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The reason why we have AMP in the first place is that normal news websites are unusable. The extra caching/preloading it enables is a bonus, but the main benefi

The reason why we have AMP in the first place is that normal news websites are unusable. The extra caching/preloading it enables is a bonus, but the main benefit comes from AMP websites not being as shitty as regular sits. It's pretty easy to make usable web sites with regular HTML, and it's almost certainly possible to make just as shitty AMP sites. However, AMP solved the political/bureaucratic problem by providing a strong carrot to make a non-shitty version of the web site, and made it easier to make a non-shitty one than a shitty one. The publishers already have to spend time remaking their web site, and the goal they get provided with is "keep it simple and lightweight", and doing shitty things is made hard/expensive. So they grumble and do it, getting it mostly right. (Although they seem to have realized the "potential" and started shittifying the AMP pages too). They could have a normal experience that is very similar. Yet, they still serve the non-AMP, ad- and tracker-laden main page that takes 20x as long to load, jumps around while doing so, and tries to blast you with an autoplaying video that remains stuck to your screen while you scroll. I don't get the hate for AMP - it somehow succeeded in the impossible quest to get publishers to make less shitty web sites, and it does improve user experience by preloading the pages. It's just like with the "acceptable ads" program - some web sites participating in it serve significantly less shitty ads to people who only allow "acceptable ads", while serving a worse version _of the same ad_ to everyone else. So maybe, to answer your question: Build a standard (or extend the AMP standard) that works just like this, but is enforced by the browser. Much harder to do and unlikely to get enough momentum/incentive to actually succeed, though.

