21 ms·

I Have Resigned from the Google AMP Advisory Committee

745 points by edent 6y ago

thegulshankumar 6y ago
Good news.
simonswords82 6y ago
Love the fact that this AMP nonsense might be the final straw that really got Google in hot water with various entities. Sadly, the only meaningful way to kill the Google beast is to break it up. If they're fined, even if it's a significant sum, it will just be a rounding error on their balance sheet and another cost of doing (sleazy) business.
- mancerayder 6y ago
  I don't know, I think it might be for real this time. The previous administration declined to pursue antitrust violations against Google in like 2013, and it's true that Democrats tend to be closer to Silicon Valley. But today there's bipartisan agreement we have a problem, with 40 states filing suit. But the EU wants to punish Google by taxing a percentage of the profit. Let's slay the monopolistic beast. I think we're finally headed in the right direction.
  - simonswords82 6y ago
    I totally agree. I feel like what was once an incredible success story and a real force for good is now a cancer on the Internet. Same goes for Facebook et al.
  - serial_dev 6y ago
    I don't see any chance they would seriously attempt to break them up. Fines, sure, but attempting to break it up? No way. These companies are insanely valuable to the United States. The tech sector is one of the most influential sectors, the incoming administration leans even more pro Silicon Valley than the previous (which didn't do much to oppose the tech sector apart from a sternly worded five minute interview with Tucker). The republicans also just pretend their opposition to make sure they keep their followers outraged over the "elite liberals in California". Most likely they just want a bigger piece of the "influence pie" and when they float ideas like breaking them up, it's just a negotiation tactic to get a bigger slice from that "pie". I also don't see the EU seriously challenge the American tech sector, as the US would not tolerate such an attack on their companies. The US has thousand ways to fight back, increasing tariffs, decreasing military presence, persecuting shady characters from the EU and more (im sure they can get more creative than I just did).
    - FpUser 6y ago
      >"...increasing military presence..." What's the point? You think the US will really threaten EU with the war?
      - serial_dev 6y ago
        Sorry, wanted to write decreasing, making the EU more vulnerable to neighboring countries.
        FpUser 6y ago
        I do not think that would really work either. It would be suicidal for either EU or Russia to fight each other. All this "threat" talk I think is just a way to squeeze the money and governments always need some enemy to deflect attention from their own fuck-ups.
        serial_dev 6y ago
        That could be true, it might be more theatre than threat. I only know that anytime the US reduces (or Russia increases) the military presence in some area, it's in the news for weeks (as examples, Turkey, Syria, Estonia, Germany come to mind). Also, the "theatre" can also work, as politicians want to be re-elected and if enough people believe that their country is in risk because the US troop numbers are reduced, then it becomes a way to pressure the EU even if the real military threat is not that great. Though I still think my point stands, as the US must have ways to pressure the EU to not take a strong stand against tech giants.
        FpUser 6y ago
        Of course the US can and will pressure. But up to a point. Otherwise they might be told to f.. off and mind their own business. More likely is that they will reach some compromise.
  - emodendroket 6y ago
    I remain skeptical that they're really going to want to do that in the competition with China era
    - elliekelly 6y ago
      Why not? I think the West’s ability to encourage market competition via antitrust enforcement is perhaps one of the most valuable tools when competing with China. The more competitive a market the more it will innovate, the more people it will reach, and the jobs it will create. Monopolies hurt our ability to compete with China. Strong antitrust regulation keeps a market healthy.
      - emodendroket 6y ago
        I don't think a bunch of little business are going to manage the kind of global reach sought here.
        elliekelly 6y ago
        I don't think any of the businesses that would spin out from Google would be anything close to "little".
        emodendroket 6y ago
        In that case the desired competition might not happen -- or could come from China which is the worst-case scenario if you're planning a sort of economic cold war
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    The administration is quietly adding tech ppl to high positions to thank them for helping Biden through the election season. They helped him to avoid this kind of regulation. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/with-news-of-hunter-bidens-criminal-5e6 https://greenwald.substack.com/p/with-news-of-hunter-bidens-... https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2020/12/12/there-it-is-politico-biden-transition-team-quietly-brings-on-facebook-google-employees/ https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2020/12/12/there-it-is-politi...
- chrismorgan 6y ago
  > If they're fined, even if it's a significant sum, it will just be a rounding error on their balance sheet Ah, that word “significant”. Significant for whom? Perhaps a 100 billion dollars fine would be significant.
- maxwell 6y ago
  Yeah, they had a shot at "regulated as a utility", but that ship has sailed. I'm looking forward to when criminal charges against corporations and "corporate executions" (i.e. revoking corporate charters and dissolving the firm) enters the Overton window.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    Utility never made sense because free software manages the IP part of the commons so much more efficiently. I.e. utility legislation - should put the ISP utility in charge of running the physical infra - require that all the "software used for interoperable protocols" I.e. we are completely separating "google the data center farmer" from "google the software writer", and then shooting one of them.
- chongli 6y ago
  If it’s just a rounding error on the balance sheet then it’s not a significant sum by definition. Fine them a trillion dollars and it won’t be a rounding error.
  - simonswords82 6y ago
    Or better still a high percentage of profits/revenue
eganist 6y ago
I sadly don't think this will make any difference. In fact, it might've had more impact if Terence did this before the suit. Speaking of which: the Texas suit itself, on the other hand, just might make that difference. (Discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25448718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25448718)
- IThinkImOKAY 6y ago
  The timing is terrible.
- zpeti 6y ago
  Yeah, interesting timing on this.
- sp332 6y ago
  The Texas suit, the Colorado suit, and the DOJ suit. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/12/new-suits-accuse-google-of-antitrust-evils-collusion-with-facebook/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/12/new-suits-accuse...
- weego 6y ago
  He's sat on it for long enough, even though the trajectory of amp has been clear for years. There's no credibility to be reclaimed here.
s5ma6n 6y ago
TLDR: > The stated goal of the AMP AC is to “make AMP a great web citizen.” > I am concerned that – despite the hard work of the AC – Google has limited interest in that goal. A "search engine" is completely affecting the culture, technology usage and (directly and indirectly) lives of the people. This is yet another reminder that we need to get rid of the AMP plague.
- coldpie 6y ago
  Google is not a search engine company, they are an ad company. Everything they do should be viewed through that lense. How many of you use Chrome, BTW?
  - m-p-3 6y ago
    They're still the #1 search engine, and I use Firefox as my personal browser and Chrome for work (we're on Google Workspace).
    - nautilus12 6y ago
      I've been using duck duck go and google side by side for about a year now and I'm actually finding that duck duck go is consistently returning better results now As far as chrome why bother? My computer grinds to a halt using chrome, been using firefox for years now
  - kmwyard 6y ago
    Most profit on Google is coming from search ads. It is more than twice sum of Youtube and display ads.
    - LunaSea 6y ago
      Yup, so still an ad company.
  - qz2 6y ago
    Safari + DDG here. That has currently the best compromise of posture and usability IMHO. I was using "new edge" before which is no better. And firefox before that.
raxxorrax 6y ago
I think i am too cynical to think such a committee can stand up to corporate interests. Thank you for trying though.
- spicybright 6y ago
  You mis-spelled "realistic".
zupreme 6y ago
Years ago I made a news aggregator site which involved dynamically digesting rss feeds and then generating an iframe display of the target story alongside related stories from other sites. The site caught on in certain circles and pageviews skyrocketed within a few months. I was not the only person pursuing this strategy at the time. Before a year had gone by, almost all the major news sites had updated their pages with JavaScript intended to either block iframing altogether, or to “break out” of the iframe, redirecting the viewer to their actual page. We even got a few nasty letters and emails about it with terms like “litigation” casually thrown in. The project became untenable because of this and I shut it down. Fast forward a few years and imagine my dismay when I see Google Amp doing essentially the same thing - but on a much larger scale....
- chrismorgan 6y ago
  Mind you, the problems with iframe embedding are technical and security-related, and it’s quite possible that news sites broke iframing at that time not because of you or any one else specifically, but because that was about the time people started making noise about clickjacking attacks, and so they protected themselves against that form of technical abuse by blocking such embedding. AMP doesn’t suffer from that technical problem, instead saying “please implement your page in such a way that it’s safe to embed and can’t possibly cause trouble for either of us if we happen to host it instead of you”.
- notjustanymike 6y ago
