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>211. Google falsely told publishers that adopting AMP would enhance load times, but Google employees knew that AMP only improves the [redacted] and AMP pages c

>211. Google falsely told publishers that adopting AMP would enhance load times, but Google employees knew that AMP only improves the [redacted] and AMP pages can actually [redacted] [redacted] [redacted]. In other words, the ostensible benefits of faster load times for cached AMP version of webpages were not true for publishers that designed their web pages for speed. Some publishers did not adopt AMP because they knew their pages actually loaded faster than AMP pages. Vindication for everybody pointing out that amp pages don't actually load faster, they were just incompatible with things that commonly made sites load slower. >212. Google also [redacted] of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one second delays in order to give Google AMP a [redacted] [redacted] slows down header bidding, which Google uses to turn around and denigrate header bidding for being too slow. Seems damning. (emphasis mine) Wonder what all the redacted is. Also glad to see that google's preferring of amp sites in searches is going to get them in trouble, as that was basically the primary complaint I had with it. AMP pages would show up in searches for dynamic content, despite its restriction of static pages

CivBase 6y ago
This is the first I've heard of that one-second delay. That's downright evil. Whoever is responsible for that should be ashamed.
- absolutelyrad 6y ago
  [deleted]
  - redisman 6y ago
    What good do these witch hunts accomplish? Punish the senior leadership that demanded this feature
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - calcifer 6y ago
      > What good do these witch hunts accomplish? Punish the senior leadership I believe this line of thought and justification was addressed for good in the Nuremberg Trials.
      - edgyquant 6y ago
        That is beyond hyperbole. These are people implementing a caching feature not individuals leading human being into death camps. A false equivalency seldom matched.
        salawat 6y ago
        >I was only following orders. It is not an excuse. What they did sets the nature of the penalty which may or may not even come out to being a substantial punishment. That they were told to do it, and knew it was wrong, but did it anyway merely fails to absolve them of guilt.
        pmoriarty 6y ago
        The crimes are not equivalent, but the "I was just following orders" excuse is just as bogus in both cases. If you believe that people are responsible for their actions, and they have a choice of what to do, then just because someone gives them an order doesn't mean they have to follow it. They could refuse. If they accept they are then responsible for their own decision and its consequences.
        redisman 6y ago
        What if you didn't know the ultimate goal of the delay feature you implemented? The ticket could have been fairly generic/abstract.
      - curryst 6y ago
        Not at all. It was a prevalent defense there, and their view of those crimes was the the Superior Orders defense was a mitigating factor, but that the crimes were too severe to allow them to escape all culpability like that. It was used prior, and has been used since, with outcomes ranging from being ignored to being absolved of all responsibility. It comes down to the scope of the crime. If you helped murder 6 million people (apologies if that's not the correct number), "I was told to" is not an appropriate defense. If it's Karen's birthday and she's lactose intolerant, but your boss says to get an ice cream cake anyways, "I was told to" is a perfectly valid excuse. Slowing down ads falls somewhere in between, but far closer to pissing off Karen's lactose intolerance than attempting genocide.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  I wonder how the team adding in that extra delay justified it to themselves? I always wonder this with things like the Volkswagen emissions cheating - how do those engineers rationalise it?
  - blacksmith_tb 6y ago
    Well, working in ad-tech is pretty much bad from the get-go, this just seems like more of the same to me. To be fair, unlike VW diesels, it's also not directly damaging anyone's health, but it's still a nasty business.
    - inetknght 6y ago
      > it's also not directly damaging anyone's health I completely disagree. Have you noticed how much targeted advertising has sold out our world and affected peoples ability to rationally think?
    - claudeganon 6y ago
      Advertising has done more damage to people’s mental health and self-image then just about any other industry.
    - manigandham 6y ago
      > working in ad-tech is pretty much bad from the get-go No, it's the same as any other industry. A single company or negative behavior doesn't define everyone.
      - engineeringwoke 6y ago
        No, ad tech is well-known as the particularly abusive part of these monopolistic businesses. It's a race to the bottom, and someone has to code them there. It's bad.
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      It's common practice in the advertising industry to exploit people's feelings of inadequacy. This is an industry that doesn't think twice about making an emotionally vulnerable teenager feel like a loser if they think it will help them sell some shitty product as the 'solution.' This is directly harming people's health.