buboard 7y ago
Or, make a service to convert those unusable news sites to tolerable.
- pvorb 7y ago
  No need for a service. Firefox comes with readability, Safari has reader mode.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
donohoe 7y ago
The problem is that publishers do not have a ton of dev resources. Now there are spending time implementing and fixing AMP pages instead of optimizing their regular pages. I would stress that amongst most publishers they are focused on the UX experience now unlike they were a few years back (but yeah, there is no shortage of bad news sites still). Its a little bit of a bitter pill that Google, responsible for all the ads and ultimately the shitty ad experience, invents a new format to restrict publishes from implementing the shitty ad experience that Google allows, and then gets the publishers to built it. "AMP for Ads" makes sense. AMP in general does not.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Google Ads can be implemented in a reasonable way. It doesn't need to be a horrible experience. Greed has made them integrate 5000 other networks and they're the reason adblock is on the rise. I'd wager display ads would have much better return if they weren't abused for years. That being said, it is the fault of these publishers to under invest in developers. It's like not investing in the printing press.
  - donohoe 7y ago
    True, but you have little control over the ads load and what they try do do. Bad actors are usually flagged manually and there are typical a ton of genuine mistakes that happen (someone loads unoptimized images etc) A AMP-like framework would catch that.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    All of those networks run through Google's ad infrastructure and is allowed and encouraged by Google's ad policies. Publishers have the least control over the ads that run.
progval 7y ago
> Build a standard (or extend the AMP standard) that works just like this, but is enforced by the browser. uMatrix and NoScript do a rather coarse-grained version of this, as you can configure them to block JS by default (and whitelist some domains, eventually default-allowing JS served from the same domain as the page, or one of the subdomains.) But when you tell someone their website doesn't work without JS, most of the time they either ignore it or tell you it's 2019 and you shouldn't disable JS.
- radicalbyte 7y ago
  I've spent a month with uMatrix misconfigured so that it was disabled by default on websites. The internet turned into a horrific bloated mess. How do these sites survive when it takes 30 seconds load the page (which freezes your browser) and then takes another 20 seconds to find the content hidden between creepy ads from ecommerce sites you recently visited? The last time I remember the internet being this horrible was the search engines back in 1999 and that was quickly fixed when Google came along.
- dorgo 7y ago
  >> Build a standard (or extend the AMP standard) that works just like this, but is enforced by the browser. >uMatrix and NoScript do a rather coarse-grained version of this What about something like: window.MAX_ALLOWED_JS_STATEMENTS == 1.mio ? User could set this value in settings for each domain/subdomain. Developers could decide based on that value what should be executed and what not.
  - progval 7y ago
    I'm not a frontend dev, but isn't this kind of variability across environment exactly what frontend devs loath? It may be even harder to properly test than checking multiple browsers.
robocat 7y ago
> Build a standard (or extend the AMP standard) that works just like this, but is enforced by the browser We have a wonderful standard for documents - simple HTML. If Google gave search juice to simple single page HTML+CSS documents with clear content that can be viewed without JavaScript, and Google gave lower ranking for shitty JavaScript based UIs for documents, that would tidy up the www greatly and be a force for goodness and accessibility and better security. But Google are pushing thier ugly AMP solution instead. I think this shows one clear area Google is evil: they are showing the colour of their money: advertising is far more important than content. Try browsing with JavaScript turned off and doing a Google - so many "articles" are entirely inaccessible even though the text is shown in the Google search result. If Google provided a search option for accessible and non-paywalled search results (zero JavaScript), I would use it. It seems obvious, but they don't: and why not? Edit: aside: fuck gizmido: infinite reload if you disable JavaScript - that should give zero rank. Edit 2: Does duckduckgo or any other search site allow searches for content that can be viewed without JavaScript enabled? (And disclosure: I am a JavaScript developer, but for a complex app that we could never deliver using vanilla HTML.)
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  I think the simple answer to this is one that people on hn just don't like: most users like some js. Js enables better experiences (for most people) than just html and css. It also enables worse experiences.
  - robocat 7y ago
    Hard to say since users are not given the choice. Where users are given the choice, they often choose to "disable" JavaScript on articles e.g. switching to reader mode, or choosing a browser or extensions that indirectly disable JavaScript (disabling: adverts, mouse tracking, popups, scroll triggers, advertising triggers, notifications, sound, auto-start video etc etc). Clearly users also choose rich applications, but that is not what I was talking about here. I was talking about text articles.
  - tripzilch 7y ago
    > I think the simple answer to this is one that people on hn just don't like: most users like some js. Js enables better experiences (for most people) than just html and css. You sound as if "most people", aka non-technical users, are like kids who like shiny things and cannot appreciate clean and elegant design. You create that audience for yourself, that way.
pvorb 7y ago
The problem with AMP is not that it limits what website creators can do. The problem is that everything is served via Google's servers and that you can have a perfectly optimized, mobile-friendly website and still have no chance in Google's search results because there is a similar result that uses AMP.
- tiborsaas 7y ago
  > still have no chance Is that proven? I highly doubt it.
  - acdha 7y ago
    For the first few years, the carousel at the top of the results page was restricted to AMP content. They changed that recently after backlash (and likely legal questions) but they still appear to weight AMP more than page load time.
    - whalabi 7y ago
      Google still requires AMP for the articles carousel: "The Top stories carousel requires that your content be published in AMP. For more information, see AMP with structured data." https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/mark-up-content https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/mark-up-con... I talked about this and more here: https://unlikekinds.com/article/google-amp-page-speed https://unlikekinds.com/article/google-amp-page-speed
- noobquestion81 7y ago
  One thing I don’t understand here is whether AMP = google? I hate privacy abuse as much as anyone, but I thought it was a standard for less insane HTML pages that any “renderer” could show. Didnt cloudflare etc do this? Basically can someone ELI5 where the actual hate comes from (aside from being annoyed because you use google search)? Because I am all for news sites being anything other than what we get today (20mb of js ads and tracking crapware etc) edited for clarity in my questions
Mirioron 7y ago
>but the main benefit comes from AMP websites not being as shitty as regular sits. I haven't had a single instance where I was happy with AMP. The very best scenario I've run into is that it's neutral, but most of the time it's an annoyance, because it forces me to constantly use desktop mode on my phone so I can actually get usable search results. AMP is utter garbage. It's so bad that I switched search engines purely so I wouldn't get AMP results. I don't want a competing standard, because I want my search results to lead to the REGULAR WEBPAGE. You know, the one that actually works, unlike most AMP pages.
mattigames 7y ago
> Build a standard (or extend the AMP standard) that works just like this, but is enforced by the browser. Much harder to do and unlikely to get enough momentum/incentive to actually succeed, though. You realize that for such standard to succeed it would have to implemented by Google Chrome right? And they are definitively NOT going to do that because its against their best interest, so no I don't think that is a solution; the only slight chance would be to make AMP illegal so Google is forced to use some kind of alternative protocol.
joegahona 7y ago
> They could have a normal experience that is very similar. Yet, they still serve the non-AMP, ad- and tracker-laden main page that takes 20x as long to load, jumps around while doing so, and tries to blast you with an autoplaying video that remains stuck to your screen while you scroll. I've never been blasted with an autoplaying video that stays stuck, on my phone. Is this even possible?
- sigotirandolas 7y ago
  Definitely. It's just an HTML5 video tag with a 'position: fixed' CSS style (plus almost always some JavaScript logic). Here's a very recent link that does it on both my phone and computer: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-no-deal-boris-johnson-local-council-spending-planning-a9037951.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-no-dea... Though I live in a rich country, I used to have "only" 500MB/month of mobile data. I could open many small text/image websites, but open one of those autoplaying videos (which sometimes serve even high definition on small screens) and my mobile data for multiple days is gone in seconds. I can only imagine how worse it must be for people in poor countries.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
    > I can only imagine how worse it must be for people in poor countries. Ironically, much better because they tend to have a much better mobile infrastructure. For example, in India someone pays "less than $3 a month for unlimited free calls. With that he gets 42GB of 4G data, at 1.5GB a day, which he uses for viewing videos and for WhatsApp calls to his family and friends in the state of Bihar" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47537201 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47537201 Even if you multiply that by 4 to account for purchasing power parity (with the US), that's dirt cheap for such a plan.
notSupplied 7y ago
Mobile browsers need to show a red banner above domains that are known to "significantly drain your battery". In the really bad cases even show an interstitial similar to the "This site is not secure" pages before people proceed to them. This targets more of the performance side of problem than the tracking & privacy side, but it does assign cost and works as signaling mechanism back to publishers when they do something that harms the user experience.
ldng 7y ago
The point of AMP is to AOLise the publisher for Google.

