on mobile, and users really appreciate when websites load fast.

ohashi 7y ago
Based on your comment history it sounds like you work at Google. Does that put blinders on your opinion?
- dictum 7y ago
  I share the same distrust about Facebook and Google on HN, but only the latter seems to bring substantial downvotes. To be fair, they have more employees, and I don't assume bad faith in the downvotes — I've been wrong more than a few times. Still, I sense that Google elicits a gratitude that is unjustified when it comes to relationships between companies, customers and employees.
blackbrokkoli 7y ago
Sure, you're not wrong. "This webpage works best in Our Browser™️" was just a pointer to the user for a faster experience. It came at the small cost of crippling the web for a mere 15 years, probably costing a few billion hours user time wasted at horrible UX bred in a hostile corporate controlled environment. AMP is just the same all over again, just with a singular player which might just be too big to fail. Oh, and also this time things like the information source of the western world is at stake, not only fan sites of specific locomotive models by some geeks. But at least my websites load....slower actually if the page was properly built[1]! [1]https://digiday.com/media/google-amp-beat-facebook-instant-articles-publishers-start-question-amps-benefits/ https://digiday.com/media/google-amp-beat-facebook-instant-a...
- clairity 7y ago
  > "...just with a singular player which might just be too big to fail" while i agree with the overall sentiment that google is pulling a microsoft, i don't see how this line is true. if google went away tomorrow, how would it lead to an economic downturn? it would suck if you're all in on google in some way, but most of their products have competitors and substitutes, so you could switch. maybe android losing some core services that aren't immediately replaceable might cripple phones for some folks. the engineers could certainly find new jobs, and a bunch would go on to create new companies from the things they're working on now while soaking up all the idle wealth around the world looking for any return at all. i rarely use google for anything, so maybe i'm missing the obvious.
  - rebuilder 7y ago
    Gmail and Drive going away tomorrow would cause a lot of trouble
gtfratteus 7y ago
HN's hatred towards AMP is something I've never understood. As a user, I'd much rather visit an AMP website than have to deal with the atrocities devs create when left to their own devices. In general, HN has a pretty strong bias against Google and Facebook. I suspect it may be clouding the average user's judgement. AMP has done immense good for the majority of users of the mobile web.
malchow 7y ago
What about the fact that it was originally called Page Speed Project and was a genuinely open standard; that that was subsequently shut down in favor of AMP? That the difference between the two is that Page Speed did not have attractive collusive lock-in effects while AMP does have collusive lock-in effects?
- creato 7y ago
  Did it work? Page Speed existed for a long time, and over that time, a huge portion of websites became bloated as hell and ridiculously slow. Hackernews is just about the only website I can think of that didn't.
- bduerst 7y ago
  What are AMPs collusive lock-in effects?
MrStonedOne 7y ago
As a mobile user, I fucking hate it. I hate that every fucking google search result on mobile web has its stupid little icon I hate that there is no way for me to disable it as a user I hate that it has muddied the waters in what the url bar means I hate that it has trained users to not question fake url bars. I hate that cloudflare so thoroughly jumped on its dick I hate that we invented a way to fake the address in the url bar just for this stupid fucking feature. I hate that we now have a system where somebody can share a page url with a friend, and that friend can view it on t he same device model using the same browser with the same settings, and will get a different page because one was viewing an amp page but shared it's real url. I hate that every fucking amp page is lower featured in some way, and almost never works in desktop mode. And most of all, I hate that it leads to everybody offloading shit onto google's servers. AMP is not fast because it's served from google's CDN. That's a lie, It has always been a lie, and it will always be a lie. AMP is fast because it's incompatible with 99% of the bullshit client cpu heavy tracking and ad libraries, so they don't get included inside AMP pages. We could have just had that, without all this stupid bullshit CDN redirection/misdirection bullshit. And you know what, You want me to get off my hate train? Get google and all of the other search providers using it to solve complaint #2. That's really all it would take to get most of the hate to go away.
- memo_ree 7y ago
  > AMP is fast because it's incompatible with 99% of the bullshit client cpu heavy tracking and ad libraries, so they don't get included inside AMP pages. > We could have just had that, without all this stupid bullshit CDN redirection/misdirection bullshit. I agree the world could have faster pages without AMP. What would that take though? Would it take web developers across the world pushing back against including megabytes of extra JavaScript for ads/tracking, at all the companies who are currently using AMP?
  - rhizome 7y ago
    Seems to be a theme with me this week but I'll suggest it anyway: sites could run their own advertising.
  - 7y ago
geofft 7y ago
"Users appreciate" and "is it good for the world" are different metrics. I'm sure many users appreciate drive-thru daiquiri stores, and they get plenty of business, but it's perfectly understandable why people would dislike their existence.
DocG 7y ago
Personal subjective experience does not show that AMP pages load faster. It has been the opposite, where Google servers have failed to deliver the page. But mostly I hate that URL crap. Give me my URL bar functionality back with original host URL. And that there is no way to disable AMP from results. We do not recommend our clients to use AMP.
lwansbrough 7y ago
Technically speaking it does nothing of the sort. It helps websites be absorbed by Google so that Google can retain the user on their site. Which keeps the experience fast. But you don’t need Google to make your site fast, and in some cases using AMP can slow your site down. If it was just about making the web fast, there wouldn’t be AMP-only features. It would just be “fast only” and websites would have to meet certain criteria to pass that test. You should try using your brain a little more when you think about the motivation behind Google’s actions. Do you think the stakeholders at Google care how fast a user can exit Google?
- rhizome 7y ago
  >It helps websites be absorbed by Google so that Google can retain the user on their site Does it also keep every cookie on a page 1st party to Google, so they don't have (m)any more GDPR-type blockers?
  - lwansbrough 7y ago
    Are you trying to point this out as being a good thing? I don’t know the answer because I don’t click AMP links, but I don’t have a problem with GDPR nonsense anyway because I’m not in Europe.
    - dk- 7y ago
      you still have to comply with the GDPR. if not, you can be detained if (e.g.) your plane makes an unwanted stop in the EU. (this assumes, EU brought a GDPR complaint against you or your company and you bothered to not respond)
    - rhizome 7y ago
      >Are you trying to point this out as being a good thing? No, I'm not. What gives you that impression?
sushisushisushi 7y ago
As a user, I hate that AMP means that Google search results give me Google URLs instead of what I’m actually looking for. As a developer, I hate that AMP is just another one of Google’s tentacles with which I have to contend.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
If AMP is so appreciated by users, why not add a setting for is to disable it in search results, as people have been requesting for years?
acdha 7y ago
If they cared about performance they’d simply weight it more in search rankings. I find AMP pages have worse user experience because they require 100KB of JavaScript to load and complete running before you see anything, which breaks with a couple decades of best-practice, including what other Google teams advise. I regularly see AMP load slowly or break because they didn’t follow those good practices whereas sites with good engineering practice load more reliably. It also breaks URLs – instead of the real URL, you get a google.com link which doesn’t have a good desktop experience.
throwapay 7y ago
Anyone else looking to respond to this innocent sounding and highly reductionist question should just have a peek at the account’s comment history.