  Years ago I worked as a frontend dev for Newsweek & The Daily Beast and saw the other side of this. It boiled down to money, brand, advertising and engagement. Wrapping the content in an iframe allowed the host to monetize our content by decorating it with ads. This would dillute the CTR on our ads, resulting in less money. Big sites enter into contracts with major brands for full page advertisements, which could include contractual requirements that theirs is the only ad on the page. Serving and decorating a site would create headaches for us to explain why their ads weren't alone. The iframe also reduced engagement as reader would only read the embedded article and move on. An actual visitor of the site had a far higher likelihood to navigate to other pages. Higher engagement resulted in more money and some brand loyalty. This also dramatically hurt sharing as the browser URL wasn't ours, but the hosts (which I also hate about AMP). Your site messed with a lot of the ways their business generated revenue, in an industry that was already struggling to adapt to "the internet".
jart 6y ago
> make AMP a great web citizen Why isn't AMP a great web citizen? As far as I can tell, it's just a web component framework. Google took a very unique approach in inventing web components. Most people who invent web frameworks just put them out there as their own arbitrary unilateral design like Django, React, etc. and if enough people sign on board it's a thing. Web components was the one time when someone who wanted a new framework, actually put the time and effort into attracting the involvement of the browser authors and web consortium and standards bodies. That's a real long road and it's incredibly hard. Google did that. It's something worth respecting, even if web components don't feel all the great to code. Beyond being a web component framework, I have no idea who the hell these AMP people are, and why they're forming consensus committees acting like they're steering the future of the Internet. We can see how quickly that fell apart into public metadrama the moment they lost their big stick SEO, since IIRC Google recently stopped explicitly favoring AMP results. If Google was smart, they would have invented an algorithm that can tell "your website is a slow bloated popup laden piece of crap" and we're going to officially demote your SEO because of that. If Google actually did that, rather than granting favoritism to the slow popup laden websites like NYTimes, then the mobile web would instantly transform itself overnight. And then they could say, hey, if you're not sure how to make web pages that don't suck, use AMP, which is guideline for the confused on how to achieve a mobile friendly ui that isn't downranked. > Google’s thesis is that the mobile-web is dying and people prefer to use apps And I'm still sitting here spending most of my time in a terminal. What is dead may never die. If the mobile web dies then Google only has its own stewardship to blame. Google once understood that its interests were tied with the success of the open web and I'm sorry but they surely didn't think that a horse which died due to their policies would come back to life if they moved its corpse out of the barnyard and into a closed barn? Since that's basically how all this comes across.
- Veen 6y ago
  > If Google was smart, they would have invented an algorithm that can tell "your website is a slow bloated popup laden piece of crap" and we're going to officially demote your SEO because of that. Google does exactly that, which is one reason so many publishers were tempted to adopt AMP. https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/07/search-ads-speed https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/07/search-ads... However, sometimes a slow site is still the best site for a particular query. There are multiple factors to consider when ranking pages. > If Google actually did that, rather than granting favoritism to the slow popup laden websites Again, Google already penalizes sites for popups and interstitials. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2016/08/helping-us... > And then they could say, hey, if you're not sure how to make web pages that don't suck, use AMP, which is guideline for the confused on how to achieve a mobile friendly ui that isn't downranked. That was the reason Google ostensibly introducted AMP in the first place. Unfortunately, it also breaks a lot of standard web interactions and forces publishers to cache content on Google infrastructure. Looking at your comparison of AMP with React, it's safe to say you are a little bit confused about what it is.
0xbadcafebee 6y ago
If a Corporation is spearheading it, it's not in the user's interest, full stop. Corporations care about Corporations just like Users care about Users. Even Governments, which are supposed to represent Citizens, end up prioritizing themselves over Citizens. But you don't need Government to clean up a neighborhood block, and you don't need Corporations to define standards. You need Community. But to have Community, it needs to be normal for random people to work together towards common goals and self-organize. I don't think that's normal yet, but it could be.
- xenophonf 6y ago
  Random people organizing themselves to work together toward common goals is the very definition of "government".
  - 0xbadcafebee 6y ago
    If that were the definition of "government" then the word would lose all meaning, because it it generalizes to any collection of people in the world. What I meant by "random" was that they aren't accountable to anyone but themselves, come from all walks of life, don't require anyone to allow them to engage and contribute, and completely self-organize. Most groups of people do not do all those things. And it really doesn't apply to government.
    - xenophonf 6y ago
      And that's the very definition of "democratic government": accountable to and comprised of everyone, deriving its authority from their consent, and self-organized by definition.
evanb 6y ago
Maybe this deserves its own Ask HN (but probably not): What automatic things do people do to get rid of amp links to see “the original”? In an ideal world I wouldn’t even load the amp. I’m especially interested in solutions for Safari on iOS and Firefox on OS X (will not ever write macOS willingly). Along the same thread, it used to be that when I clicked an Apple News link on my laptop it’d open in a browser and redirect to the original. Now Apple has “helpfully” provided my with an OS X version of News—a browser without any of the plugins I like. How can I intercept the URL handling and send it to Firefox rather than News?
- rahkiin 6y ago
  > will not ever write macOS willingly And yet you did. News app -> preferences -> Open web links in News might help
  - evanb 6y ago
    > And yet you did. It was unwilling. When I navigate to OS X 11.0.1 -> News -> Preferences I am presented with only two tick boxes: [ ] Restrict stories in Today (... description ...) [ ] Restrict stories with explicit content (... description ...)
    - ArgyleSound 6y ago
      OS Ten Eleven?
- lvass 6y ago
  I'd ask the opposite instead, what is it that leads people to AMP over "the original"? I have never been directed to an AMP page except in case someone shares AMP urls. And I use a lot of browsers and search engines, just not chrome or google.
  - 0x53 6y ago
    For me Google news on mobile(firefox)loads every page as a AMP page. Very annoying.
TomAnthony 6y ago
It was only Monday that they announced 9 new people joining the AMP AC to replace 10 others leaving: https://blog.amp.dev/2020/12/14/amp-advisory-committee-2020-election-results/ https://blog.amp.dev/2020/12/14/amp-advisory-committee-2020-...
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  I can't understand - where do they find all these people from outside Google willing to sit on a committee for a Google product? Why are people volunteering for this? It sounds like there's two committees?! Why so much bureaucracy and why do people want to take part in it?
  - maxfurman 6y ago
    The committees exist essentially as an antitrust defense - "Look, see, people outside Google have an influence on this project!" - we'll see how effective that is. As to why someone would sit on such a committee, that's a much better question. I suppose they might be flattered to be invited. It looks good on a resume and they might get some speaking gigs out of it? But I don't see how someone with the necessary expertise to be considered could also be ignorant enough to take Google at their word.
  - michaelt 6y ago
    Because Google doesn't give a shit about their advice, it's probably a very small time commitment.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    I suspect having "Sat on Google Committee" is a pretty nice résumé item. There's lots of extremely qualified people fighting over working with/for Google, even for free. Also, there are many idealists, who believe that they, alone, can "bring light to darkness." I can't really blame them, but I'm old and cynical, with a singed tuchus, from playing that game, so you probably won't find me sitting on these committees.
    - 6y ago
lemonspat 6y ago
> I remain convinced that AMP is poorly implemented, hostile to the interests of both users and publishers, and a proprietary & unnecessary incursion into the open web. Brutal, but at least we know an insider agrees that AMP is hostile to the web. If others leave, will that push Google to make better decisions? Probably not.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  Thank goodness. AMP is the reason I don’t use Google on mobile. It just sucks. They could have done a million things that could have improved the quality of the mobile web and they chose one that actively makes using it unbearable.
  - cpach 6y ago
    May I ask what you use instead? Duckduckgo?
    - stevehawk 6y ago
      DDG for life (honestly the first thing I do with all browsers, mobile or desktop, is swap out Google for DDG).. It's good enough, and when it isn't I can just throw a '!g' on it and hope Google will be better. Mileage varies on that, though. Some people think Google is still the best search engine, and some of us don't (I mean that in regards to quality of search results, not 'Google is evil' or some other emotional metric), if you're still in the former group then switching to DDG may not be your best move.
      - potta_coffee 6y ago
        Google has gamed their search algorithm so much that DDG is IMO objectively better now. Top results on Google for things I'm interested are always trashy fake blogs for affiliate links and things like that.