- jefftk 6y ago
  It looks to me like the design for this was https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3133 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3133 (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, and I'm friends with some of the people at the link. Speaking only for myself.)
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    So tl;dr: Traditional HTML+JS ads have always needed an extra second delay to load because of cross-domain UX degredation, but because AMP is pre-caching pages, they're able to pre-cache the ads too? Is that what I'm reading?
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      I believe that the idea is that if the ad is amp, you can be sure it will load fast and not impede the ux of the page, whereas if it's html/js, you can't. It isn't about whether it is cached or not.
      - ngold 6y ago
        So taking websites hostage and demanding a ransom in the form of an amp link. Thanks.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
        If the top-line goal is to make the page as responsive as possible, I'm a little stumped as to what the alternative would be beyond delaying the loading of arbitrary html and JS. Can you think of a way to load arbitrary HTML immediately and not cause any page responsiveness issues on, say, a three year old Android device?
      - creato 6y ago
        But this sounds like a technical limitation that makes sense? This entire comment chain is mostly people interpreting the lawsuit as claiming this was a deliberate artificial delay for business reasons and getting outraged about that, not a technical issue.
- mtgx 6y ago
  People are way too quick to defend Google around here - and I'm saying that as a former Google evangelist. Google does a LOT of crap like that these days. Most people just aren't aware just how "evil" they've become, or prefer to defend them with nonsensical arguments like "see, Google still throws the Don't Be Evil motto somewhere at the very end of their multi-page work of conduct document, so technically they still believe in it!"
  - nicetryguy 6y ago
    Yeah... They aren't the same Google of 20 or even 10 years ago...
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  >Whoever is responsible for that should be ashamed. Isn't it the CEO?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - broknbottle 6y ago
    more than likely a single "Rogue" engineer
    - dfee 6y ago
      This was sarcastic, right?
      - withinboredom 6y ago
        Someone’s gotta be the scapegoat...
      - arthurcolle 6y ago
        Obviously yes, probably on the back of stuff like Jerome Kerviel, and Tom Hayes, where one "rogue X" is capable of taking down Y.
      - devmunchies 6y ago
        "air quotes" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_quotes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_quotes
    - Ygg2 6y ago
      You mean scapegoat?
    - onion2k 6y ago
      The engineer is responsible for it. The CEO is accountable for it.
  - momokoko 6y ago
- amelius 6y ago
  > This is the first I've heard of that one-second delay. That's downright evil. Whoever is responsible for that should be ashamed. That's it. I'm putting a 1-second delay into my webserver right now, when it detects Google Chrome.
  - rriepe 6y ago
    This idea is one github repo away from being viral.
  - Quekid5 6y ago
    That'll probably just get you penalized by Google Search... This whole AMP mess just shows how insidiously evil a HugeCorp can be through sheer system complexity. Was it intentional? Well, I guess court cases will show that, but sheesh... even if unintentional it's extremely chilling.
    - crazypython 6y ago
      > That'll probably just get you penalized by Google Search... Then don't add it for Googlebot User-Agents or IPs.
      - cpeterso 6y ago
        Google probably crawls with non-Googlebot User-Agent strings periodically to test if sites are serving different content to Googlebot and regular browsers.
        SolarNet 6y ago
        But this mitigation would still fail. They might test for different content, but they probably don't include a periodic test like this in their timing tests, and if they did, it would just be an outlier.
        Quekid5 6y ago
        I have no insider knowledge, but I'm going to guess that they even crawl using actual Chrome browsers once in a while... and penalize deviations from what you serve to the GoogleBot... and also factor in response times for either. I don't think any single person can predict/know what's actually going on at this point.
- Karishma1234 6y ago
  Before jumping to conclusion me might have to hear the other side as well.
  - emmelaich 6y ago
    Karishma, you were shadowbanned. I've seen nothing in your comment history which would warrant this so I've vouched this comment.
- fossuser 6y ago
  Reminds me of this story: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
