19 ms·
It's ironic to me that AMP is a problem we all brought upon ourselves, really. It's almost (jokingly) a Prisoner's dilemma [1]. Had no one ever opted into it, i
by bluetidepro 7y ago
It's ironic to me that AMP is a problem we all brought upon ourselves, really. It's almost (jokingly) a Prisoner's dilemma [1]. Had no one ever opted into it, it probably would have just been swept under the rug by Google, and a win-win for us all. But since a competitor of yours (probably) opted into it to get ahead of you, you now have to opt into it also, to compete and get the same SEO "power juice" it gave them. The fact that everyone now adds the code to their site to make it work with AMP is the problem. Google gave us the rope. And then all the SEO managers/marketers/specialists hung us with it. Ha
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
- etrma 7y agoYou think SEO specialists give a shit about AMP? They just care about how high your page ranks in Google--if anything, they'd love it if the web was more Google-centric.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nurettin 7y agoThis is sadly true. There is no universe in which e-commerce would not wholly try to swallow something that google recommends in order to increase their chances of ending up on the front page.
- laumars 7y agoAgreed. Further to your point, AMP was only ever needed because we made our pages so artificiality heavy in the first place
- jhabdas 7y agoIt's okay to use more data. But it's important to respect users on faster mobile networks who pay by quota. Getting to the top of Google isn't at all difficult if you know how to build a fast website. And that doesn't require AMP at all.
- ihuman 7y ago> It's okay to use more data. But it's important to respect users on faster mobile networks who pay by quota. Aren't those 2 sentences contradictory?
- albertsondev 7y ago"We have to consider both of these in seeking a balanced middle-ground" is hardly a paradox.
- grey-area 7y agoThat's not why AMP is needed. It is needed (by google) to extend their dominance of search results into the results themselves. It is not needed by anyone else. You can easily make pages lighter without AMP, and we shouldn't so easily swallow the reasons given by Google for its introduction.
- dwild 7y agoI'll rephrase what he said. AMP was only ever needed because so many made their pages so artificiality heavy in the first place and had no incentive to make them lighter. AMP SEO advantage is a great incentive to make them lighter. The thing is, Google could have pushed their algorithm toward performance more and make it clear on their page too and have the same effect. They just found a way to get more control from it too.
- thegeomaster 7y agoI think the real trouble with AMP is that it really does bring a better experience to users. It's harder to argue against AMP when it has undoubtedly helped with the web bloat problem. Even I find myself semi-subconsciously preferring the results with the little lightning icon because it means I don't have to wait for the page to perform 3-4 tectonic shifts and wait a couple of seconds to read something that could've been text/plain without a lot of loss. Say what you will, but the experience is much better. AMP was a very calculated move on Google's part. The narrative of "we're only doing it to help our users avoid the bloat" when everyone agrees that bloat is a huge problem works very well.
- rblatz 7y agoMy experience is the exact opposite of yours. Amp drives me insane. It shows a bastardized version of most pages, it doesn't behave the way I expect. It has this weird swipe side to side thing that makes no sense and gets triggered accidentally. It also breaks scrolling in iOS, causing the header and footer to always show. I've gotten so sick of the terrible AMP browsing experience that I actually have to click the little i in the top corner to navigate to the real page. Which causes more data use, a worse user experience, and more difficult time getting to the content that I want.
- untog 7y agoPages being heavy is just the justification Google used to implement AMP. They should have prioritised search results based on page size (they have the data) instead to reach the same goal. (AMP isn't even that light - Google preloads pages in its AMP carousel, using bandwidth whether you tap to view them or not)
- Fiahil 7y agoSame thing happens in agriculture over pesticide use !
- apexalpha 7y agoCounterpoint: WE don't live in an ideal world and AMP is my only option of getting de-bloated webpages. I would love if managers and directors would do this themselves and AMP wouldn't be needed, but that's just not the case. I have to choose between downloading some text and images to read an article or load 5MB JavaScript SinglePageApp with tracking, ads, auto playing video's... I know in an ideal world AMP would be useless, but until we reach that world I'm going to prefer AMP links over normal ones.
- bluetidepro 7y agoI understand your point, but I guess I just wish it wasn't an "either or" world, so we both could enjoy the web how we would respectively like. Why won't Google let us have both? Right now, I don't believe there is a way to disable AMP (unless you use like a Firefox mobile extension for that specific use case). That's what bothers me the most, personally. Google shoving it down our throats, and force feeding us AMP is so user hostile. Let the user decide, even if it was hidden under a super obscure setting in something like chrome://flags/, that'd be better. It's a simple win-win for everyone.
- apexalpha 7y agoI agree with you. I would prefer a world where AMP isn't needed and websites don't ad 4MB of bloat to their sites. But, we don't live in that world I'm afraid. And for many news websites I don't want to even begin downloading the auto-playing video on their page. So AMP is for many the easiest choice.
- bluetidepro 7y agoAgain, I'm not arguing that. I'm saying, Google should let us choose. If I want to download 4MB of bloat, let me. I don't like them making the choice for me that AMP is "the best" option. What you want, isn't what I want always, and that's my point. It is user hostile/a dark pattern for Google to force AMP on me, with no way to disable it.
- 7y ago
- benjymo 7y agoUnfortunately, Google can rank by whatever criteria they want and we are forced to implement it. And it isn't always in the best interest of the end user. E.g. at a company we had to add "useless" content on our shop pages, otherwise google ranked the pages lower due to having not enough content.
- hknd 7y agoThe Google Search team is always ranking pages to get the best metric (ctr, time-spend-on-website), s.t. it indicates that users are happy with the result. If any feature/change introduces a regression, they will not ship it. (That kinda indicates that people outside of hn actually like amp) Keep in mind that: amp team != search team.
- nullwasamistake 7y agoI have heard the AMP team is/was part of the search department.
- rileymat2 7y agoTime spent on a website is an interesting metric. I am curious if there are studies linking it to happy users. I would guess there are some interesting findings after you remove immediate bounces from the data.
- asdff 7y agoTime spent on website is more time spent looking at advertisement. The last thing an advertiser wants is a user finding their answer quickly and closing the tab without engaging with any advertising.
- epanchin 7y agoTime spent on website? Is that why answers are always buried in long articles or walls of text? Seems a horrible metric.
- 7y ago
- StreamBright 7y agoYou are talking about a small fraction of companies. Anyways, I would not bend over for Google not for AMP not for anything similar to it.