Seriously, I just don't get these hateful comments on Hacker News regarding AMP. It helps websites load fast on mobile, and users really appreciate when websites load fast.

ohashi 7y ago

Based on your comment history it sounds like you work at Google. Does that put blinders on your opinion?

dictum 7y ago
I share the same distrust about Facebook and Google on HN, but only the latter seems to bring substantial downvotes. To be fair, they have more employees, and I don't assume bad faith in the downvotes — I've been wrong more than a few times. Still, I sense that Google elicits a gratitude that is unjustified when it comes to relationships between companies, customers and employees.

blackbrokkoli 7y ago

Sure, you're not wrong. "This webpage works best in Our Browser™️" was just a pointer to the user for a faster experience. It came at the small cost of crippling the web for a mere 15 years, probably costing a few billion hours user time wasted at horrible UX bred in a hostile corporate controlled environment. AMP is just the same all over again, just with a singular player which might just be too big to fail. Oh, and also this time things like the information source of the western world is at stake, not only fan sites of specific locomotive models by some geeks. But at least my websites load....slower actually if the page was properly built[1]! [1]https://digiday.com/media/google-amp-beat-facebook-instant-articles-publishers-start-question-amps-benefits/ https://digiday.com/media/google-amp-beat-facebook-instant-a...

clairity 7y ago
> "...just with a singular player which might just be too big to fail" while i agree with the overall sentiment that google is pulling a microsoft, i don't see how this line is true. if google went away tomorrow, how would it lead to an economic downturn? it would suck if you're all in on google in some way, but most of their products have competitors and substitutes, so you could switch. maybe android losing some core services that aren't immediately replaceable might cripple phones for some folks. the engineers could certainly find new jobs, and a bunch would go on to create new companies from the things they're working on now while soaking up all the idle wealth around the world looking for any return at all. i rarely use google for anything, so maybe i'm missing the obvious.
- rebuilder 7y ago
  Gmail and Drive going away tomorrow would cause a lot of trouble

gtfratteus 7y ago

HN's hatred towards AMP is something I've never understood. As a user, I'd much rather visit an AMP website than have to deal with the atrocities devs create when left to their own devices. In general, HN has a pretty strong bias against Google and Facebook. I suspect it may be clouding the average user's judgement. AMP has done immense good for the majority of users of the mobile web.

malchow 7y ago

What about the fact that it was originally called Page Speed Project and was a genuinely open standard; that that was subsequently shut down in favor of AMP? That the difference between the two is that Page Speed did not have attractive collusive lock-in effects while AMP does have collusive lock-in effects?

creato 7y ago
Did it work? Page Speed existed for a long time, and over that time, a huge portion of websites became bloated as hell and ridiculously slow. Hackernews is just about the only website I can think of that didn't.
bduerst 7y ago
What are AMPs collusive lock-in effects?