        electricviolet 6y ago
muglug 6y ago
I'm a big fan of the open web, but I also think Google is on the right track with AMP. Whenever I'm on an AMP website I make an effort to use the "real" version instead by following the link in the top right corner. Nine times out of ten that non-AMP page content is harder to read – the notifications more intrusive, the content jumps around while loading. It looks like Google are now taking a more-refined approach to prioritising pages in mobile results, but I like that AMP forced publishing companies to take a hard look at page performance, for the first time in a while.
- toxik 6y ago
  The solution is not to let Google be the gatekeepers of the internet. There are so many other things you could do that fixes your problem WITHOUT handing over the internet to a single company.
  - emodendroket 6y ago
    Ok. What are they and who's doing them? At a certain point we need to engage with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. In fact, one might argue that AMP would never have taken off if Google did not already serve that gatekeeper role.
    - toxik 6y ago
      Google is the disease itself. Clicks are a terrible way to incentivize, and this has been shaking the foundations of our democracies in the last decade. You will note that Wikipedia, for example, doesn’t have the type of bloat that an online newspaper article does. Why is that? The question is one of incentives.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Incentives such as earning sufficient income to secure resources for one’s self and family. It seems pointless to bring up a volunteer run website where people do charity work in a discussion about business practices of businesses that need to have cash flow to pay employees.
emodendroket 6y ago
I don't doubt the claims that AMP causes problems for publishers. But as a user I'll click the AMP page every time.
- MrStonedOne 6y ago
  And as a user I avoid them.
_gtly 6y ago
The attorneys general case led by Texas [1] asserts that Google created AMP so that Google could stop "header bidding" (which subjects them to competition): > To respond to the threat of header bidding, Google created Accelerated Mobile Pages (“AMP”), a framework for developing mobile web pages, and made AMP essentially incompatible with JavaScript and header bidding. 1.https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/20201216%20COMPLAINT_REDACTED.pdf https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
- potench 6y ago
  You can use Prebid Server to provide ad competition on AMP. So I would imagine that it’s less about competition and more about removing the very negative web performance impact of JS header bidding.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    "Prebid Server" is a standard made up and invented by Google, an ad publisher. This is like appointing the head of Cola Cola to the FDA.
    - llacb47 6y ago
      *Coca-Cola
  - _gtly 6y ago
    I'd encourage you to read the Attorneys General allegations by searching for 'amp' in the link shared (https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/20201216%20COMPLAINT_REDACTED.pdf https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...)
markkat 6y ago
This committee is window-dressing. AMP is about Google revenue alone, remaking the web as a consumer portal, not an open platform for information exchange and creativity. The premise that the web ought to compete with native app experience is flawed to begin with. Executing that goal through a corporate gateway is perverse.
- emodendroket 6y ago
  Why is that premise flawed? That's precisely what happens on mobile platforms. At least on desktops we recognize the absurdity of installing an app for every Web page we want to use
  - watwut 6y ago
    Literally no one is installing an app for every web page they use. The kind of web pages that people install as apps are made significantly worst by amp - like reddit is unuseable monstrosity with amp.
    - emodendroket 6y ago
      I'm not sure what the New York Times app would give me that AMP wouldn't.
      - jolux 6y ago
        It’s actually navigable, supports offline viewing, and isn’t a weird, messed up approximation of a real webpage the way AMP is.
        emodendroket 6y ago
        Better navigation and offline viewing might make sense if I really want to read the New York Times specifically, but that probably isn't the case if I'm getting there by way of a search engine.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Considering one of the lawsuits specifically cites AMP as part of the project to wall in the web, it's now public information that there is no real effort on Google's part to be a good steward of web technologies here. I've followed your participation from time to time, and appreciate the lengths you've gone to keep an eye on them and push them in the right direction, but it's pretty clear what their goals were from the start.
jan_Inkepa 6y ago
I mentioned this before, but the only problem I have with AMP is that one can't self-host - you have to link to amp js files on the official servers (you'd think a starting point for fast hosting of webpages would be hosting everything on the same server, but it seems no...). I haven't seen anyone try to justify this; for whatever reason it's not on anyone else's radar that I've seen. For me it's a total deal-breaker. If you want a standard you can specify a standard, if you want a framework you can specify a framework. But requiring it to give you client-side permission to run scripts is something that requires more justification that I've seen anyone give. (I haven't checked the official amp website in a year or so, maybe things have changed since then).
- BrianOnHN 6y ago
  Self-hosting is a thing, at least as far as the amp-geo component is concerned: > Publishers and caches that re-host AMP JavaScript files... https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-geo/#self-hosting https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-geo/#self-hosti...
  - jan_Inkepa 6y ago
    Huh. Interesting! https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-framework-hosting.md https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-f... says that as of April 2020 self-hosted pages don't pass validation: >The AMP Project is looking into options for validation of AMP pages that use an AMP framework hosted outside of cdn.ampproject.org (#27546). As of April 2020, these AMP pages do not pass validation. The linked issue is still open: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/27546 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/27546 And if I look at the official Specs page ( https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/learn/spec/amphtml/ https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/learn/spe... ) it says this: > Any AMP document MUST [...] contain a <script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> tag inside their head tag. So it seems they're planning on supporting self-hosting, but it's not there yet (and it might be complex to get working).
- maxfurman 6y ago
k_sze 6y ago
Does anybody know how old Terence Eden is? He doesn't look all that young. I'm surprised that he has chosen to do his MSc now, assuming it will be a MSc related to computer science. Somehow, I've always been under the impression that, when it comes to comp sci, because it's so close to mathematics in nature, you either get all the way to PhD blazingly fast, or you never get past Bachelor's degree. Although, of course, I don't have any data to back that up. EDIT: I just looked at the blog post again. It's linked to another one where he says it will be a MSc Digital and Technology Specialist, so maybe it won't be very mathematics heavy.
Mindwipe 6y ago
It's a shame, but it had become pretty clear that the AMP advisory committee had done everything in it's power to ignore the action it had on it's project plan to let end users opt out of AMP.
- dannyw 6y ago
  Let us opt out of AMP and we will give you a lot less flak.
  - pas 6y ago
    Just a few "hackers" and power users opting out changes nothing, the important thing is the market forces that move the masses.
- lern_too_spel 6y ago
  That preference would live with the link aggregator, not in the AMP spec. Where does it say that this was on any project plan? The idea does not make any sense.
rchase 6y ago
Google is getting some serious flack. From NPR this morning... https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/947918291/google-researcher-discusses-departure https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/947918291/google-researcher-d...
tomaszs 6y ago
With Google Chrome as the most popular browser and Google that earns a lots from Google App Store all we can expect, and what I actually see, is that open web development is blocked. Open web is almost perfectly capable to serve apps on the same quality that native ones. But without a strong competition to Google Chrome we might never experience the full benefit
yoran 6y ago
> Google’s thesis is that the mobile-web is dying and people prefer to use apps – therefore making the web faster and more app-like will retain users. I'm not sure how to interpret that. Does it mean that Google has given up on PWAs and the likes, and shifted their attention to native? Or is it the converse, that Google is continuing their work in making web apps more "native"-like?
anoncow 6y ago
That post was all over the place but it reflects that we have good people trying to improve things everywhere. In some places, the company agenda doesn't allow the team to do what they think is best, and that is okay. As long as we have people trying to do good, despite company motivations (which are important as well), we will keep moving forward.
joshxyz 6y ago
That fucking AMP even makes it hard to find the original link of the site it is wrapping. I just hate and abhor its existence.
supernovae 6y ago
I can only assume AMP is dead if Google Analytics 4 doesn't even support it. Not only do they not support it, but you get a run-a-around by anyone and everyone who is simply ass kissing google and insulting you for asking valid questions. I'm removing AMP from my websites now... it is terrible.
accosine 6y ago
I don't get why HN is hating on AMP so much. Yes, Google's force feeding AMP content to its users is not everyones cup of tea, but it enables devs with little experience in SEO to built fast, well ranking sites much more easily. It is a great subset of HTML and JS and Web Stories do look like the next best (open source) solution to compete with Instagram, Snapchat and Tik Tok. There is basically NO OTHER CONTENDER in this space... Why is everybody always hating on the effin' AMP Viewer on Google, if you do not like it, just don't use it. AMP is great micdrop
