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Sorry but I like amp. I don’t want sites like the guardian to drain my phone battery and load in 10 seconds. I understand if it’s bad for publishers but as a co

Sorry but I like amp. I don’t want sites like the guardian to drain my phone battery and load in 10 seconds. I understand if it’s bad for publishers but as a consumer I love it. To suggest that an end user would go about disabling JavaScript and other reasons just shows how HN is in a bubble and don’t really understand that 99% of the users don’t care.

searchableguy 6y ago
There are many ways to go about speeding up the websites for the end users that are less technically involved for everyone and require a new subset of markup and standard.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >There are many ways to go about speeding up the websites for the end users that are less technically involved for everyone and require a new subset of markup and standard. So why isn't it done?
  - searchableguy 6y ago
    Google could simply cache the web pages and strip them naked. Reader mode on browsers do a good job of it on most sites and they can publish guidelines on how to structure your site to make it easier for reader mode to work which wouldn't be that problematic (it would also encourage accessibility).
    - macspoofing 6y ago
      >Google could simply cache the web pages and strip them naked You think Google could get away with stripping or editing commercial pages by default? Be serious. >Reader mode on browsers do a good job of it on most sites Then use it. >they can publish guidelines on how to structure your site to make it easier for reader mode to work which wouldn't be that problematic (it would also encourage accessibility). Google actually does a lot of that. They publish a lot of guidelines, including testing tools (like Lighthouse) to have developers build faster websites. Case in point: https://web.dev/measure https://web.dev/measure
      - searchableguy 6y ago
        > You think Google could get away with stripping or editing commercial pages by default? Be serious. No one said anything about default. It can be opt in like amp but the difference is here simply that they don't require a new standard. Other ways they could solve is just disincentivise slow loading pages. They have said speed is a factor and tried to introduce some features such as showing how fast a page is on chrome as an experiment. They could have pushed that more.
        macspoofing 6y ago
        >It can be opt in like amp but the difference is here simply that they don't require a new standard. But that's exactly what amp is. An opt-in set of standards for creating fast-loading, cach-able pages. There is also no reason why websites couldn't replicate this outside of amp ... but they don't. >Other ways they could solve is just disincentivise slow loading pages. They do that ... in all kinds of ways. The problem is that with their position, they can destroy a lot of businesses if they apply these kinds of rules haphazardly. There's no simple solution here.
        searchableguy 6y ago
        > But that's exactly what amp is. An opt-in set of standards for creating fast-loading, cach-able pages Not exactly. For one, you could introduce opt in for Google to cache your page through a meta tag. No need for entirely new markup and tools. I have no problem with amp as a concept but the implementation leaves me sour. Amp specification has been growing in complexity that I don't notice speed differences on many sites anymore. They also inject their own js which I don't find amusing. Many sites are abusing amp to rank on Google. Reddit, pinterest, etc. It's a terrible experience as a user. They also didn't fix url and domain problem until recently. It's a usability problem. I can't search for the specific tab by the domain name of the site on my browser. They default opt-in to downloading content in the background for amp feed on chrome android. There are many little annoyances like this one that make me dislike amp. Plus, amp isn't heuristic based. If my network speed is fast enough, I don't need the stripped out page. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24327292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24327292
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      Caching and editing could be construed as a derivative work which would run afoul of copyright laws
  - esperent 6y ago
    Because the people creating the standards (i.e. Google) are more interested in pushing AMP than other solutions. That's the whole issue here.
    - macspoofing 6y ago
      >Because the people creating the standards (i.e. Google) Google doesn't create standards. They are one of the major stakeholders, but they don't have the final say. >That's the whole issue here. No. The issue is that Google built a browser that is better than anything now, and was better than anything out there for the past decade and got themselves into a dominant position. They haven't yet abused that position - contrary to a lot of the posts in this thread - but people are nervous. I can respect that viewpoint because it is something to worry about.
      - searchableguy 6y ago
        Amp stories and search ranking were the driving force behind adoption of amp otherwise news media wouldn't pick it up. That is leveraging their existing position as a search engine and aggregator to force a standard.
svnpenn 6y ago
The guardian drains battery because it calls 15 JavaScript files on each page load, followed by another every 5 seconds. This can be solved by blocking 3rd party JavaScript, no need for anything Google related.
- earthboundkid 6y ago
  All of that shit JS is Google related. They don’t write it (all) themselves but they absolutely are responsible for creating the platform for it.
  - nl 6y ago
    This seems a strange take. Half the argument is "Google is taking too much control over the web by forcing people to use AMP" and the other half is "Google is to blame for companies using non-Google related services when they don't use AMP because they created the platform for it (??)". I can understand the first half of the argument. The second half seems to blame Google for creating the web or something?
    - pirocks 6y ago
      I absolutely blame Google + a number of other companies, for the bloated state of the web today. They encouraged and invented most of the bloat.
      - nl 6y ago
        I can understand that argument in regards to standards (I disagree, but it is a coherent argument at least). But that argument doesn't hold up with Javascript based ad serving, which was around prior to Google.
        earthboundkid 6y ago
        Google has owned Double Click for twelve years. In all that time, they couldn't fix ad hosting?
spideymans 6y ago
Cool. I can respect that. Google should give users the option of disabling AMP though. The fact that they've gone out of their way to make it increasingly difficult to access non-AMP versions of webpages makes me think their primary motivation behind AMP is to get people behind the Google walled garden, and not out of benevolent concern for performance.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  Google does give users the opinion of stabling AMP: Switch your search engine to something else. Google search results have become less and less relevant unless I'm actually trying to buy something.
earthboundkid 6y ago
Psst, the thing that drains your battery on news sites are the ads, which Google is 100% responsible for by encouraging an ecosystem of third party JS.
- hu3 6y ago
  Not just the ads but also autoplay videos, 2mb of javascript and the ocasional fancy background fullHD video. Amp gets ride of those.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-video/?format=websites https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-video/?format=w... https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-video-interface.md#autoplay https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-v...
    - hu3 6y ago
      A great advantage of having standards like Amp is that we can then control and limit how things behave. See criterias for autoplay video on Amp: - the video is automatically muted before autoplay starts - when the video is scrolled out of view, the video is paused - when the video is scrolled into view, the video resumes playback - when the user taps the video, the video is unmuted - if the user has interacted with the video (e.g., mutes/unmutes, pauses/resumes, etc.), and the video is scrolled in or out of view, the state of the video remains as how the user left it. For example, if the user pauses the video, then scrolls the video out of view and returns to the video, the video is still paused. Source: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-video-interface.md#autoplay https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-v...
      - Lammy 6y ago
        None of these features should need Google's proprietary platform. See, for example, Mozilla's `media.autoplay.enabled` or `media.block-play-until-visible`
sebazzz 6y ago
AMP is essentially removing stuff from your HTML and Javascript. I don't think AMP is necessary for that.