  Such artificial delays are already intentionally inserted for the purposes of allowing header bidding, regardless of AMP. Are most users aware of that. What this alleges Google is doing with AMP is making the delay worse, but there is still a delay. This is part of the price the user pays for online advertising. Not just (potential) visual distraction of advertising, but (real) time waiting for advertisers to bid before an ad can be shown. (What does a message like "Page loading..." really mean. Imagine if the message was "Advertisers bidding...") Advertisers might fail to get the user's attention or click, but they are always successful in stealing the user's time, with help from "ad tech" companies like Google. Regardless of whether the user ever looks at the ad, or clicks, she still has to wait for header bidding to complete.
  - spockz 6y ago
    The problem here is that there allegedly an additional artificial second of delay on non-amp ads vs amp ads. This is seen as anti competitive.
scarmig 6y ago
Entirely aside from the merits, I'd be so happy if this lawsuit somehow resulted in the destruction of AMP.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
> they were just incompatible with things that commonly made sites load slower. I always thought that was the entire point.
- MrStonedOne 6y ago
  The primary upsell I always heard on here, and I think google's pages on it, was that it could be prefetched without exposing the user's info to the publisher if the user didn't click on it (because it's hosted on google's servers), and the prefetch was what made it faster, as well as being hosted on a cached cdn network.
- manigandham 6y ago
  The things that make sites slower are ads. And 90%+ of those are served by Google which runs the biggest adserver on the internet. AMP is Google solving for performance from itself, and costing a lot of time and effort for everyone else to deal with.
jjulius 6y ago
It's worth mentioning that AMP intentionally adds an 8-second blank page delay if you are blocking Google's third-party js.
- edoceo 6y ago
  I think that was intentional malice designed to get some high-bounce rates for non-amp to have something to point at for publisher. See, over there - w/o AMP you have ScArY nUmBeRs
- ffpip 6y ago
  Yeah. If you block all js, the blank doesnt occur. It's just when you block google js. It also creates blank layers above the actual content.
  - samoa42 6y ago
    have noticed this with a growing number of websites; they load fine/fast if you block .js but show a paywall/annoyification when .js is enabled... "if you insist"
bmitc 6y ago
I'm glad Google is being investigated, and I am even more glad AMP could be going away. It completely ruins mobile experiences because it blocks preferred apps from opening their respective URLs.
- BrianOnHN 6y ago
  What do you mean by this?
  - ffpip 6y ago
    When you click an Amazon link in Chrome, it usually opens the Amazon app if you have it installed. However when you click an Amazon link, if it uses AMP, it usually opens google.com/amp/amazon.com meaning chrome doesn't know it has to open the Amazon app Note: Amazon doesn't use AMP, just an example.
    - BrianOnHN 6y ago
      I hate when web links try to open an app. If your product is an app, I refuse to use it. So no harm no fowl, for me at least, here.
- nanidin 6y ago
  When I’m in the browser, I prefer to stay in the browser. When I visit amazon.com I don’t want the app. I wish there were a way to disable this behavior on a domain by domain basis.
  - infogulch 6y ago
    I like how Firefox for Android does it: "Open in App" is the first menu item when you're on a site that has a matching app installed. Best of both worlds: user retains control of their app / browser experience, and can easily opt in to using the app.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
stevespang 6y ago
Internal Conspiracy. Rico Act stuff. Corporate criminals . . .
AgentME 6y ago
Aren't AMP pages able to be preloaded while you're at Google before you click on the link? I thought that was half the point of them. I can't see how that couldn't reduce loading times.
- dannyw 6y ago
  AMP pages artificially delay the loading of non-AMP elements, including non-AMP ads by 1 second. This means if you want AMP, you better switch to an AMP advertising network. Who makes AMP advertising networks and also gets to make the rules about amp.js that changes behaviour, and adds in arbitrary restrictions (like a 8 second blank page if you block Google's tracking javascript) at will?
ffpip 6y ago
That one second delay is straight up evil. Extremely shitty, unethical behavior.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  A Google employee commented above about the design reasoning behind this, and it's worth reading and understanding the linked GitHub discussion: > It looks to me like the design for this was https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3133 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3133 To be clear, I'm not defending Google here, but I just want to point out that it's possible to be "evil" (for whatever that means) without being malicious. That is, I don't think any Google engineer was thinking "Haha! We'll slow down all those non-AMP ads deliberately!" The thinking seems to have been "We want to be somewhat 'backwards compatible' to allow non-AMP ads, but we don't want those ads to kill AMP's performance benefits, so we'll still load them but only after the AMP content has loaded and rendered." However, this is exactly the mindset that I hate about AMP, and it drives me a little nuts when I see Googlers defending it. I get that your intentions are good, but don't you realize that it's not an accident that the primary beneficiary of AMP is Google, e.g. by keeping users in the SERP instead