8 ms·
A new AMP update shows how it can infiltrate every corner of the internet
- aww_dang 7y agoI've published AMP only sites and regular optimized sites. My niche is usually large informational sites. Minifying and removing unused CSS and inlining everything has resulted in better indexing than similarly positioned AMP sites. The resulting pages are smaller than their AMP equivalents and load with less requests. On my non-news sites I can say that I get more traffic without AMP.
- spiderfarmer 7y agoI have no trouble getting websites with good web performance to rank above AMP results. I like to think I have beaten them even when I'm slightly below them, because they trap their visitors in the AMP silo, while I am offering them a full site with probably better performance overall. The only reason to offer AMP is to get into the news caroussel.
- the_gipsy 7y agoJust wait until they dial up the preference for AMP.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- onevu 7y agoTalking about a crappy web technology using Medium
- tiernano 7y agoJust thinking that... I find medium worse than amp... at least amp doesn't show pop ups to join or subscribe...
- Mirioron 7y agoBut AMP sites pretty much require you to get out of the AMP site to work properly. Closing a pop up is no harder than that.
- Kiro 7y agoI'm all for bashing AMP but I can't remember a single time I've had to get out of AMP to get it working. Do you have any examples?
- empath75 7y agoYeah the first thing is an interstitial asking me to sign up with google.
- GoblinSlayer 7y agoDoesn't happen for me. Using noscript.
- cameronbrown 7y agoThe sad truth is, the 'modern' web is rotting. AMP is just a symptom of a growing problem.
- duxup 7y agoThe thing is AMP can be it's own problem regardless what the "modern web" does.
- cryptica 7y agoI think that the mobile trend was blown way out of proportion. I very often find myself clicking on the 'Browse desktop version' button when browsing a so-called 'mobile-friendly' version of a site. Is the look of the website really more important than the content and functionality? For me, it's not. This is just another example of a big tech monopoly imposing their highly opinionated ideas on billions of people. Also, I hate it when a mobile site keeps reminding me to install the app. This is extremely mobile-unfriendly. Google ought to punish those sites.
- 2_listerine_pls 7y agoNot a trend, they rank AMP sites higher
- sho 7y ago> I think that the mobile trend was blown way out of proportion This is an extraordinarily location-specific sentiment. In the country I'm in right now, less than 25% of the population have desktop PCs. Everyone has a smartphone, if not two. Most of the world is like this, especially the developing countries with the most future growth potential.
- Mirioron 7y agoI think the parent's point is that desktop sites are often good enough even on mobile. Mobile sites, on the other hand, seem to often lack in functionality.
- yoz-y 7y agoBut most purely desktop sites, are in fact, not anywhere close to good on mobile. A good test is: do you need to zoom in and then pan horizontally to be able to read the content?
- cryptica 7y agoPersonally, I don't even mind panning around across both axes and zooming in but I may be a minority in that respect. Probably a large minority nonetheless. On Android/Chrome, the experience is not bad. When you load the desktop site, it looks very small but you see the whole thing. Then you can zoom in and pan using your fingers... Not so different from how you use Google maps. It's just a tiny bit slower than on desktop; but everything on mobile is slower than on desktop anyway including typing. If you're already loosely familiar with the site's UI, it's not difficult to use. Even if you have big finger, you can just zoom in first and then click. It's a quick two-step gesture which is easy to master.
- maaaats 7y agoGoogle intentionally gimps Firefox on Android, by serving an old-school page. Using an addon (which you can on mobile Fx, and not on Chrome), fixes this by editing the UA string when visiting Google. Getting the "nice experience", however, gives me amp links. And when I click on them, I'm unable to scroll?! It doesn't matter if it loads fast, when I cannot read beyond the fold. It also breaks the "open in app" I normally have. If the link is a reddit link, for instance, I can press an icon in Firefox to have it open in "Reddit is fun".
- dessant 7y agoThere is a bug report [1] that tracks Google serving a second tier search experience for Firefox for Android. Google has been dragging their feet for years on this one, and it perfectly fits their "oopsies" pattern of behavior [2], which ends up hurting their competition. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=975444 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=975444 [2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3389882/former-mozilla-exec-alleges-google-torpedoed-firefox-with-oops-excuses.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3389882/former-mozilla...
- AJ007 7y agoThis is yet another case where Google probably has minimal to no benefit from doing it, but when produced collectively with other evidence in an anti-trust case will do an incredible amount of damage.
- superasn 7y agoBelieve it or not but the web is literally unusable if I use any other browser not based on chrome because: - The search is degraded (it hides the advanced search menu in Google and most dropdowns in ff) - Most of the sites use Recaptcha or cloudflare (also an extension of recaptcha) which gives you a low bot score if you're using anything other than chrome and then begins the never ending exercise of identifying cars and traffic lights - I think web devs are also only testing for chrome nowadays and a lot of big and small sites just won't render properly with FF (the PH menu won't open on ff android for me unless I change the ua). It's not always chrome's fault though as many sites (like dictation.io) insist I use chrome because ff still won't support some web apis.