searchableguy 6y ago

There are many ways to go about speeding up the websites for the end users that are less technically involved for everyone and require a new subset of markup and standard.

macspoofing 6y ago
>There are many ways to go about speeding up the websites for the end users that are less technically involved for everyone and require a new subset of markup and standard. So why isn't it done?
- searchableguy 6y ago
  Google could simply cache the web pages and strip them naked. Reader mode on browsers do a good job of it on most sites and they can publish guidelines on how to structure your site to make it easier for reader mode to work which wouldn't be that problematic (it would also encourage accessibility).
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >Google could simply cache the web pages and strip them naked You think Google could get away with stripping or editing commercial pages by default? Be serious. >Reader mode on browsers do a good job of it on most sites Then use it. >they can publish guidelines on how to structure your site to make it easier for reader mode to work which wouldn't be that problematic (it would also encourage accessibility). Google actually does a lot of that. They publish a lot of guidelines, including testing tools (like Lighthouse) to have developers build faster websites. Case in point: https://web.dev/measure https://web.dev/measure
    - searchableguy 6y ago
      > You think Google could get away with stripping or editing commercial pages by default? Be serious. No one said anything about default. It can be opt in like amp but the difference is here simply that they don't require a new standard. Other ways they could solve is just disincentivise slow loading pages. They have said speed is a factor and tried to introduce some features such as showing how fast a page is on chrome as an experiment. They could have pushed that more.
      - macspoofing 6y ago
        >It can be opt in like amp but the difference is here simply that they don't require a new standard. But that's exactly what amp is. An opt-in set of standards for creating fast-loading, cach-able pages. There is also no reason why websites couldn't replicate this outside of amp ... but they don't. >Other ways they could solve is just disincentivise slow loading pages. They do that ... in all kinds of ways. The problem is that with their position, they can destroy a lot of businesses if they apply these kinds of rules haphazardly. There's no simple solution here.
        searchableguy 6y ago
        > But that's exactly what amp is. An opt-in set of standards for creating fast-loading, cach-able pages Not exactly. For one, you could introduce opt in for Google to cache your page through a meta tag. No need for entirely new markup and tools. I have no problem with amp as a concept but the implementation leaves me sour. Amp specification has been growing in complexity that I don't notice speed differences on many sites anymore. They also inject their own js which I don't find amusing. Many sites are abusing amp to rank on Google. Reddit, pinterest, etc. It's a terrible experience as a user. They also didn't fix url and domain problem until recently. It's a usability problem. I can't search for the specific tab by the domain name of the site on my browser. They default opt-in to downloading content in the background for amp feed on chrome android. There are many little annoyances like this one that make me dislike amp. Plus, amp isn't heuristic based. If my network speed is fast enough, I don't need the stripped out page. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24327292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24327292
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Caching and editing could be construed as a derivative work which would run afoul of copyright laws
- esperent 6y ago
  Because the people creating the standards (i.e. Google) are more interested in pushing AMP than other solutions. That's the whole issue here.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >Because the people creating the standards (i.e. Google) Google doesn't create standards. They are one of the major stakeholders, but they don't have the final say. >That's the whole issue here. No. The issue is that Google built a browser that is better than anything now, and was better than anything out there for the past decade and got themselves into a dominant position. They haven't yet abused that position - contrary to a lot of the posts in this thread - but people are nervous. I can respect that viewpoint because it is something to worry about.
    - searchableguy 6y ago
      Amp stories and search ranking were the driving force behind adoption of amp otherwise news media wouldn't pick it up. That is leveraging their existing position as a search engine and aggregator to force a standard.