buboard 7y ago

Or, make a service to convert those unusable news sites to tolerable.

pvorb 7y ago
No need for a service. Firefox comes with readability, Safari has reader mode.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

donohoe 7y ago

The problem is that publishers do not have a ton of dev resources. Now there are spending time implementing and fixing AMP pages instead of optimizing their regular pages. I would stress that amongst most publishers they are focused on the UX experience now unlike they were a few years back (but yeah, there is no shortage of bad news sites still). Its a little bit of a bitter pill that Google, responsible for all the ads and ultimately the shitty ad experience, invents a new format to restrict publishes from implementing the shitty ad experience that Google allows, and then gets the publishers to built it. "AMP for Ads" makes sense. AMP in general does not.

cameronbrown 7y ago
Google Ads can be implemented in a reasonable way. It doesn't need to be a horrible experience. Greed has made them integrate 5000 other networks and they're the reason adblock is on the rise. I'd wager display ads would have much better return if they weren't abused for years. That being said, it is the fault of these publishers to under invest in developers. It's like not investing in the printing press.
- donohoe 7y ago
  True, but you have little control over the ads load and what they try do do. Bad actors are usually flagged manually and there are typical a ton of genuine mistakes that happen (someone loads unoptimized images etc) A AMP-like framework would catch that.
- manigandham 7y ago
  All of those networks run through Google's ad infrastructure and is allowed and encouraged by Google's ad policies. Publishers have the least control over the ads that run.

progval 7y ago

> Build a standard (or extend the AMP standard) that works just like this, but is enforced by the browser. uMatrix and NoScript do a rather coarse-grained version of this, as you can configure them to block JS by default (and whitelist some domains, eventually default-allowing JS served from the same domain as the page, or one of the subdomains.) But when you tell someone their website doesn't work without JS, most of the time they either ignore it or tell you it's 2019 and you shouldn't disable JS.

radicalbyte 7y ago
I've spent a month with uMatrix misconfigured so that it was disabled by default on websites. The internet turned into a horrific bloated mess. How do these sites survive when it takes 30 seconds load the page (which freezes your browser) and then takes another 20 seconds to find the content hidden between creepy ads from ecommerce sites you recently visited? The last time I remember the internet being this horrible was the search engines back in 1999 and that was quickly fixed when Google came along.
dorgo 7y ago
>> Build a standard (or extend the AMP standard) that works just like this, but is enforced by the browser. >uMatrix and NoScript do a rather coarse-grained version of this What about something like: window.MAX_ALLOWED_JS_STATEMENTS == 1.mio ? User could set this value in settings for each domain/subdomain. Developers could decide based on that value what should be executed and what not.
- progval 7y ago
  I'm not a frontend dev, but isn't this kind of variability across environment exactly what frontend devs loath? It may be even harder to properly test than checking multiple browsers.

robocat 7y ago

> Build a standard (or extend the AMP standard) that works just like this, but is enforced by the browser We have a wonderful standard for documents - simple HTML. If Google gave search juice to simple single page HTML+CSS documents with clear content that can be viewed without JavaScript, and Google gave lower ranking for shitty JavaScript based UIs for documents, that would tidy up the www greatly and be a force for goodness and accessibility and better security. But Google are pushing thier ugly AMP solution instead. I think this shows one clear area Google is evil: they are showing the colour of their money: advertising is far more important than content. Try browsing with JavaScript turned off and doing a Google - so many "articles" are entirely inaccessible even though the text is shown in the Google search result. If Google provided a search option for accessible and non-paywalled search results (zero JavaScript), I would use it. It seems obvious, but they don't: and why not? Edit: aside: fuck gizmido: infinite reload if you disable JavaScript - that should give zero rank. Edit 2: Does duckduckgo or any other search site allow searches for content that can be viewed without JavaScript enabled? (And disclosure: I am a JavaScript developer, but for a complex app that we could never deliver using vanilla HTML.)