- MrStonedOne 6y ago
  AMP does not fit all types of content, so prioritizing it over non-AMP pages penalizes websites that don't make static content or forces them to make all searches a landing page in AMP to the actual page, making shit even more of a mess on the web. AMP Forces publishers to put their content on googles servers giving google more data about users (that it doesn't share with the publisher) and its the equivalent of a yellow pages phone book provider making the text of all companies smaller unless the company gives yellow pages exclusive access to their front door security camera. Don't defend it. When yelp started replacing the phone number of restaurants with their yelp delivery service partner's phone number to intercept the sales and use their own provider, everybody on hackernews rightly called it out as shit, but when google does the same shit its "not everybody's cup of tea". No, you can't divorce AMP from how Google uses AMP. Google made AMP and Google shaped the core foundations of AMP that lets them do this. You can't just hand wave that away.
piyush_soni 6y ago
I know HN hates AMP (overall), and I understand it from an ideological perspective (they trying to be the 'gatekeeper of the web' and all), but I think it's because the audience here includes many content 'creators', not consumers alone. Purely as a user, I love the fact that when I click on an AMP'ed page, it loads almost instantly on my mobile, as opposed to a few seconds that I have to wait before they load completely. How it could have been done in a way that didn't hurt publishers is not a consumer's concern. For an end-user who doesn't know much about tech, they 'made the web better'.
- MrStonedOne 6y ago
  As a user, I fucking hate searching on mobile google now. I was trying to find some information on something, can't remember what, and all I got on the first 3 pages were amp links to news sites talking about the thing, but nothing to do with the info I was looking for. I ended up opening duckduckgo and it was on the first page. Did google just forget that static article content does not exclusively make up the internet? I'm gonna re-post the rant I posted last time this came up: > As a mobile user, I hate it. > I hate that every fucking google search result on mobile web has its stupid little icon > I hate that there is no way for me to disable it as a user > I hate that it has muddied the waters in what the url bar means > I hate that it has trained users to not question fake url bars. > I hate that cloudflare so thoroughly jumped on its dick > I hate that we invented a way to fake the address in the url bar just for this stupid fucking feature. > I hate that we now have a system where somebody can share a page url with a friend, and that friend can view it on the same device model using the same browser with the same settings, and will get a different page because one was viewing an amp page but shared it's real url. > I hate that every fucking amp page is lower featured in some way, and almost never works in desktop mode. > And most of all, I hate that it leads to everybody offloading shit onto google's servers. > AMP is not fast because it's served from google's CDN. AMP is fast because it's incompatible with 99% of the bullshit client cpu heavy tracking and ad libraries, so they don't get included inside AMP pages.
  - lern_too_spel 6y ago
    > AMP is fast because it's incompatible with 99% of the bullshit client cpu heavy tracking and ad libraries, so they don't get included inside AMP pages. That is wrong. AMP is fast because it prerenders. Everything included in AMP is designed to enable safe prerendering. That is the entire point of AMP markup.
w3clan 6y ago
> Google’s thesis is that the mobile-web is dying and people prefer to use apps – therefore making the web faster and more app-like will retain users. I am not sure, if this is your opinion about Google's view on AMP or is exactly the Google view on AMP, but, Whatever it be, I almost died laughing - what's wrong with these people(Google)? Either Google is assuming, - people would only need 1-2 digit numbers of app in their device and rest all of the websites/platform are just hawkers on the street. OR, - world is going to be exploded with extreme scalable storage system on mobile/user's devices where people would be able to store hundreds of apps. The only reason PEOPLE PREFER TO USE APPS in most of the case is the ability of OFFLINE USE CASE for FREQUENTLY used apps, and we know FREQUENT uses are for limited numbers of apps. Such thesis that people "prefer to use apps" requires citation and contradicts Google's own "search engine" which helps people to explore the world for data. Is that a reason? google prefers to steal the data from various website and show the results in their search engine result page?
dheera 6y ago
> Google’s thesis is that the mobile-web is dying and people prefer to use apps At least this user doesn't prefer apps, it's just that websites downright refuse to make their mobile pages useful, and keep throwing popups for you to get the app, and Chrome on mobile doesn't support extensions to block said popups. Most mobile websites also suck at supporting common navigation modes like swiping between tabs. They entirely could, but they refuse to spend resources developing it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deft 6y ago
The damage is done. AMP has been criticized since its inception, the author is no hero for realizing it after making it this way for years.
ffritz 6y ago
Besides the obvious, I have an additional problem with AMP that I never see getting mentioned: It completely fucks up redirects on mobile Safari. It requires two or three swipe back gestures to actually return to Google.
wolverine876 6y ago
It's trendy to despair, and I want to call it out. I've seen it recently in prominent journalists talking about disinformation, in the former Google AI researcher's exit message to colleagues, in lots of people talking about politics and government and democracy and public affairs (such as racism). 'Let's leave the city - what's the point of being here?' It seems that people want to say: 'it's useless to try', and 'I don't know what to do' ... sometimes they say they will quixotically continue (to drag out the despair, I suppose). Perhaps it's a consequence of the pandemic, which creates depressing environments for much of the world. Perhaps it's a the reactionary concept of the 'SJW' (a negative term, which mocked their supposed uselessness) seeping into broader society. Whatever, despair is a pretty f*g stupid trend. Really? Despair? That's cool now? You sound smart now? I promise you that you will never accomplish anything you don't believe in. Remember the American Dream - anyone can accomplish anything they believe in and work hard for. A friend of mine (now hip to despair) once said, 'the biggest obstacle most people face is that they don't believe' - my friend was right. Who would even choose despair, given the options - what an unhappy life. I believe. I believe we can do it. I believe that the biggest obstacle is all these people standing around talking about despair, and that we outnumber the actual bad people 100 to 1. I believe democracy and freedom and believing in people has an incredible history of success and we can solve these problems too. I believe we can make the open web work on mobile. I believe we can solve disinformation - it's just a matter of engagement, of finding out what engages them and where; they reading that crap for the content. I believe in the city - the land of opportunities, on every block, at every corner, in every cafe and bar. I love the city, I love people. Let's do this! LET'S GOOOOOO! (And I'm not being ironic. I am dead serious. Why are you standing there talking about irony? Is it so rare that someone could be earnest and enthusiastic these days? I'm going to leave you behind; I'm going to make the future while you despair. Let's go!!!!)
- frongpik 6y ago
  Bad guys are powerful because they are organized. Like you said: an organized 1% can wipe floor with the rest 99%. You can set up a nonprofit org funded by membership fees and call it say "a software engineering guild". That's very legal and very cool. Come up with the mission statement, rules (e.g. one vote per member), basic background checks for new members, figure how you'd protect it from bad actors, and get a few hundred people to join. I'd have no problem with 1k a year in fees. Make sure to provide plausible deniability to members. Maybe call them shareholders: we already own shares from hundreds of companies, nothing wrong with adding one more to the list. With those fees you'll be able to hire law firms and various lobbyists to rock the boat. Luckily, our gov doesn't permit private armies, so you won't need to compete on that front. You'll become the number 1 target for FANG, but if you set up the org right, it will survive even if you have to leave. This type of organizations act like lenses that focus energy of thousands of people into a laser beam.
musicale 6y ago
> AI remain convinced that AMP is poorly implemented, hostile to the interests of both users and publishers, and a proprietary & unnecessary incursion into the open web. That kind of says it all, doesn't it?
Triv888 6y ago
thank you for stopping making this awful and hurtful product...
nrvn 6y ago
Amp is a hackity hack of the modern web, a poster child of some people who try to justify their mere existence in bright google conference rooms and email chains. It seems like inside google(and outside of it as well) people tend to have forgotten that web performance is all about intelligent work with web standards. And throughout years people-who-care-about-perf introduced and advocated various techniques and changes to engines, standards and languages used across web development to improve end user experience. Prefetching, preloading, multiplexing, minifying, lazy loading, PWA, CDN, et al. Instead of teaching how to build web properly google puts its enormous resources to what serves as a search result preview for end users, and the only beneficiary of the AMP is google itself. Care about your users, their experience and performance of your website? Ditch https://amp.dev/ https://amp.dev/ Discover https://web.dev/ https://web.dev/