of going off to sites where the content is hosted, and by making everything ideal for the ad network you own? Googlers have to come to realize that essentially all of their engineering decisions are constrained by what makes more money for Google, not what is best for users. Sure, faster page loads are great, but do you honestly think Google would have supported a tech that made page loads faster ig it didn't cause people to look at more Google ads? I mean, if Google really supported what was best for users, they'd support more privacy controls a la what is coming in iOS Safari, but of course they don't because that's bad for their business. I hate AMP and hope it dies, but I don't hate it because I think there aren't some user benefits to it, I hate it because it is a further attempt by a single company to own even more of the Internet.
  - pydry 6y ago
    >We want to be somewhat 'backwards compatible' to allow non-AMP ads It requires some pretty absurd mental calisthenics to be able to see AMP as an upgrade on the open web.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Seems damning. The claims in a lawsuit aren't doing their jobs if they don't seem damning. > Also glad to see that google's preferring of amp sites in searches is going to get them in trouble Presuming the outcome of a lawsuit from the fact that it was filed may be ill-advised.
melomal 6y ago
I had to log into my HN account just to say HOOORAHHH! I've been SEOing for 8 years now with endless debates with dev people about AMP. I pushed to have it simply because "if google says jump, you say how high". There's a bunch of insane tactics with the Ads model. For example the Ads quality score which is a totally ambiguous rating out of 10. They will then rate the page based on a whole load of variables and determine the rating - if you get 4/10 you are going to be paying more for your bids due to being penalized for low-quality BUT they will still allow it. Now trying to figure how to improve and get it up to 10/10 is an entire process in itself. There's going to be people coming out of the wood work saying that the Quality Score is easy and so on but to me is just smells of unfair practices to exploit each cent out of advertisers.
- freespeechlol 6y ago
  I think even those who see through Google's shenaigans continue to abide by what Google says as there's no other choice, pretty much exploitation of monopoloy powers. If anything fruitful comes out of this action, it would apply utmost to North Amercia, EU has already doing what it can, but what about rest of the world? I mean, how many can knowingly risk loosing website from the front page if they don't use AMP or worse don't display Google Ads? How can a layman even know their website is being penalised for not doing those, whom can they complain to when anti-trust regulations are non-existant in other parts of the world and even if they exist monopolies tend to keep the bureaucrats/politicians well fed. So yeah, HOOORAHHH! if you live in U.S.A.
- prox 6y ago
  Thank you for putting this out there. Google in its current form needs to go as a de facto monopoly. I am not hating on Google, just that I hate I have no alternatives but jumping the hoops Google puts out there.
  - solipsism 6y ago
    Are you wishing for other strong ad competitors? Or are you wishing for alternatives to add? Sometimes it seems the overwhelming sentiment at HN is that ads (especially targeted ones) are bad for the world. But it seems like nearly everyone is relying on them for their livelihood.
pembrook 6y ago
I am overjoyed that Google is finally getting payback for AMP. Small sites don’t have the resources to support it, and are therefore at a major disadvantage compared to the big clickbait news factories, who of course have the resources to build entire second versions of their pages for AMP. Meanwhile, if you don’t comply with Google’s AMP demands, you likely wont appear in the “articles for you,” suggestions every time you open chrome on mobile. Nor will you be featured in certain content carousels on Google search. This can amount to shutting off 30% or more of your traffic. If Google wanted to make the web faster, they could have just tweaked the search algorithm to more heavily favor faster sites. Problem solved. Google can only force the adoption of AMP because of their monopoly power. They claim it is an “open source” project but this is questionable. 90%+ of commits are Google employees. It’s not like “the community” designed it or has any power to change it. I always cite AMP as the most cut and dry piece of evidence that Google is a harmful monopoly. I continue to be astonished that higher ups at Google ever greenlit the idea in the first place. I love Google and what they’ve done for the internet, but it’s clear they need to be reigned in.
fvv 6y ago
google being evil here..
chinathrow 6y ago
> Wonder what all the redacted is. My guess it's related to the page rank algorithm.
onetimemanytime 6y ago
How many Googlers knew this and kept quiet? They should be named, shamed and then shunned. This should be criminal, if it isn't.
Daho0n 6y ago
>>212. Google also [redacted] of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one second delays in order to give Google AMP a [redacted] [redacted] slows down header bidding, which Google uses to turn around and denigrate header bidding for being too slow. See comment by jefftk. Seems to explain it.

