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How does anyone think this is a good idea? It should be clear which news site I am reading when I'm reading an article. Otherwise, how do I know which bias to a
by TechBro8615 6y ago
How does anyone think this is a good idea? It should be clear which news site I am reading when I'm reading an article. Otherwise, how do I know which bias to apply? On iOS, the title bar says "google.com" whether I'm reading an article from CNN.com or WashingtonExaminer.com.
Of all the anti-competitive actions google has taken around search results, AMP is by far the worst. I hope they get smacked down for it in the upcoming anti-trust lawsuit. And kudos to Apple for refusing to change the URL bar like Google does on Android.
- lonelappde 6y agoWhat about the URL bar? For average non techie users, the URL bar isn't particularly helpful. They use page content. And AMP pages do show the original page domain name.
- ilikehurdles 6y agoThe URL bar is helpful to fighting phishing attacks. It's one of the things everyone at my company, including the non-technical people, is askedt to check before entering information. Also techie and non-techie people have been using the same browsers for how many decades now? Aren't the majority of people in many countries on the internet? It seems like the average non-techie users succeeded in figuring things out so far.
- delouvois 6y agoURL are "not particularly helpful for non-techie users" ? How did you even end up here is beyond me.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoPresumably you know that non-technical users, IME, use Google instead of the URL bar. And, if Bing is the default search engine they search Google first, then enter the website name in Google, then click on the first result (without checking the URL). This is the primary way I've seen "non tech" users navigate to a website. Some will use the address bar, but they're in the minority. No matter how much I berate my family they still all do this, so I'm no longer surprised to see it when visiting a client (though I don't do web design/training since last year).
- u801e 6y ago> The URL bar is helpful to fighting phishing attacks It would have been nice if client side TLS certificates were more popular. Then your browser could warn you that you're not using your client cert when connecting to a certain website and not allow you to complete the connection. That would be a better solution as opposed to relying on users to manually check the URL.
- arbitrage 6y agowhile we're wishing for things that just won't ever happen, can I have a pony?
- ralph84 6y agoHow does a client-side cert help with authenticating the server? Why wouldn’t a phishing site also ask for the client-side cert if the real site does?
- u801e 6y ago~~It wouldn't work because the phishing site would lack the private key needed to validate your client-side certificate and the TLS connection would not be established. This is assuming that the legitimate website itself signed your certificate signing request (CSR) to create the client-side certificate.~~ Edit: What I posted above is not correct. What I should have said was that the server would validate the client certificate by checking a certificate authority (either managed by the server itself or a 3rd party).
- Arnavion 6y ago>It wouldn't work because the phishing site would lack the private key needed to validate your client-side certificate and the TLS connection would not be established. That is not how TLS works. A server can trust a client based on the certificate the client presents. A client can't distrust a server based on the certificate the client presents. "The phishing site would lack the private key needed to validate your client-side certificate" is nonsense. Neither the real site nor the phishing site have the private key used to generate the CSR; only the client that sent the CSR has that, and validating a cert does not involve the private key in any way. If you're thinking of a new protocol where the server itself generates an arbitrary asymmetric keypair and shares it with the client, then a) that's not TLS, b) that could just as well be done with a symmetric key (since this is just pre-shared key auth) where the server presents a nonce to the client to sign and verifies the client signed it, and c) a fake server can just not do that.
- lightswitch05 6y agoI couldn't agree more that AMP is terrible. I do everything I can to avoid it. Using DuckDuckGo certainly helps, but I will still occasionally stumble on an AMP site. I've created a hosts block list to help me avoid AMP as much as possible. It currently has 3,569 unique domains (works great with a PiHole!). I'm really concerned about Chrome's 'signed exchanges' where they can fake the URL completely. I hope Firefox will never support it. https://www.github.developerdan.com/hosts/ https://www.github.developerdan.com/hosts/
- diminish 6y agoWe don't need any other website except Google /fear Google scraped and stole all the traffic for covid19 since 3 months just like it did for other topics
- elliekelly 6y agoJust wanted to say thanks for maintaining your block lists! I use a few with NextDNS. I try to be privacy conscious but I don’t really have the technical background to know the best way to make that happen so I very much appreciate that you share your work and make it easy for those of us who aren’t experts. I’ve never been quite sure that I’ve configured things right but your NOT BLOCKING image doesn’t show up for me so that’s quite a relief!
- lightswitch05 6y agoI'm glad you like it! If you have any issues with it, I encourage people to come open a ticket explaining what is wrong. Sometimes I screw up and block things that shouldn't be - other times I have reasons why I blocked something and the ticket provides a good place to have a that discussion. Feedback from the community is great help to me in improving the lists.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago> I'm really concerned about Chrome's 'signed exchanges' where they can fake the URL completely. They're not faking the URL; a signed exchange contains data that can only have come from the original site. It's a secure way of handling caching/CDNs/etc, and it'll be a net improvement for security that allows sites to put less trust in third-party servers and scripts.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoSo how long until AMP is exploited in a wide range phishing campaign? I know that it is getting harder and harder to distinguish phishing emails from non-phishing emails, but this move is not helping at all. It clearly helps google though. The annoying thing is, average user will not notice and/or care.