745 points by edent 6y ago

Good news.

Love the fact that this AMP nonsense might be the final straw that really got Google in hot water with various entities. Sadly, the only meaningful way to kill the Google beast is to break it up. If they're fined, even if it's a significant sum, it will just be a rounding error on their balance sheet and another cost of doing (sleazy) business.

mancerayder 6y ago
I don't know, I think it might be for real this time. The previous administration declined to pursue antitrust violations against Google in like 2013, and it's true that Democrats tend to be closer to Silicon Valley. But today there's bipartisan agreement we have a problem, with 40 states filing suit. But the EU wants to punish Google by taxing a percentage of the profit. Let's slay the monopolistic beast. I think we're finally headed in the right direction.
- simonswords82 6y ago
  I totally agree. I feel like what was once an incredible success story and a real force for good is now a cancer on the Internet. Same goes for Facebook et al.
- serial_dev 6y ago
  I don't see any chance they would seriously attempt to break them up. Fines, sure, but attempting to break it up? No way. These companies are insanely valuable to the United States. The tech sector is one of the most influential sectors, the incoming administration leans even more pro Silicon Valley than the previous (which didn't do much to oppose the tech sector apart from a sternly worded five minute interview with Tucker). The republicans also just pretend their opposition to make sure they keep their followers outraged over the "elite liberals in California". Most likely they just want a bigger piece of the "influence pie" and when they float ideas like breaking them up, it's just a negotiation tactic to get a bigger slice from that "pie". I also don't see the EU seriously challenge the American tech sector, as the US would not tolerate such an attack on their companies. The US has thousand ways to fight back, increasing tariffs, decreasing military presence, persecuting shady characters from the EU and more (im sure they can get more creative than I just did).
  - FpUser 6y ago
    >"...increasing military presence..." What's the point? You think the US will really threaten EU with the war?
    - serial_dev 6y ago
      Sorry, wanted to write decreasing, making the EU more vulnerable to neighboring countries.
      - FpUser 6y ago
        I do not think that would really work either. It would be suicidal for either EU or Russia to fight each other. All this "threat" talk I think is just a way to squeeze the money and governments always need some enemy to deflect attention from their own fuck-ups.
        serial_dev 6y ago
        That could be true, it might be more theatre than threat. I only know that anytime the US reduces (or Russia increases) the military presence in some area, it's in the news for weeks (as examples, Turkey, Syria, Estonia, Germany come to mind). Also, the "theatre" can also work, as politicians want to be re-elected and if enough people believe that their country is in risk because the US troop numbers are reduced, then it becomes a way to pressure the EU even if the real military threat is not that great. Though I still think my point stands, as the US must have ways to pressure the EU to not take a strong stand against tech giants.
        FpUser 6y ago
        Of course the US can and will pressure. But up to a point. Otherwise they might be told to f.. off and mind their own business. More likely is that they will reach some compromise.
- emodendroket 6y ago
  I remain skeptical that they're really going to want to do that in the competition with China era
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    Why not? I think the West’s ability to encourage market competition via antitrust enforcement is perhaps one of the most valuable tools when competing with China. The more competitive a market the more it will innovate, the more people it will reach, and the jobs it will create. Monopolies hurt our ability to compete with China. Strong antitrust regulation keeps a market healthy.
    - emodendroket 6y ago
      I don't think a bunch of little business are going to manage the kind of global reach sought here.
      - elliekelly 6y ago
        I don't think any of the businesses that would spin out from Google would be anything close to "little".
        emodendroket 6y ago
        In that case the desired competition might not happen -- or could come from China which is the worst-case scenario if you're planning a sort of economic cold war
- tehjoker 6y ago
  The administration is quietly adding tech ppl to high positions to thank them for helping Biden through the election season. They helped him to avoid this kind of regulation. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/with-news-of-hunter-bidens-criminal-5e6 https://greenwald.substack.com/p/with-news-of-hunter-bidens-... https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2020/12/12/there-it-is-politico-biden-transition-team-quietly-brings-on-facebook-google-employees/ https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2020/12/12/there-it-is-politi...
chrismorgan 6y ago
> If they're fined, even if it's a significant sum, it will just be a rounding error on their balance sheet Ah, that word “significant”. Significant for whom? Perhaps a 100 billion dollars fine would be significant.
maxwell 6y ago
Yeah, they had a shot at "regulated as a utility", but that ship has sailed. I'm looking forward to when criminal charges against corporations and "corporate executions" (i.e. revoking corporate charters and dissolving the firm) enters the Overton window.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Utility never made sense because free software manages the IP part of the commons so much more efficiently. I.e. utility legislation - should put the ISP utility in charge of running the physical infra - require that all the "software used for interoperable protocols" I.e. we are completely separating "google the data center farmer" from "google the software writer", and then shooting one of them.
chongli 6y ago
If it’s just a rounding error on the balance sheet then it’s not a significant sum by definition. Fine them a trillion dollars and it won’t be a rounding error.
- simonswords82 6y ago
  Or better still a high percentage of profits/revenue

eganist 6y ago

I sadly don't think this will make any difference. In fact, it might've had more impact if Terence did this before the suit. Speaking of which: the Texas suit itself, on the other hand, just might make that difference. (Discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25448718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25448718)