CivBase 6y ago

This is the first I've heard of that one-second delay. That's downright evil. Whoever is responsible for that should be ashamed.

absolutelyrad 6y ago
[deleted]
- redisman 6y ago
  What good do these witch hunts accomplish? Punish the senior leadership that demanded this feature
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - calcifer 6y ago
    > What good do these witch hunts accomplish? Punish the senior leadership I believe this line of thought and justification was addressed for good in the Nuremberg Trials.
    - edgyquant 6y ago
      That is beyond hyperbole. These are people implementing a caching feature not individuals leading human being into death camps. A false equivalency seldom matched.
      - salawat 6y ago
        >I was only following orders. It is not an excuse. What they did sets the nature of the penalty which may or may not even come out to being a substantial punishment. That they were told to do it, and knew it was wrong, but did it anyway merely fails to absolve them of guilt.
      - pmoriarty 6y ago
        The crimes are not equivalent, but the "I was just following orders" excuse is just as bogus in both cases. If you believe that people are responsible for their actions, and they have a choice of what to do, then just because someone gives them an order doesn't mean they have to follow it. They could refuse. If they accept they are then responsible for their own decision and its consequences.
        redisman 6y ago
        What if you didn't know the ultimate goal of the delay feature you implemented? The ticket could have been fairly generic/abstract.
    - curryst 6y ago
      Not at all. It was a prevalent defense there, and their view of those crimes was the the Superior Orders defense was a mitigating factor, but that the crimes were too severe to allow them to escape all culpability like that. It was used prior, and has been used since, with outcomes ranging from being ignored to being absolved of all responsibility. It comes down to the scope of the crime. If you helped murder 6 million people (apologies if that's not the correct number), "I was told to" is not an appropriate defense. If it's Karen's birthday and she's lactose intolerant, but your boss says to get an ice cream cake anyways, "I was told to" is a perfectly valid excuse. Slowing down ads falls somewhere in between, but far closer to pissing off Karen's lactose intolerance than attempting genocide.
ForHackernews 6y ago
I wonder how the team adding in that extra delay justified it to themselves? I always wonder this with things like the Volkswagen emissions cheating - how do those engineers rationalise it?
- blacksmith_tb 6y ago
  Well, working in ad-tech is pretty much bad from the get-go, this just seems like more of the same to me. To be fair, unlike VW diesels, it's also not directly damaging anyone's health, but it's still a nasty business.
  - inetknght 6y ago
    > it's also not directly damaging anyone's health I completely disagree. Have you noticed how much targeted advertising has sold out our world and affected peoples ability to rationally think?
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    Advertising has done more damage to people’s mental health and self-image then just about any other industry.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    > working in ad-tech is pretty much bad from the get-go No, it's the same as any other industry. A single company or negative behavior doesn't define everyone.
    - engineeringwoke 6y ago
      No, ad tech is well-known as the particularly abusive part of these monopolistic businesses. It's a race to the bottom, and someone has to code them there. It's bad.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    It's common practice in the advertising industry to exploit people's feelings of inadequacy. This is an industry that doesn't think twice about making an emotionally vulnerable teenager feel like a loser if they think it will help them sell some shitty product as the 'solution.' This is directly harming people's health.
jefftk 6y ago
It looks to me like the design for this was https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3133 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3133 (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, and I'm friends with some of the people at the link. Speaking only for myself.)
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  So tl;dr: Traditional HTML+JS ads have always needed an extra second delay to load because of cross-domain UX degredation, but because AMP is pre-caching pages, they're able to pre-cache the ads too? Is that what I'm reading?
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    I believe that the idea is that if the ad is amp, you can be sure it will load fast and not impede the ux of the page, whereas if it's html/js, you can't. It isn't about whether it is cached or not.
    - ngold 6y ago
      So taking websites hostage and demanding a ransom in the form of an amp link. Thanks.
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
