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On the one hand - yeah, AMP can go to hell. It's a massive overreach and, as pointed out, is getting awfully close to an actual attempt to rewrite the Web. On

On the one hand - yeah, AMP can go to hell. It's a massive overreach and, as pointed out, is getting awfully close to an actual attempt to rewrite the Web. On the other hand, we probably wouldn't be in this situation if website owners didn't try to bog down their own websites with tens of MB of sheer garbage. Trimming the fat isn't a priority for website owners, so Google is trying to make it their priority. As long as sites think it's OK to lard up their sites with trackers, video ads, and all manner of nonsense, AMP will continue to be attractive to the end user.

mulmen 6y ago
Your second point comes up every time and you’re right. The bloat is a problem. Also Google can fix this. They can simply add load times and page size to their ranking algorithm. Problem solved. AMP is not the solution.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  I am not sure that is much better than AMP in the burden it puts on content generators. AMP at least gives them a helping hand in being faster.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- gundmc 6y ago
  Wish granted! https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience.html https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/05/evaluating-page-ex... I don't have an issue with providing amp as a service if it doesn't get treated more favorably than fast non-amp pages.
- zeta0134 6y ago
  I don't even need it to be part of the ranking algorithm. Google could simply display a number of megabytes as a grey, boring number underneath a page. I think mobile users would be especially appreciative; those of us stuck on metered connections could avoid bloated news articles in favor of leaner sites covering the same story.
- creato 6y ago
  Wasn't load time already part of the algorithm? I have thought making a site not-slow was step 0 of SEO for quite a long time. Maybe they could have increased the penalty for slowness though.
- 7e7dueh3h 6y ago
  I want a useful search engine not a political one. If the most relevant result to my query is loaded with garbage web design I still want it at the top of my search results because I can decide if I want to return to that site for myself whereas I can't magically correct some unseen ranking parameter that I don't care about.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dtech 6y ago
    Taking page load times into account is not political in any way. Faster load times provide a better user experience.
    - feanaro 6y ago
      Who is this mythical universal user for whom it provides a better experience? Your parent poster is a user and it seems his experience is better when he gets the most accurate results, not a subset that is fastest. I tend to agree.
dmitriid 6y ago
> Trimming the fat isn't a priority for website owners, so Google is trying to make it their priority No, Google is not. At least not with AMP. AMP was the answer to Facebook News. If you want to get into the top spot in Google Search (the carousel) you have to 1) be a publisher and 2) use AMP. That's the entire extent and purpose of AMP, no matter how much Google may pretend otherwise.
0xy 6y ago
Leaving Gmail open for 15 seconds = 220 requests and 28MB of information over the network for me. Google is the absolute last company to lecture anyone about website bloat.
- dastx 6y ago
  Right but other websites load bloat in the sense that it's all trackers, ads and other useless crap that doesn't add anything to the UX. Gmail on the other hand all, if not most, of what is being downloaded is to have the rich UI that it gives. It's mostly not ads, and likely only GA or whatever they use internally as a tracker. I doubt those add up to more than a couple of MB. Other websites use many different third parties. I've seen some sites use over 10 different analytics tools on top of other other ad networks.
  - 0xy 6y ago
    A significant portion of those requests are multiple trackers on multiple domains.
- mobilio 6y ago
  Here is Gmail basic HTML for legacy browsers: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/1pq68r75kzvdr/?v%3Dlui https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/1pq68r75kzvdr/?v%3Dlui
- Zak 6y ago
  Gmail is an application, not a web page. The distinction isn't a technical one, but based on how users interact with it. It's still fair to complain about bloat and performance issues, but users generally load Gmail once per browser session, making a large, slow load more excusable than it is for say, CNN.
  - 0xy 6y ago
    Unless you're using an incorrect definition of application, then CNN is also an application. Arguably with far more functionality. The old version of Gmail had 90% of the features and was at least 3x faster and more responsive. If you load the new Gmail, immediately click the search when it's available and start typing it stutters and misses half of your inputs because they're totally pegging JS threads loading in all the bloatware. It's a far worse experience for almost no benefit (other than for the Google engineers who made the site 3x slower to use as leverage for promotions).
markosaric 6y ago
Google owns 7 of the top 10 most popular third-party calls on the websites today. They’re things such as Google Analytics, Google Fonts and Google’s DoubleClick advertising scripts. So they're at least partially responsible for the websites being slow with lots of garbage in the first place.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  You can say this all you want but Google's assets aren't really the ones slowing websites down. Websites download megabytes and megabytes of garbage.
tannhaeuser 6y ago
Don't think for a moment AMP is a technical solution to counter sites being bloated - it's a strategical solution for Google to lead audiences into their walled garden, like they always do eg. Usenet/DejaNews and XMPP/Hangouts. The bloat is something that Google themselves are responsible for, by the incentives and economies of scale they set upon the web (after they hijacked HTML and attempting to transform it into a shitty app platform for like 15 years now). News publishers should be aware that giving Google exclusive access to your content via AMP is very shortsighted and in fact just demonstrating basic failure to comprehend what should be their very core competence - winning audiences for your site and independent, sustainable journalism in this era of the attention economy. All the more since Google's reign as a privileged portal to the extant web is coming to an end (as demonstrated by this desperate AMP initiative itself). If you as a journalist cannot make it in a free and undiscriminating medium, but rather give in to a walled garden like CompuServe and AOL used to be in the 1990s, then this doesn't inspire confidence in the journalistic quality of your content, and I don't want to read it (I could as well go elsewhere, link to other publishers, and I do). The same could be said for news providers in bed with Facebook. For example, German public broadcasters (themselves on a roll to expand their web offerings to a degree that private publishers went to court over this) have absolutely no reason to be on Fb, and lead their audience into privacy minefields, yet on their site, the same publishers make grand essays on privacy and fake news.
wruza 6y ago
Website owners are not mostly software developers. They just want features for their business to rest on. They may not even understand how ranking works in tech detail. If only developers were motivated to create and use decent code instead of using modern multilayered garbage technology...

mulmen 6y ago

Your second point comes up every time and you’re right. The bloat is a problem. Also Google can fix this. They can simply add load times and page size to their ranking algorithm. Problem solved. AMP is not the solution.