IThinkImOKAY 6y ago
The timing is terrible.
zpeti 6y ago
Yeah, interesting timing on this.
sp332 6y ago
The Texas suit, the Colorado suit, and the DOJ suit. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/12/new-suits-accuse-google-of-antitrust-evils-collusion-with-facebook/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/12/new-suits-accuse...
weego 6y ago
He's sat on it for long enough, even though the trajectory of amp has been clear for years. There's no credibility to be reclaimed here.

s5ma6n 6y ago

TLDR: > The stated goal of the AMP AC is to “make AMP a great web citizen.” > I am concerned that – despite the hard work of the AC – Google has limited interest in that goal. A "search engine" is completely affecting the culture, technology usage and (directly and indirectly) lives of the people. This is yet another reminder that we need to get rid of the AMP plague.

coldpie 6y ago
Google is not a search engine company, they are an ad company. Everything they do should be viewed through that lense. How many of you use Chrome, BTW?
- m-p-3 6y ago
  They're still the #1 search engine, and I use Firefox as my personal browser and Chrome for work (we're on Google Workspace).
  - nautilus12 6y ago
    I've been using duck duck go and google side by side for about a year now and I'm actually finding that duck duck go is consistently returning better results now As far as chrome why bother? My computer grinds to a halt using chrome, been using firefox for years now
- kmwyard 6y ago
  Most profit on Google is coming from search ads. It is more than twice sum of Youtube and display ads.
  - LunaSea 6y ago
    Yup, so still an ad company.
- qz2 6y ago
  Safari + DDG here. That has currently the best compromise of posture and usability IMHO. I was using "new edge" before which is no better. And firefox before that.

raxxorrax 6y ago

I think i am too cynical to think such a committee can stand up to corporate interests. Thank you for trying though.

spicybright 6y ago
You mis-spelled "realistic".

zupreme 6y ago

Years ago I made a news aggregator site which involved dynamically digesting rss feeds and then generating an iframe display of the target story alongside related stories from other sites. The site caught on in certain circles and pageviews skyrocketed within a few months. I was not the only person pursuing this strategy at the time. Before a year had gone by, almost all the major news sites had updated their pages with JavaScript intended to either block iframing altogether, or to “break out” of the iframe, redirecting the viewer to their actual page. We even got a few nasty letters and emails about it with terms like “litigation” casually thrown in. The project became untenable because of this and I shut it down. Fast forward a few years and imagine my dismay when I see Google Amp doing essentially the same thing - but on a much larger scale....

chrismorgan 6y ago
Mind you, the problems with iframe embedding are technical and security-related, and it’s quite possible that news sites broke iframing at that time not because of you or any one else specifically, but because that was about the time people started making noise about clickjacking attacks, and so they protected themselves against that form of technical abuse by blocking such embedding. AMP doesn’t suffer from that technical problem, instead saying “please implement your page in such a way that it’s safe to embed and can’t possibly cause trouble for either of us if we happen to host it instead of you”.
notjustanymike 6y ago
Years ago I worked as a frontend dev for Newsweek & The Daily Beast and saw the other side of this. It boiled down to money, brand, advertising and engagement. Wrapping the content in an iframe allowed the host to monetize our content by decorating it with ads. This would dillute the CTR on our ads, resulting in less money. Big sites enter into contracts with major brands for full page advertisements, which could include contractual requirements that theirs is the only ad on the page. Serving and decorating a site would create headaches for us to explain why their ads weren't alone. The iframe also reduced engagement as reader would only read the embedded article and move on. An actual visitor of the site had a far higher likelihood to navigate to other pages. Higher engagement resulted in more money and some brand loyalty. This also dramatically hurt sharing as the browser URL wasn't ours, but the hosts (which I also hate about AMP). Your site messed with a lot of the ways their business generated revenue, in an industry that was already struggling to adapt to "the internet".

jart 6y ago

> make AMP a great web citizen Why isn't AMP a great web citizen? As far as I can tell, it's just a web component framework. Google took a very unique approach in inventing web components. Most people who invent web frameworks just put them out there as their own arbitrary unilateral design like Django, React, etc. and if enough people sign on board it's a thing. Web components was the one time when someone who wanted a new framework, actually put the time and effort into attracting the involvement of the browser authors and web consortium and standards bodies. That's a real long road and it's incredibly hard. Google did that. It's something worth respecting, even if web components don't feel all the great to code. Beyond being a web component framework, I have no idea who the hell these AMP people are, and why they're forming consensus committees acting like they're steering the future of the Internet. We can see how quickly that fell apart into public metadrama the moment they lost their big stick SEO, since IIRC Google recently stopped explicitly favoring AMP results. If Google was smart, they would have invented an algorithm that can tell "your website is a slow bloated popup laden piece of crap" and we're going to officially demote your SEO because of that. If Google actually did that, rather than granting favoritism to the slow popup laden websites like NYTimes, then the mobile web would instantly transform itself overnight. And then they could say, hey, if you're not sure how to make web pages that don't suck, use AMP, which is guideline for the confused on how to achieve a mobile friendly ui that isn't downranked. > Google’s thesis is that the mobile-web is dying and people prefer to use apps And I'm still sitting here spending most of my time in a terminal. What is dead may never die. If the mobile web dies then Google only has its own stewardship to blame. Google once understood that its interests were tied with the success of the open web and I'm sorry but they surely didn't think that a horse which died due to their policies would come back to life if they moved its corpse out of the barnyard and into a closed barn? Since that's basically how all this comes across.

Veen 6y ago
> If Google was smart, they would have invented an algorithm that can tell "your website is a slow bloated popup laden piece of crap" and we're going to officially demote your SEO because of that. Google does exactly that, which is one reason so many publishers were tempted to adopt AMP. https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/07/search-ads-speed https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/07/search-ads... However, sometimes a slow site is still the best site for a particular query. There are multiple factors to consider when ranking pages. > If Google actually did that, rather than granting favoritism to the slow popup laden websites Again, Google already penalizes sites for popups and interstitials. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2016/08/helping-us... > And then they could say, hey, if you're not sure how to make web pages that don't suck, use AMP, which is guideline for the confused on how to achieve a mobile friendly ui that isn't downranked. That was the reason Google ostensibly introducted AMP in the first place. Unfortunately, it also breaks a lot of standard web interactions and forces publishers to cache content on Google infrastructure. Looking at your comparison of AMP with React, it's safe to say you are a little bit confused about what it is.