        If the top-line goal is to make the page as responsive as possible, I'm a little stumped as to what the alternative would be beyond delaying the loading of arbitrary html and JS. Can you think of a way to load arbitrary HTML immediately and not cause any page responsiveness issues on, say, a three year old Android device?
    - creato 6y ago
      But this sounds like a technical limitation that makes sense? This entire comment chain is mostly people interpreting the lawsuit as claiming this was a deliberate artificial delay for business reasons and getting outraged about that, not a technical issue.
mtgx 6y ago
People are way too quick to defend Google around here - and I'm saying that as a former Google evangelist. Google does a LOT of crap like that these days. Most people just aren't aware just how "evil" they've become, or prefer to defend them with nonsensical arguments like "see, Google still throws the Don't Be Evil motto somewhere at the very end of their multi-page work of conduct document, so technically they still believe in it!"
- nicetryguy 6y ago
  Yeah... They aren't the same Google of 20 or even 10 years ago...
itsoktocry 6y ago
>Whoever is responsible for that should be ashamed. Isn't it the CEO?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- broknbottle 6y ago
  more than likely a single "Rogue" engineer
  - dfee 6y ago
    This was sarcastic, right?
    - withinboredom 6y ago
      Someone’s gotta be the scapegoat...
    - arthurcolle 6y ago
      Obviously yes, probably on the back of stuff like Jerome Kerviel, and Tom Hayes, where one "rogue X" is capable of taking down Y.
    - devmunchies 6y ago
      "air quotes" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_quotes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_quotes
  - Ygg2 6y ago
    You mean scapegoat?
  - onion2k 6y ago
    The engineer is responsible for it. The CEO is accountable for it.
- momokoko 6y ago
amelius 6y ago
> This is the first I've heard of that one-second delay. That's downright evil. Whoever is responsible for that should be ashamed. That's it. I'm putting a 1-second delay into my webserver right now, when it detects Google Chrome.
- rriepe 6y ago
  This idea is one github repo away from being viral.
- Quekid5 6y ago
  That'll probably just get you penalized by Google Search... This whole AMP mess just shows how insidiously evil a HugeCorp can be through sheer system complexity. Was it intentional? Well, I guess court cases will show that, but sheesh... even if unintentional it's extremely chilling.
  - crazypython 6y ago
    > That'll probably just get you penalized by Google Search... Then don't add it for Googlebot User-Agents or IPs.
    - cpeterso 6y ago
      Google probably crawls with non-Googlebot User-Agent strings periodically to test if sites are serving different content to Googlebot and regular browsers.
      - SolarNet 6y ago
        But this mitigation would still fail. They might test for different content, but they probably don't include a periodic test like this in their timing tests, and if they did, it would just be an outlier.
      - Quekid5 6y ago
        I have no insider knowledge, but I'm going to guess that they even crawl using actual Chrome browsers once in a while... and penalize deviations from what you serve to the GoogleBot... and also factor in response times for either. I don't think any single person can predict/know what's actually going on at this point.
Karishma1234 6y ago
Before jumping to conclusion me might have to hear the other side as well.
- emmelaich 6y ago
  Karishma, you were shadowbanned. I've seen nothing in your comment history which would warrant this so I've vouched this comment.
fossuser 6y ago
Reminds me of this story: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
Such artificial delays are already intentionally inserted for the purposes of allowing header bidding, regardless of AMP. Are most users aware of that. What this alleges Google is doing with AMP is making the delay worse, but there is still a delay. This is part of the price the user pays for online advertising. Not just (potential) visual distraction of advertising, but (real) time waiting for advertisers to bid before an ad can be shown. (What does a message like "Page loading..." really mean. Imagine if the message was "Advertisers bidding...") Advertisers might fail to get the user's attention or click, but they are always successful in stealing the user's time, with help from "ad tech" companies like Google. Regardless of whether the user ever looks at the ad, or clicks, she still has to wait for header bidding to complete.
- spockz 6y ago
  The problem here is that there allegedly an additional artificial second of delay on non-amp ads vs amp ads. This is seen as anti competitive.

scarmig 6y ago

Entirely aside from the merits, I'd be so happy if this lawsuit somehow resulted in the destruction of AMP.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago

> they were just incompatible with things that commonly made sites load slower. I always thought that was the entire point.