MattGaiser 6y ago
I am not sure that is much better than AMP in the burden it puts on content generators. AMP at least gives them a helping hand in being faster.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
gundmc 6y ago
Wish granted! https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience.html https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/05/evaluating-page-ex... I don't have an issue with providing amp as a service if it doesn't get treated more favorably than fast non-amp pages.
zeta0134 6y ago
I don't even need it to be part of the ranking algorithm. Google could simply display a number of megabytes as a grey, boring number underneath a page. I think mobile users would be especially appreciative; those of us stuck on metered connections could avoid bloated news articles in favor of leaner sites covering the same story.
creato 6y ago
Wasn't load time already part of the algorithm? I have thought making a site not-slow was step 0 of SEO for quite a long time. Maybe they could have increased the penalty for slowness though.
7e7dueh3h 6y ago
I want a useful search engine not a political one. If the most relevant result to my query is loaded with garbage web design I still want it at the top of my search results because I can decide if I want to return to that site for myself whereas I can't magically correct some unseen ranking parameter that I don't care about.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dtech 6y ago
  Taking page load times into account is not political in any way. Faster load times provide a better user experience.
  - feanaro 6y ago
    Who is this mythical universal user for whom it provides a better experience? Your parent poster is a user and it seems his experience is better when he gets the most accurate results, not a subset that is fastest. I tend to agree.

dmitriid 6y ago

> Trimming the fat isn't a priority for website owners, so Google is trying to make it their priority No, Google is not. At least not with AMP. AMP was the answer to Facebook News. If you want to get into the top spot in Google Search (the carousel) you have to 1) be a publisher and 2) use AMP. That's the entire extent and purpose of AMP, no matter how much Google may pretend otherwise.

0xy 6y ago

Leaving Gmail open for 15 seconds = 220 requests and 28MB of information over the network for me. Google is the absolute last company to lecture anyone about website bloat.

dastx 6y ago
Right but other websites load bloat in the sense that it's all trackers, ads and other useless crap that doesn't add anything to the UX. Gmail on the other hand all, if not most, of what is being downloaded is to have the rich UI that it gives. It's mostly not ads, and likely only GA or whatever they use internally as a tracker. I doubt those add up to more than a couple of MB. Other websites use many different third parties. I've seen some sites use over 10 different analytics tools on top of other other ad networks.
- 0xy 6y ago
  A significant portion of those requests are multiple trackers on multiple domains.
mobilio 6y ago
Here is Gmail basic HTML for legacy browsers: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/1pq68r75kzvdr/?v%3Dlui https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/1pq68r75kzvdr/?v%3Dlui
Zak 6y ago
Gmail is an application, not a web page. The distinction isn't a technical one, but based on how users interact with it. It's still fair to complain about bloat and performance issues, but users generally load Gmail once per browser session, making a large, slow load more excusable than it is for say, CNN.
- 0xy 6y ago
  Unless you're using an incorrect definition of application, then CNN is also an application. Arguably with far more functionality. The old version of Gmail had 90% of the features and was at least 3x faster and more responsive. If you load the new Gmail, immediately click the search when it's available and start typing it stutters and misses half of your inputs because they're totally pegging JS threads loading in all the bloatware. It's a far worse experience for almost no benefit (other than for the Google engineers who made the site 3x slower to use as leverage for promotions).

markosaric 6y ago

Google owns 7 of the top 10 most popular third-party calls on the websites today. They’re things such as Google Analytics, Google Fonts and Google’s DoubleClick advertising scripts. So they're at least partially responsible for the websites being slow with lots of garbage in the first place.

kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
You can say this all you want but Google's assets aren't really the ones slowing websites down. Websites download megabytes and megabytes of garbage.

tannhaeuser 6y ago

Don't think for a moment AMP is a technical solution to counter sites being bloated - it's a strategical solution for Google to lead audiences into their walled garden, like they always do eg. Usenet/DejaNews and XMPP/Hangouts. The bloat is something that Google themselves are responsible for, by the incentives and economies of scale they set upon the web (after they hijacked HTML and attempting to transform it into a shitty app platform for like 15 years now). News publishers should be aware that giving Google exclusive access to your content via AMP is very shortsighted and in fact just demonstrating basic failure to comprehend what should be their very core competence - winning audiences for your site and independent, sustainable journalism in this era of the attention economy. All the more since Google's reign as a privileged portal to the extant web is coming to an end (as demonstrated by this desperate AMP initiative itself). If you as a journalist cannot make it in a free and undiscriminating medium, but rather give in to a walled garden like CompuServe and AOL used to be in the 1990s, then this doesn't inspire confidence in the journalistic quality of your content, and I don't want to read it (I could as well go elsewhere, link to other publishers, and I do). The same could be said for news providers in bed with Facebook. For example, German public broadcasters (themselves on a roll to expand their web offerings to a degree that private publishers went to court over this) have absolutely no reason to be on Fb, and lead their audience into privacy minefields, yet on their site, the same publishers make grand essays on privacy and fake news.

wruza 6y ago

Website owners are not mostly software developers. They just want features for their business to rest on. They may not even understand how ranking works in tech detail. If only developers were motivated to create and use decent code instead of using modern multilayered garbage technology...