- TechBro8615 6y agoAll it would require is an AMP website that mimics the Google login page. It already says "google.com" at the top of the browser, and we've told users to trust that, so...
- tyingq 6y agoMaybe they are trying to push their signed exchanges / "AMP real URL"[1]? Last I understood, Firefox says they won't support it, ever. Apple is less vocal about it, but doesn't appear to be working it. [1] https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/04/instant-loading-amp-pages-from-your-own.html https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/04/instant-loading-am...
- dane-pgp 6y ago> Firefox says they won't support it, ever. That's a bit of an exaggeration. Mozilla's position statement on web packaging[1] says: > As a whole, and for origin substitution in particular, until more information is available on the effect on the web ecosystem, Mozilla concludes that it would not be good for the web to deploy web packaging. Personally I'd like to see web packaging adopted without the origin substitution capability (at least to start with), as it would still allow sites to offer web apps comprised of a fixed bundle of code (signed with an offline key), rather than potentially different code each time you visited. That would reduce some of the concerns around serving "secure" apps on the web, as long as browsers had a way of preventing the server from silently updating the web package (perhaps using short-lived unique subdomains/certs). [1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ha00dSGKmjoEh2mRiG8FIA5sJ1KihTuZe-AXX1r8P-8/edit# https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ha00dSGKmjoEh2mRiG8FIA5s...
- ravenstine 6y ago> I hope they get smacked down for it in the upcoming anti-trust lawsuit. People have been saying this for years, and it never happens.
- sgift 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google - Things take time, but Google did get fined in the past and there's a good chance they get fined again (and forced to change things).
- reaperducer 6y agoFined ≠ "smacked." To Google, EU fines are just a cost of doing business. Like FedEx eating parking tickets. Until Google is fined to a degree that it impacts its share price, nothing will change.
- AnssiH 6y agoAll of the 3 big antitrust cases with fines the parent linked to resulted in Google changing their practices. So IMHO "nothing will change" does not seem right.
- reaperducer 6y agoIf Google had truly changed, this topic wouldn't come up over and over again.
- glenstein 6y agoMy concern is they lose the ability to counterbalance the other four of the Big Five, if they are uniquely targeted by an anti-trust lawsuit. Which is to say, I don't disagree with the momentum toward anti-trust measures being brought against Google, but I want them systematically brought against the entire Big Five, or else the effects may just be further consolidation.
- nothis 6y ago>Of all the anti-competitive actions google has taken around search results, AMP is by far the worst. I hope they get smacked down for it in the upcoming anti-trust lawsuit. This reminds me of the EU Internet Explorer lawsuit, which was peanuts compared to what Google is doing right now. Between Google Search, Chrome, Android, Youtube, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, AMP and likely 5 more things I forgot, they've stealth-grabbed so much of the internet, it's not even funny. At least force them to split off their ad/datahoarding businesses.
- strictnein 6y agoTheir ad business is more or less their only business. Everything else is paid for by that.
- ferzul 6y agowhich is why it should be segregated from the products people find useful
- a1369209993 6y agoExactly; this would - if done correctly - result in Google collapsing pretty much immediately, as they should have done a decade ago.
- wwweston 6y ago> How does anyone think this is a good idea? A while back on one of the AMP discussions here, someone from Google weighed in. They said the data was clear: users not only accept it, they love AMP. I asked how they knew that, because if it was, say, just tracking how many people tried the 2-3 tap process to get to the original URL compared to how many people just engaged whatever you showed them, then the data might be showing you something else (and in fact, I wasn't clear how you'd get from accept to love in any other way than a focus group or survey). No response. Not clear if that's because revealing data would run afoul of internal confidential disclosure, or because this basically hadn't been thought through. > Apple for refusing to change the URL bar like Google does on Android. Apple has its own problems with the URL bar -- they keep the domain but drop the rest of the URL. Not as bad as replacing the domain, but not great.
- PunksATawnyFill 6y agoCompanies with shitty UI often make unfounded claims that "users prefer it." Adobe is another prime offender here. If anyone's word should NOT be taken as gospel for UI or branding, it's Google's.
- spideymans 6y ago> Apple has its own problems with the URL bar -- they keep the domain but drop the rest of the URL. Not as bad as replacing the domain, but not great. You can view the full URL in safari for iOS by tapping the URL bar. In Safari for Mac, you can modify your preferences to always show the full URL. Definitely not ideal, but also not anticompetitive in the same vein as AMP
- asjw 6y agoI wrote an extension to "unamp" the website of a popular Italian newspaper and as soon it reached a thousand users Google banned it and forced Firefox to do the same (shame on you Firefox) So I guess worse is better we are supposed to accept it or else they'll police us into accepting it.