- ec109685 7y agoWhat is the AMP update this article was speaking of?
- r3bl 7y agoIt's literally mentioned and linked to in the first paragraph.
- est 7y agoSo google chrome hides www and m in the domain, will Google replace AMP domains as well?
- buboard 7y agoThey are building another monstrosity to be able to masquerade as your entire domain. But it is optional , of course /s
- AgentME 7y agoWebsite authors opting in to letting another server serve content "as" their own domain isn't anything new: it's what CDNs do. The Signed Exchanges standard is actually a huge step up because the website authors get to cryptographically sign their content. With normal CDNs, if the CDN is malicious or gets hacked, the CDN is free to serve modified content on the original domain.
- throwaway2048 7y agoA CDN that you have no choice but to use if you want to reach mobile users, otherwise your site will be so artificially de-ranked nobody will click it. A CDN where active content is extremely limited, and advertising is effectively limited to Google. A CDN entirely under control of the biggest search engine, who has a direct, a perverse incentive to take as much traffic from you as they can (see info boxes). Presenting Google AMP as "just" a CDN is very dishonest.
- gorhill 7y ago> Signed Exchanges standard is actually a huge step up Signed exchanges is considered harmful by Mozilla.[1] * * * [1] https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/
- Avamander 7y agoYet they didn't consider Cliqz harmful when they shipped that. Pot calling the kettle black, I'm using IceCat where possible instead.
- AlexDragusin 7y agoI have to give it to Google for such brilliant scheme to make use the current web clutter to its advantage, but we all know the dangers of this if left unchecked. The web doesn't need AMP to be fast, it needs common sense which has left the building once ads and tracking became the goal.
- buboard 7y agoah that's nothing. Wait until google launches accelerated desktop pages
- buboard 7y agoAnd then accelerated shopping results. And then accelerated signups.
- Sephr 7y agoAMP isn't all bad. SXG from AMP will enable advanced P2P CDN tech to flourish. Unfortunately Mozilla has decided to not support it.
- LoSboccacc 7y agoit's like we learned nothing from the wml fiasco and are jumping both feet in the same system with the same shortcomings
- Avamander 7y agoI'd honestly love to see domain-signed pages being distributed over IPFS.
- RobertRoberts 7y agoWhat would it take to get the internet community to really see the danger of AMP? Some kind of social media campaign? AMP will rot away a free and open internet. The internet will be turned into a walled garden for Google/Alphabet's sole benefit. (or at least a large enough chunk of it to make avoiding Google/Alphabet nearly impossible) Edit: clarity.
- GoblinSlayer 7y ago>server-side rendering Oh, that's shiny new technology. Call me when we have 3d buttons back.
- Ajedi32 7y agoI'm confused. The title of this article isn't at all supported by its content. The entire thing can be summarized as: > Google rolled out a new feature that allows AMP to use server-side rendering (SSR), boosting performance for sites that adopt the technology across their entire domain. Followed by a dozen paragraphs arguing why AMP is bad, with no further mention of server side rendering or why it "shows how [AMP] can infiltrate every corner of the internet". Is there anything new here, or is this just another rehash of the same arguments we've been having about AMP since the day it was released?
- aww_dang 7y agoIs there any irony in this? SPAs are often the pages which are excessively heavy. Not saying it can't be done well. Just that these pages are frequent offenders.
- kerkeslager 7y agoI'm going to make a rare exception to my usual hating on Google, and say that AMP is great for users. I'd like to see a move back to a document-based web rather than a web-application-based web: CSS and JavaScript have not been good for users. A document-based web allows users to pull down content and render it on their machines using programs users control. Coupling content with CSS and JavaScript means that users must use a website's CSS and JavaScript to render the content, which means that users must give up control of how the content is rendered. The results are predictable: most websites have crap accessibility, run a bunch of malware[1] that has nothing to do with rendering, and have user interfaces are all over the place (every website is different so you have to learn a new interface every time you visit a new website, even if they're presenting the same kinds of content). Why should we let websites determine how content is rendered? I can pull down an AMP page and view the content the way I want to view it, so this gives me as a user a lot more power. Sure, the most common case right now is that Google renders it on their page, and that gives power to Google. But that's just trading one evil (Google) for another (content providers who package content with malware)--as a user that's not really a net gain or loss. But having content shipped in a more document-based format is a big gain for users. [1] Code which runs on my computer to show me ads is adware. Code which runs on my computer to send data about me to companies is spyware. If these were written in Python and packaged with a desktop program everyone would call them adware and spyware, but if they're written in JavaScript and packaged with a web application they're ubiquitous and accepted.
- tempodox 7y agoI really do wonder how long it will take everybody to realize that Google is the ultimate computer virus.