joshuamorton 7y ago
I think the simple answer to this is one that people on hn just don't like: most users like some js. Js enables better experiences (for most people) than just html and css. It also enables worse experiences.
- robocat 7y ago
  Hard to say since users are not given the choice. Where users are given the choice, they often choose to "disable" JavaScript on articles e.g. switching to reader mode, or choosing a browser or extensions that indirectly disable JavaScript (disabling: adverts, mouse tracking, popups, scroll triggers, advertising triggers, notifications, sound, auto-start video etc etc). Clearly users also choose rich applications, but that is not what I was talking about here. I was talking about text articles.
- tripzilch 7y ago
  > I think the simple answer to this is one that people on hn just don't like: most users like some js. Js enables better experiences (for most people) than just html and css. You sound as if "most people", aka non-technical users, are like kids who like shiny things and cannot appreciate clean and elegant design. You create that audience for yourself, that way.

pvorb 7y ago

The problem with AMP is not that it limits what website creators can do. The problem is that everything is served via Google's servers and that you can have a perfectly optimized, mobile-friendly website and still have no chance in Google's search results because there is a similar result that uses AMP.

tiborsaas 7y ago
> still have no chance Is that proven? I highly doubt it.
- acdha 7y ago
  For the first few years, the carousel at the top of the results page was restricted to AMP content. They changed that recently after backlash (and likely legal questions) but they still appear to weight AMP more than page load time.
  - whalabi 7y ago
    Google still requires AMP for the articles carousel: "The Top stories carousel requires that your content be published in AMP. For more information, see AMP with structured data." https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/mark-up-content https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/mark-up-con... I talked about this and more here: https://unlikekinds.com/article/google-amp-page-speed https://unlikekinds.com/article/google-amp-page-speed
noobquestion81 7y ago
One thing I don’t understand here is whether AMP = google? I hate privacy abuse as much as anyone, but I thought it was a standard for less insane HTML pages that any “renderer” could show. Didnt cloudflare etc do this? Basically can someone ELI5 where the actual hate comes from (aside from being annoyed because you use google search)? Because I am all for news sites being anything other than what we get today (20mb of js ads and tracking crapware etc) edited for clarity in my questions

Mirioron 7y ago

>but the main benefit comes from AMP websites not being as shitty as regular sits. I haven't had a single instance where I was happy with AMP. The very best scenario I've run into is that it's neutral, but most of the time it's an annoyance, because it forces me to constantly use desktop mode on my phone so I can actually get usable search results. AMP is utter garbage. It's so bad that I switched search engines purely so I wouldn't get AMP results. I don't want a competing standard, because I want my search results to lead to the REGULAR WEBPAGE. You know, the one that actually works, unlike most AMP pages.

mattigames 7y ago

> Build a standard (or extend the AMP standard) that works just like this, but is enforced by the browser. Much harder to do and unlikely to get enough momentum/incentive to actually succeed, though. You realize that for such standard to succeed it would have to implemented by Google Chrome right? And they are definitively NOT going to do that because its against their best interest, so no I don't think that is a solution; the only slight chance would be to make AMP illegal so Google is forced to use some kind of alternative protocol.

joegahona 7y ago

> They could have a normal experience that is very similar. Yet, they still serve the non-AMP, ad- and tracker-laden main page that takes 20x as long to load, jumps around while doing so, and tries to blast you with an autoplaying video that remains stuck to your screen while you scroll. I've never been blasted with an autoplaying video that stays stuck, on my phone. Is this even possible?

sigotirandolas 7y ago
Definitely. It's just an HTML5 video tag with a 'position: fixed' CSS style (plus almost always some JavaScript logic). Here's a very recent link that does it on both my phone and computer: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-no-deal-boris-johnson-local-council-spending-planning-a9037951.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-no-dea... Though I live in a rich country, I used to have "only" 500MB/month of mobile data. I could open many small text/image websites, but open one of those autoplaying videos (which sometimes serve even high definition on small screens) and my mobile data for multiple days is gone in seconds. I can only imagine how worse it must be for people in poor countries.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
  > I can only imagine how worse it must be for people in poor countries. Ironically, much better because they tend to have a much better mobile infrastructure. For example, in India someone pays "less than $3 a month for unlimited free calls. With that he gets 42GB of 4G data, at 1.5GB a day, which he uses for viewing videos and for WhatsApp calls to his family and friends in the state of Bihar" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47537201 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47537201 Even if you multiply that by 4 to account for purchasing power parity (with the US), that's dirt cheap for such a plan.

notSupplied 7y ago

Mobile browsers need to show a red banner above domains that are known to "significantly drain your battery". In the really bad cases even show an interstitial similar to the "This site is not secure" pages before people proceed to them. This targets more of the performance side of problem than the tracking & privacy side, but it does assign cost and works as signaling mechanism back to publishers when they do something that harms the user experience.

ldng 7y ago

The point of AMP is to AOLise the publisher for Google.