- searchableguy 6y agoCan you share more details?
- asjw 6y agoThe extension was very simple, it just displayed the content for pages protected by a paywall by changing the display attribute. To be clear, they use amp to serve pages in the protected area, but the protected content is served in the body of the page, inside an AMP-APP tag, but simply hidden. The code is few lines long, it could have been one line, but it has to unwrap the shadow dom. I made it for myself, but then friends started asking for it so I published it on Firefox's extension store and later on on the Chrome's one. It's been there for a couple of years, nobody complained, I even emailed the newspaper several times to warn them about the "bug" but they never replied back. It has never been very popular, especially outside Italy, it had around a thousand of installations and about 900 daily users, but on March this year I received a copyright infringement notice from Google, even though Google has no rights on the newspaper's content. They removed the extension right away and banned me from re-uploading it. I tried to reach their support many times, never heard back from them. A few days later Firefox removed the extension as well saying Google contacted them about the copyright infringement. As of today after at least a dozen emails I haven't been able to speak to a human being. I don't mind much, I still use it on my systems and it still works even on Firefox mobile (for now) I tried to upload it under a different name, but apparently I'm forbidden from publishing it again. Weird detail: the day after Firefox removed it I've been contacted on the email I used to register on Firefox dev website asking me if I wanted to sell the extension. The newspaper website is https://www.repubblica.it https://www.repubblica.it
- fomine3 6y ago
- princevegeta89 6y agoThis amp nonsense has long annoyed everyone and I'm puzzled why it's still around. It makes everything harder and confuses deeplinking, sharing, identifying sites and general navigation between pages.
- Kiro 6y agoWhen you say everyone you mean a tiny minority of developers. The actual users don't care or even know what it is. If anything they like it because it loads the page faster.
- searchableguy 6y agoI don't know if it is just my experience but amp sites load slower than hn does. Slower than my own websites. Slower than the websites I usually read on. Sure, amp sites from the feed appear to "work" instantly but they fetch all the content in the background so that's not fair (on chrome at least).
- princevegeta89 6y agoI disagree that amp doesn't bother normal users. It is easily noticeable when you click on a search result and go to a page that says amp.google.com?blah=blahhhh and all that. When, as a normal user, you try to copy that link, you'll end up finding this junk and no straightforward way to see the original link. When you click on a link on the AMP page, it forces a full browser refresh. Sites which force people to use apps don't even work with AMP, because these links confuse the deep linking big time. I haven't even seen AMP pages to be any faster than the actual website itself.
- Kiro 6y agoIt's because your internet speed is too good to notice. AMP pages are definitely much faster, which you can ask anyone in a country with lousy internet connections about. I'm not saying that AMP is good but claiming it's not faster is just wrong. I also don't see why it wouldn't be. If the restrictions on the stuff you can put on AMP pages together with Google's edge caches wouldn't make it faster it would be strange.
- briandear 6y agoMaybe read the actual page you are on? Clearly you have identified the Examiner and CNN despite a google url. I am no fan of AMP, but this criticism is not particularly valid.
- glenstein 6y ago>I hope they get smacked down for it in the upcoming anti-trust lawsuit. I wonder if the outcome of the lawsuit will be a grab bag of concessions, such as abandoning AMP, and, say, adding the ability to fully delete Google Apps from Android rather than doing a mere factory reset, making opt-out of interest based ads easier, and things of that nature.
- ehsankia 6y ago> How does anyone think this is a good idea? They don't. > Just heard from the Image Search team that this is an oversight and they'll add the feature! Sorry about that and thanks for the report! https://twitter.com/cramforce/status/1265688067706245120 https://twitter.com/cramforce/status/1265688067706245120
- marvindanig 6y ago> How does anyone think this is a good idea? Isn't Malte Ubl one of the developer/architect behind it? I could be wrong about this but I remember reading his notes/thoughts on AMP last year.
- ChrisAntaki 6y agoMalte tweeted about this 8 hours ago actually: "Just heard from the Image Search team that this is an oversight and they'll add the feature! Sorry about that and thanks for the report!" https://twitter.com/cramforce/status/1265688067706245120 https://twitter.com/cramforce/status/1265688067706245120
- raxxorrax 6y agoThe already proclaimed their desire to get rid of the URL. I don't think this is in the interest of the user and more in the interest of market dominance and information filtering.
- TechticSolution 6y agoThis news is talking about amp image search and you talking about amp post. First visit this URL https://twitter.com/zenexer/status/1265633022709301249 https://twitter.com/zenexer/status/1265633022709301249 and understand what this post want to tell us.