MrStonedOne 7y ago

As a mobile user, I fucking hate it. I hate that every fucking google search result on mobile web has its stupid little icon I hate that there is no way for me to disable it as a user I hate that it has muddied the waters in what the url bar means I hate that it has trained users to not question fake url bars. I hate that cloudflare so thoroughly jumped on its dick I hate that we invented a way to fake the address in the url bar just for this stupid fucking feature. I hate that we now have a system where somebody can share a page url with a friend, and that friend can view it on t he same device model using the same browser with the same settings, and will get a different page because one was viewing an amp page but shared it's real url. I hate that every fucking amp page is lower featured in some way, and almost never works in desktop mode. And most of all, I hate that it leads to everybody offloading shit onto google's servers. AMP is not fast because it's served from google's CDN. That's a lie, It has always been a lie, and it will always be a lie. AMP is fast because it's incompatible with 99% of the bullshit client cpu heavy tracking and ad libraries, so they don't get included inside AMP pages. We could have just had that, without all this stupid bullshit CDN redirection/misdirection bullshit. And you know what, You want me to get off my hate train? Get google and all of the other search providers using it to solve complaint #2. That's really all it would take to get most of the hate to go away.

memo_ree 7y ago
> AMP is fast because it's incompatible with 99% of the bullshit client cpu heavy tracking and ad libraries, so they don't get included inside AMP pages. > We could have just had that, without all this stupid bullshit CDN redirection/misdirection bullshit. I agree the world could have faster pages without AMP. What would that take though? Would it take web developers across the world pushing back against including megabytes of extra JavaScript for ads/tracking, at all the companies who are currently using AMP?
- rhizome 7y ago
  Seems to be a theme with me this week but I'll suggest it anyway: sites could run their own advertising.
- 7y ago

geofft 7y ago

"Users appreciate" and "is it good for the world" are different metrics. I'm sure many users appreciate drive-thru daiquiri stores, and they get plenty of business, but it's perfectly understandable why people would dislike their existence.

DocG 7y ago

Personal subjective experience does not show that AMP pages load faster. It has been the opposite, where Google servers have failed to deliver the page. But mostly I hate that URL crap. Give me my URL bar functionality back with original host URL. And that there is no way to disable AMP from results. We do not recommend our clients to use AMP.

lwansbrough 7y ago

Technically speaking it does nothing of the sort. It helps websites be absorbed by Google so that Google can retain the user on their site. Which keeps the experience fast. But you don’t need Google to make your site fast, and in some cases using AMP can slow your site down. If it was just about making the web fast, there wouldn’t be AMP-only features. It would just be “fast only” and websites would have to meet certain criteria to pass that test. You should try using your brain a little more when you think about the motivation behind Google’s actions. Do you think the stakeholders at Google care how fast a user can exit Google?

rhizome 7y ago
>It helps websites be absorbed by Google so that Google can retain the user on their site Does it also keep every cookie on a page 1st party to Google, so they don't have (m)any more GDPR-type blockers?
- lwansbrough 7y ago
  Are you trying to point this out as being a good thing? I don’t know the answer because I don’t click AMP links, but I don’t have a problem with GDPR nonsense anyway because I’m not in Europe.
  - dk- 7y ago
    you still have to comply with the GDPR. if not, you can be detained if (e.g.) your plane makes an unwanted stop in the EU. (this assumes, EU brought a GDPR complaint against you or your company and you bothered to not respond)
  - rhizome 7y ago
    >Are you trying to point this out as being a good thing? No, I'm not. What gives you that impression?

sushisushisushi 7y ago

As a user, I hate that AMP means that Google search results give me Google URLs instead of what I’m actually looking for. As a developer, I hate that AMP is just another one of Google’s tentacles with which I have to contend.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

If AMP is so appreciated by users, why not add a setting for is to disable it in search results, as people have been requesting for years?

acdha 7y ago

If they cared about performance they’d simply weight it more in search rankings. I find AMP pages have worse user experience because they require 100KB of JavaScript to load and complete running before you see anything, which breaks with a couple decades of best-practice, including what other Google teams advise. I regularly see AMP load slowly or break because they didn’t follow those good practices whereas sites with good engineering practice load more reliably. It also breaks URLs – instead of the real URL, you get a google.com link which doesn’t have a good desktop experience.

throwapay 7y ago

Anyone else looking to respond to this innocent sounding and highly reductionist question should just have a peek at the account’s comment history.