MrStonedOne 6y ago
The primary upsell I always heard on here, and I think google's pages on it, was that it could be prefetched without exposing the user's info to the publisher if the user didn't click on it (because it's hosted on google's servers), and the prefetch was what made it faster, as well as being hosted on a cached cdn network.
manigandham 6y ago
The things that make sites slower are ads. And 90%+ of those are served by Google which runs the biggest adserver on the internet. AMP is Google solving for performance from itself, and costing a lot of time and effort for everyone else to deal with.

jjulius 6y ago

It's worth mentioning that AMP intentionally adds an 8-second blank page delay if you are blocking Google's third-party js.

edoceo 6y ago
I think that was intentional malice designed to get some high-bounce rates for non-amp to have something to point at for publisher. See, over there - w/o AMP you have ScArY nUmBeRs
ffpip 6y ago
Yeah. If you block all js, the blank doesnt occur. It's just when you block google js. It also creates blank layers above the actual content.
- samoa42 6y ago
  have noticed this with a growing number of websites; they load fine/fast if you block .js but show a paywall/annoyification when .js is enabled... "if you insist"

bmitc 6y ago

I'm glad Google is being investigated, and I am even more glad AMP could be going away. It completely ruins mobile experiences because it blocks preferred apps from opening their respective URLs.

BrianOnHN 6y ago
What do you mean by this?
- ffpip 6y ago
  When you click an Amazon link in Chrome, it usually opens the Amazon app if you have it installed. However when you click an Amazon link, if it uses AMP, it usually opens google.com/amp/amazon.com meaning chrome doesn't know it has to open the Amazon app Note: Amazon doesn't use AMP, just an example.
  - BrianOnHN 6y ago
    I hate when web links try to open an app. If your product is an app, I refuse to use it. So no harm no fowl, for me at least, here.
nanidin 6y ago
When I’m in the browser, I prefer to stay in the browser. When I visit amazon.com I don’t want the app. I wish there were a way to disable this behavior on a domain by domain basis.
- infogulch 6y ago
  I like how Firefox for Android does it: "Open in App" is the first menu item when you're on a site that has a matching app installed. Best of both worlds: user retains control of their app / browser experience, and can easily opt in to using the app.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago

stevespang 6y ago

Internal Conspiracy. Rico Act stuff. Corporate criminals . . .

AgentME 6y ago

Aren't AMP pages able to be preloaded while you're at Google before you click on the link? I thought that was half the point of them. I can't see how that couldn't reduce loading times.

dannyw 6y ago
AMP pages artificially delay the loading of non-AMP elements, including non-AMP ads by 1 second. This means if you want AMP, you better switch to an AMP advertising network. Who makes AMP advertising networks and also gets to make the rules about amp.js that changes behaviour, and adds in arbitrary restrictions (like a 8 second blank page if you block Google's tracking javascript) at will?

ffpip 6y ago

That one second delay is straight up evil. Extremely shitty, unethical behavior.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
A Google employee commented above about the design reasoning behind this, and it's worth reading and understanding the linked GitHub discussion: > It looks to me like the design for this was https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3133 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3133 To be clear, I'm not defending Google here, but I just want to point out that it's possible to be "evil" (for whatever that means) without being malicious. That is, I don't think any Google engineer was thinking "Haha! We'll slow down all those non-AMP ads deliberately!" The thinking seems to have been "We want to be somewhat 'backwards compatible' to allow non-AMP ads, but we don't want those ads to kill AMP's performance benefits, so we'll still load them but only after the AMP content has loaded and rendered." However, this is exactly the mindset that I hate about AMP, and it drives me a little nuts when I see Googlers defending it. I get that your intentions are good, but don't you realize that it's not an accident that the primary beneficiary of AMP is Google, e.g. by keeping users in the SERP instead of going off to sites where the content is hosted, and by making everything ideal for the ad network you own? Googlers have to come to realize that essentially all of their engineering decisions are constrained by what makes more money for Google, not what is best for users. Sure, faster page loads are great, but do you honestly think Google would have supported a tech that made page loads faster ig it didn't cause people to look at more Google ads? I mean, if Google really supported what was best for users, they'd support more privacy controls a la what is coming in iOS Safari, but of course they don't because that's bad for their business. I hate AMP and hope it dies, but I don't hate it because I think there aren't some user benefits to it, I hate it because it is a further attempt by a single company to own even more of the Internet.
- pydry 6y ago
  >We want to be somewhat 'backwards compatible' to allow non-AMP ads It requires some pretty absurd mental calisthenics to be able to see AMP as an upgrade on the open web.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Seems damning. The claims in a lawsuit aren't doing their jobs if they don't seem damning. > Also glad to see that google's preferring of amp sites in searches is going to get them in trouble Presuming the outcome of a lawsuit from the fact that it was filed may be ill-advised.