0xbadcafebee 6y ago

If a Corporation is spearheading it, it's not in the user's interest, full stop. Corporations care about Corporations just like Users care about Users. Even Governments, which are supposed to represent Citizens, end up prioritizing themselves over Citizens. But you don't need Government to clean up a neighborhood block, and you don't need Corporations to define standards. You need Community. But to have Community, it needs to be normal for random people to work together towards common goals and self-organize. I don't think that's normal yet, but it could be.

xenophonf 6y ago
Random people organizing themselves to work together toward common goals is the very definition of "government".
- 0xbadcafebee 6y ago
  If that were the definition of "government" then the word would lose all meaning, because it it generalizes to any collection of people in the world. What I meant by "random" was that they aren't accountable to anyone but themselves, come from all walks of life, don't require anyone to allow them to engage and contribute, and completely self-organize. Most groups of people do not do all those things. And it really doesn't apply to government.
  - xenophonf 6y ago
    And that's the very definition of "democratic government": accountable to and comprised of everyone, deriving its authority from their consent, and self-organized by definition.

evanb 6y ago

Maybe this deserves its own Ask HN (but probably not): What automatic things do people do to get rid of amp links to see “the original”? In an ideal world I wouldn’t even load the amp. I’m especially interested in solutions for Safari on iOS and Firefox on OS X (will not ever write macOS willingly). Along the same thread, it used to be that when I clicked an Apple News link on my laptop it’d open in a browser and redirect to the original. Now Apple has “helpfully” provided my with an OS X version of News—a browser without any of the plugins I like. How can I intercept the URL handling and send it to Firefox rather than News?

rahkiin 6y ago
> will not ever write macOS willingly And yet you did. News app -> preferences -> Open web links in News might help
- evanb 6y ago
  > And yet you did. It was unwilling. When I navigate to OS X 11.0.1 -> News -> Preferences I am presented with only two tick boxes: [ ] Restrict stories in Today (... description ...) [ ] Restrict stories with explicit content (... description ...)
  - ArgyleSound 6y ago
    OS Ten Eleven?
lvass 6y ago
I'd ask the opposite instead, what is it that leads people to AMP over "the original"? I have never been directed to an AMP page except in case someone shares AMP urls. And I use a lot of browsers and search engines, just not chrome or google.
- 0x53 6y ago
  For me Google news on mobile(firefox)loads every page as a AMP page. Very annoying.

TomAnthony 6y ago

It was only Monday that they announced 9 new people joining the AMP AC to replace 10 others leaving: https://blog.amp.dev/2020/12/14/amp-advisory-committee-2020-election-results/ https://blog.amp.dev/2020/12/14/amp-advisory-committee-2020-...

chrisseaton 6y ago
I can't understand - where do they find all these people from outside Google willing to sit on a committee for a Google product? Why are people volunteering for this? It sounds like there's two committees?! Why so much bureaucracy and why do people want to take part in it?
- maxfurman 6y ago
  The committees exist essentially as an antitrust defense - "Look, see, people outside Google have an influence on this project!" - we'll see how effective that is. As to why someone would sit on such a committee, that's a much better question. I suppose they might be flattered to be invited. It looks good on a resume and they might get some speaking gigs out of it? But I don't see how someone with the necessary expertise to be considered could also be ignorant enough to take Google at their word.
- michaelt 6y ago
  Because Google doesn't give a shit about their advice, it's probably a very small time commitment.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I suspect having "Sat on Google Committee" is a pretty nice résumé item. There's lots of extremely qualified people fighting over working with/for Google, even for free. Also, there are many idealists, who believe that they, alone, can "bring light to darkness." I can't really blame them, but I'm old and cynical, with a singed tuchus, from playing that game, so you probably won't find me sitting on these committees.
  - 6y ago

lemonspat 6y ago

> I remain convinced that AMP is poorly implemented, hostile to the interests of both users and publishers, and a proprietary & unnecessary incursion into the open web. Brutal, but at least we know an insider agrees that AMP is hostile to the web. If others leave, will that push Google to make better decisions? Probably not.

IgorPartola 6y ago
Thank goodness. AMP is the reason I don’t use Google on mobile. It just sucks. They could have done a million things that could have improved the quality of the mobile web and they chose one that actively makes using it unbearable.
- cpach 6y ago
  May I ask what you use instead? Duckduckgo?
  - stevehawk 6y ago
    DDG for life (honestly the first thing I do with all browsers, mobile or desktop, is swap out Google for DDG).. It's good enough, and when it isn't I can just throw a '!g' on it and hope Google will be better. Mileage varies on that, though. Some people think Google is still the best search engine, and some of us don't (I mean that in regards to quality of search results, not 'Google is evil' or some other emotional metric), if you're still in the former group then switching to DDG may not be your best move.
    - potta_coffee 6y ago
      Google has gamed their search algorithm so much that DDG is IMO objectively better now. Top results on Google for things I'm interested are always trashy fake blogs for affiliate links and things like that.
      - electricviolet 6y ago

muglug 6y ago

I'm a big fan of the open web, but I also think Google is on the right track with AMP. Whenever I'm on an AMP website I make an effort to use the "real" version instead by following the link in the top right corner. Nine times out of ten that non-AMP page content is harder to read – the notifications more intrusive, the content jumps around while loading. It looks like Google are now taking a more-refined approach to prioritising pages in mobile results, but I like that AMP forced publishing companies to take a hard look at page performance, for the first time in a while.

toxik 6y ago
The solution is not to let Google be the gatekeepers of the internet. There are so many other things you could do that fixes your problem WITHOUT handing over the internet to a single company.
- emodendroket 6y ago
  Ok. What are they and who's doing them? At a certain point we need to engage with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. In fact, one might argue that AMP would never have taken off if Google did not already serve that gatekeeper role.
  - toxik 6y ago
    Google is the disease itself. Clicks are a terrible way to incentivize, and this has been shaking the foundations of our democracies in the last decade. You will note that Wikipedia, for example, doesn’t have the type of bloat that an online newspaper article does. Why is that? The question is one of incentives.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Incentives such as earning sufficient income to secure resources for one’s self and family. It seems pointless to bring up a volunteer run website where people do charity work in a discussion about business practices of businesses that need to have cash flow to pay employees.

emodendroket 6y ago

I don't doubt the claims that AMP causes problems for publishers. But as a user I'll click the AMP page every time.

MrStonedOne 6y ago
And as a user I avoid them.

_gtly 6y ago

The attorneys general case led by Texas [1] asserts that Google created AMP so that Google could stop "header bidding" (which subjects them to competition): > To respond to the threat of header bidding, Google created Accelerated Mobile Pages (“AMP”), a framework for developing mobile web pages, and made AMP essentially incompatible with JavaScript and header bidding. 1.https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/20201216%20COMPLAINT_REDACTED.pdf https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...

potench 6y ago
You can use Prebid Server to provide ad competition on AMP. So I would imagine that it’s less about competition and more about removing the very negative web performance impact of JS header bidding.
- dannyw 6y ago
  "Prebid Server" is a standard made up and invented by Google, an ad publisher. This is like appointing the head of Cola Cola to the FDA.
  - llacb47 6y ago
    *Coca-Cola
- _gtly 6y ago
  I'd encourage you to read the Attorneys General allegations by searching for 'amp' in the link shared (https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/20201216%20COMPLAINT_REDACTED.pdf https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...)

markkat 6y ago

This committee is window-dressing. AMP is about Google revenue alone, remaking the web as a consumer portal, not an open platform for information exchange and creativity. The premise that the web ought to compete with native app experience is flawed to begin with. Executing that goal through a corporate gateway is perverse.

