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Wow, this is just terrible. Sites using this will now be indexed by google, but not by any other search engine, since it's encrypted with a key only google [and

Wow, this is just terrible. Sites using this will now be indexed by google, but not by any other search engine, since it's encrypted with a key only google [and subscribers] can read. I really hope AMP never gets any large scale adoption by consumers.

diggan 7y ago
> I really hope AMP never gets any large scale adoption by consumers. Sad part is that with Google's marketshare on smartphone (StatCounter shows 77% of mobile OS is android) and web (again, StatCounter: 63% on Google Chrome) they don't need consumers to adopt it. They just make to need any alternatives (like not using AMP) be more of a hassle and normal users will just use it, not considering the consequences.
- WhyNotHugo 7y ago
  I though that AMP was something that the Google-search-app used. Does Google Chrome implement AMP too? (I use Firefox and occasionally Safari on mobile, so I've no idea here).
  - diggan 7y ago
    I think it's Google Search (website, google.com) that shows AMP links more prominently if your user agent is Google Chrome (at least on Android, unsure on desktop), but I'm also not 100% confident, as I'm not using Chrome on either my smartphone nor computer.
  - abraham 7y ago
    AMP is a web UI framework. Any fairly modem browser can display it without having to implement anything special.
    - diggan 7y ago
      The UI Framework is one part of AMP. I don't think most people who resist AMP is resisting some web components. AMP is however not just that, it's also the AMP Caches, which are currently gatekept by Google and CloudFlare with little information published around how you run your own. There is just some guidelines, but no information outside of that. This is the part that many are feeling is giving Google too much control and influence over the web, as they control large swaths of the web and are now trying to find ways of making sure people don't leave their controlled parts.
hlandau 7y ago
I remember in the early days of Google, it was a big no-no for sites to serve different content to Google than to actual users. Sites caught doing this would be banned from Google, so SEO advice quickly became widespread: don't do this, it will hurt you. But results like this seem to be commonplace now, with Google doing nothing about it. This article seems to be overt confirmation that Google no longer has an issue with this. Sad to see, though of course Google jumped the shark a long time ago.
- fastball 7y ago
  But... that actually doesn't apply here? In fact, it's the exact opposite of what you are saying. Google isn't encouraging anyone to deliver different results to Google. It is providing a solution that serves the same content to all users (and search engines). That is exactly the thing you said they were espousing previously. Previously, the actually worthwhile solution to paywalling was to not load the content at all until after auth. This means that you were showing different content to a google spider vs. a subbed user. Now it's the same.
  - detaro 7y ago
    And before, showing different content to Google than to a random web user was bad.
    - xnyan 7y ago
      Repeating the same thing you just said in response to an argument is not an argument. Encryption is not changing content, in fact it's the only way to prove that the content was not changed from the version google indexed vs what your are seeing. Please correct me if I am wrong, but google has always indexed paywalled sites, in other words there has never been a guarantee you have rights to view what google indexed. The only sin is to say "I told google I have A" but really you have B. It seems like what you are arguing is that google should not index paywalled sites. This is a legitimate desire of course, but has never been reality.
      - deleted 7y ago
fastball 7y ago
Is it? Now at least Google can index it and it's faster. The solution most savvy publishers were using before was to not send the content at all to the client, which means that search engines were not able to index it at all. As someone who is actually subbed to a few paywalled sites, this solution sounds great to me. I mean, we're talking about paywalled content here – ideals of an Open Web don't really apply.
- bscphil 7y ago
  > I mean, we're talking about paywalled content here – ideals of an Open Web don't really apply. I think the scenario being imagined here is: 1. I search for story on Google dot com. 2. Paywalled story appears at #1, artificially boosted relative to other paywalled content because Google can index it. 3. I click on the story (not knowing it's paywalled), am greeted with a paywall. The site not only blocked me from viewing the story, they just wasted significantly more of my mobile data.
- WhyNotHugo 7y ago
  What worries me is that, for consumers of these paywalled websites, google is not the only search option to search content in them, but not any other search engine. The monopolisation here is a very scary trend.

diggan 7y ago

> I really hope AMP never gets any large scale adoption by consumers. Sad part is that with Google's marketshare on smartphone (StatCounter shows 77% of mobile OS is android) and web (again, StatCounter: 63% on Google Chrome) they don't need consumers to adopt it. They just make to need any alternatives (like not using AMP) be more of a hassle and normal users will just use it, not considering the consequences.