svnpenn 6y ago

The guardian drains battery because it calls 15 JavaScript files on each page load, followed by another every 5 seconds. This can be solved by blocking 3rd party JavaScript, no need for anything Google related.

earthboundkid 6y ago
All of that shit JS is Google related. They don’t write it (all) themselves but they absolutely are responsible for creating the platform for it.
- nl 6y ago
  This seems a strange take. Half the argument is "Google is taking too much control over the web by forcing people to use AMP" and the other half is "Google is to blame for companies using non-Google related services when they don't use AMP because they created the platform for it (??)". I can understand the first half of the argument. The second half seems to blame Google for creating the web or something?
  - pirocks 6y ago
    I absolutely blame Google + a number of other companies, for the bloated state of the web today. They encouraged and invented most of the bloat.
    - nl 6y ago
      I can understand that argument in regards to standards (I disagree, but it is a coherent argument at least). But that argument doesn't hold up with Javascript based ad serving, which was around prior to Google.
      - earthboundkid 6y ago
        Google has owned Double Click for twelve years. In all that time, they couldn't fix ad hosting?

spideymans 6y ago

Cool. I can respect that. Google should give users the option of disabling AMP though. The fact that they've gone out of their way to make it increasingly difficult to access non-AMP versions of webpages makes me think their primary motivation behind AMP is to get people behind the Google walled garden, and not out of benevolent concern for performance.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
Google does give users the opinion of stabling AMP: Switch your search engine to something else. Google search results have become less and less relevant unless I'm actually trying to buy something.

earthboundkid 6y ago

Psst, the thing that drains your battery on news sites are the ads, which Google is 100% responsible for by encouraging an ecosystem of third party JS.

hu3 6y ago
Not just the ads but also autoplay videos, 2mb of javascript and the ocasional fancy background fullHD video. Amp gets ride of those.
- Lammy 6y ago
  https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-video/?format=websites https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-video/?format=w... https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-video-interface.md#autoplay https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-v...
  - hu3 6y ago
    A great advantage of having standards like Amp is that we can then control and limit how things behave. See criterias for autoplay video on Amp: - the video is automatically muted before autoplay starts - when the video is scrolled out of view, the video is paused - when the video is scrolled into view, the video resumes playback - when the user taps the video, the video is unmuted - if the user has interacted with the video (e.g., mutes/unmutes, pauses/resumes, etc.), and the video is scrolled in or out of view, the state of the video remains as how the user left it. For example, if the user pauses the video, then scrolls the video out of view and returns to the video, the video is still paused. Source: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-video-interface.md#autoplay https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-v...
    - Lammy 6y ago
      None of these features should need Google's proprietary platform. See, for example, Mozilla's `media.autoplay.enabled` or `media.block-play-until-visible`

sebazzz 6y ago

AMP is essentially removing stuff from your HTML and Javascript. I don't think AMP is necessary for that.