melomal 6y ago

I had to log into my HN account just to say HOOORAHHH! I've been SEOing for 8 years now with endless debates with dev people about AMP. I pushed to have it simply because "if google says jump, you say how high". There's a bunch of insane tactics with the Ads model. For example the Ads quality score which is a totally ambiguous rating out of 10. They will then rate the page based on a whole load of variables and determine the rating - if you get 4/10 you are going to be paying more for your bids due to being penalized for low-quality BUT they will still allow it. Now trying to figure how to improve and get it up to 10/10 is an entire process in itself. There's going to be people coming out of the wood work saying that the Quality Score is easy and so on but to me is just smells of unfair practices to exploit each cent out of advertisers.

freespeechlol 6y ago
I think even those who see through Google's shenaigans continue to abide by what Google says as there's no other choice, pretty much exploitation of monopoloy powers. If anything fruitful comes out of this action, it would apply utmost to North Amercia, EU has already doing what it can, but what about rest of the world? I mean, how many can knowingly risk loosing website from the front page if they don't use AMP or worse don't display Google Ads? How can a layman even know their website is being penalised for not doing those, whom can they complain to when anti-trust regulations are non-existant in other parts of the world and even if they exist monopolies tend to keep the bureaucrats/politicians well fed. So yeah, HOOORAHHH! if you live in U.S.A.
prox 6y ago
Thank you for putting this out there. Google in its current form needs to go as a de facto monopoly. I am not hating on Google, just that I hate I have no alternatives but jumping the hoops Google puts out there.
- solipsism 6y ago
  Are you wishing for other strong ad competitors? Or are you wishing for alternatives to add? Sometimes it seems the overwhelming sentiment at HN is that ads (especially targeted ones) are bad for the world. But it seems like nearly everyone is relying on them for their livelihood.

pembrook 6y ago

I am overjoyed that Google is finally getting payback for AMP. Small sites don’t have the resources to support it, and are therefore at a major disadvantage compared to the big clickbait news factories, who of course have the resources to build entire second versions of their pages for AMP. Meanwhile, if you don’t comply with Google’s AMP demands, you likely wont appear in the “articles for you,” suggestions every time you open chrome on mobile. Nor will you be featured in certain content carousels on Google search. This can amount to shutting off 30% or more of your traffic. If Google wanted to make the web faster, they could have just tweaked the search algorithm to more heavily favor faster sites. Problem solved. Google can only force the adoption of AMP because of their monopoly power. They claim it is an “open source” project but this is questionable. 90%+ of commits are Google employees. It’s not like “the community” designed it or has any power to change it. I always cite AMP as the most cut and dry piece of evidence that Google is a harmful monopoly. I continue to be astonished that higher ups at Google ever greenlit the idea in the first place. I love Google and what they’ve done for the internet, but it’s clear they need to be reigned in.

fvv 6y ago

google being evil here..

chinathrow 6y ago

> Wonder what all the redacted is. My guess it's related to the page rank algorithm.

onetimemanytime 6y ago

How many Googlers knew this and kept quiet? They should be named, shamed and then shunned. This should be criminal, if it isn't.

Daho0n 6y ago

>>212. Google also [redacted] of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one second delays in order to give Google AMP a [redacted] [redacted] slows down header bidding, which Google uses to turn around and denigrate header bidding for being too slow. See comment by jefftk. Seems to explain it.