WhyNotHugo 7y ago
I though that AMP was something that the Google-search-app used. Does Google Chrome implement AMP too? (I use Firefox and occasionally Safari on mobile, so I've no idea here).
- diggan 7y ago
  I think it's Google Search (website, google.com) that shows AMP links more prominently if your user agent is Google Chrome (at least on Android, unsure on desktop), but I'm also not 100% confident, as I'm not using Chrome on either my smartphone nor computer.
- abraham 7y ago
  AMP is a web UI framework. Any fairly modem browser can display it without having to implement anything special.
  - diggan 7y ago
    The UI Framework is one part of AMP. I don't think most people who resist AMP is resisting some web components. AMP is however not just that, it's also the AMP Caches, which are currently gatekept by Google and CloudFlare with little information published around how you run your own. There is just some guidelines, but no information outside of that. This is the part that many are feeling is giving Google too much control and influence over the web, as they control large swaths of the web and are now trying to find ways of making sure people don't leave their controlled parts.

hlandau 7y ago

I remember in the early days of Google, it was a big no-no for sites to serve different content to Google than to actual users. Sites caught doing this would be banned from Google, so SEO advice quickly became widespread: don't do this, it will hurt you. But results like this seem to be commonplace now, with Google doing nothing about it. This article seems to be overt confirmation that Google no longer has an issue with this. Sad to see, though of course Google jumped the shark a long time ago.

fastball 7y ago
But... that actually doesn't apply here? In fact, it's the exact opposite of what you are saying. Google isn't encouraging anyone to deliver different results to Google. It is providing a solution that serves the same content to all users (and search engines). That is exactly the thing you said they were espousing previously. Previously, the actually worthwhile solution to paywalling was to not load the content at all until after auth. This means that you were showing different content to a google spider vs. a subbed user. Now it's the same.
- detaro 7y ago
  And before, showing different content to Google than to a random web user was bad.
  - xnyan 7y ago
    Repeating the same thing you just said in response to an argument is not an argument. Encryption is not changing content, in fact it's the only way to prove that the content was not changed from the version google indexed vs what your are seeing. Please correct me if I am wrong, but google has always indexed paywalled sites, in other words there has never been a guarantee you have rights to view what google indexed. The only sin is to say "I told google I have A" but really you have B. It seems like what you are arguing is that google should not index paywalled sites. This is a legitimate desire of course, but has never been reality.
    - deleted 7y ago

fastball 7y ago

Is it? Now at least Google can index it and it's faster. The solution most savvy publishers were using before was to not send the content at all to the client, which means that search engines were not able to index it at all. As someone who is actually subbed to a few paywalled sites, this solution sounds great to me. I mean, we're talking about paywalled content here – ideals of an Open Web don't really apply.

bscphil 7y ago
> I mean, we're talking about paywalled content here – ideals of an Open Web don't really apply. I think the scenario being imagined here is: 1. I search for story on Google dot com. 2. Paywalled story appears at #1, artificially boosted relative to other paywalled content because Google can index it. 3. I click on the story (not knowing it's paywalled), am greeted with a paywall. The site not only blocked me from viewing the story, they just wasted significantly more of my mobile data.
WhyNotHugo 7y ago
What worries me is that, for consumers of these paywalled websites, google is not the only search option to search content in them, but not any other search engine. The monopolisation here is a very scary trend.