emodendroket 6y ago
Why is that premise flawed? That's precisely what happens on mobile platforms. At least on desktops we recognize the absurdity of installing an app for every Web page we want to use
- watwut 6y ago
  Literally no one is installing an app for every web page they use. The kind of web pages that people install as apps are made significantly worst by amp - like reddit is unuseable monstrosity with amp.
  - emodendroket 6y ago
    I'm not sure what the New York Times app would give me that AMP wouldn't.
    - jolux 6y ago
      It’s actually navigable, supports offline viewing, and isn’t a weird, messed up approximation of a real webpage the way AMP is.
      - emodendroket 6y ago
        Better navigation and offline viewing might make sense if I really want to read the New York Times specifically, but that probably isn't the case if I'm getting there by way of a search engine.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

Considering one of the lawsuits specifically cites AMP as part of the project to wall in the web, it's now public information that there is no real effort on Google's part to be a good steward of web technologies here. I've followed your participation from time to time, and appreciate the lengths you've gone to keep an eye on them and push them in the right direction, but it's pretty clear what their goals were from the start.

jan_Inkepa 6y ago

I mentioned this before, but the only problem I have with AMP is that one can't self-host - you have to link to amp js files on the official servers (you'd think a starting point for fast hosting of webpages would be hosting everything on the same server, but it seems no...). I haven't seen anyone try to justify this; for whatever reason it's not on anyone else's radar that I've seen. For me it's a total deal-breaker. If you want a standard you can specify a standard, if you want a framework you can specify a framework. But requiring it to give you client-side permission to run scripts is something that requires more justification that I've seen anyone give. (I haven't checked the official amp website in a year or so, maybe things have changed since then).

BrianOnHN 6y ago
Self-hosting is a thing, at least as far as the amp-geo component is concerned: > Publishers and caches that re-host AMP JavaScript files... https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-geo/#self-hosting https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-geo/#self-hosti...
- jan_Inkepa 6y ago
  Huh. Interesting! https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-framework-hosting.md https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-f... says that as of April 2020 self-hosted pages don't pass validation: >The AMP Project is looking into options for validation of AMP pages that use an AMP framework hosted outside of cdn.ampproject.org (#27546). As of April 2020, these AMP pages do not pass validation. The linked issue is still open: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/27546 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/27546 And if I look at the official Specs page ( https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/learn/spec/amphtml/ https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/learn/spe... ) it says this: > Any AMP document MUST [...] contain a <script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> tag inside their head tag. So it seems they're planning on supporting self-hosting, but it's not there yet (and it might be complex to get working).
maxfurman 6y ago

k_sze 6y ago

Does anybody know how old Terence Eden is? He doesn't look all that young. I'm surprised that he has chosen to do his MSc now, assuming it will be a MSc related to computer science. Somehow, I've always been under the impression that, when it comes to comp sci, because it's so close to mathematics in nature, you either get all the way to PhD blazingly fast, or you never get past Bachelor's degree. Although, of course, I don't have any data to back that up. EDIT: I just looked at the blog post again. It's linked to another one where he says it will be a MSc Digital and Technology Specialist, so maybe it won't be very mathematics heavy.

Mindwipe 6y ago

It's a shame, but it had become pretty clear that the AMP advisory committee had done everything in it's power to ignore the action it had on it's project plan to let end users opt out of AMP.

dannyw 6y ago
Let us opt out of AMP and we will give you a lot less flak.
- pas 6y ago
  Just a few "hackers" and power users opting out changes nothing, the important thing is the market forces that move the masses.
lern_too_spel 6y ago
That preference would live with the link aggregator, not in the AMP spec. Where does it say that this was on any project plan? The idea does not make any sense.

rchase 6y ago

Google is getting some serious flack. From NPR this morning... https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/947918291/google-researcher-discusses-departure https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/947918291/google-researcher-d...

tomaszs 6y ago

With Google Chrome as the most popular browser and Google that earns a lots from Google App Store all we can expect, and what I actually see, is that open web development is blocked. Open web is almost perfectly capable to serve apps on the same quality that native ones. But without a strong competition to Google Chrome we might never experience the full benefit

yoran 6y ago

> Google’s thesis is that the mobile-web is dying and people prefer to use apps – therefore making the web faster and more app-like will retain users. I'm not sure how to interpret that. Does it mean that Google has given up on PWAs and the likes, and shifted their attention to native? Or is it the converse, that Google is continuing their work in making web apps more "native"-like?

anoncow 6y ago

That post was all over the place but it reflects that we have good people trying to improve things everywhere. In some places, the company agenda doesn't allow the team to do what they think is best, and that is okay. As long as we have people trying to do good, despite company motivations (which are important as well), we will keep moving forward.

joshxyz 6y ago

That fucking AMP even makes it hard to find the original link of the site it is wrapping. I just hate and abhor its existence.

supernovae 6y ago

I can only assume AMP is dead if Google Analytics 4 doesn't even support it. Not only do they not support it, but you get a run-a-around by anyone and everyone who is simply ass kissing google and insulting you for asking valid questions. I'm removing AMP from my websites now... it is terrible.

accosine 6y ago

I don't get why HN is hating on AMP so much. Yes, Google's force feeding AMP content to its users is not everyones cup of tea, but it enables devs with little experience in SEO to built fast, well ranking sites much more easily. It is a great subset of HTML and JS and Web Stories do look like the next best (open source) solution to compete with Instagram, Snapchat and Tik Tok. There is basically NO OTHER CONTENDER in this space... Why is everybody always hating on the effin' AMP Viewer on Google, if you do not like it, just don't use it. AMP is great micdrop

MrStonedOne 6y ago
AMP does not fit all types of content, so prioritizing it over non-AMP pages penalizes websites that don't make static content or forces them to make all searches a landing page in AMP to the actual page, making shit even more of a mess on the web. AMP Forces publishers to put their content on googles servers giving google more data about users (that it doesn't share with the publisher) and its the equivalent of a yellow pages phone book provider making the text of all companies smaller unless the company gives yellow pages exclusive access to their front door security camera. Don't defend it. When yelp started replacing the phone number of restaurants with their yelp delivery service partner's phone number to intercept the sales and use their own provider, everybody on hackernews rightly called it out as shit, but when google does the same shit its "not everybody's cup of tea". No, you can't divorce AMP from how Google uses AMP. Google made AMP and Google shaped the core foundations of AMP that lets them do this. You can't just hand wave that away.

piyush_soni 6y ago

I know HN hates AMP (overall), and I understand it from an ideological perspective (they trying to be the 'gatekeeper of the web' and all), but I think it's because the audience here includes many content 'creators', not consumers alone. Purely as a user, I love the fact that when I click on an AMP'ed page, it loads almost instantly on my mobile, as opposed to a few seconds that I have to wait before they load completely. How it could have been done in a way that didn't hurt publishers is not a consumer's concern. For an end-user who doesn't know much about tech, they 'made the web better'.

MrStonedOne 6y ago
As a user, I fucking hate searching on mobile google now. I was trying to find some information on something, can't remember what, and all I got on the first 3 pages were amp links to news sites talking about the thing, but nothing to do with the info I was looking for. I ended up opening duckduckgo and it was on the first page. Did google just forget that static article content does not exclusively make up the internet? I'm gonna re-post the rant I posted last time this came up: > As a mobile user, I hate it. > I hate that every fucking google search result on mobile web has its stupid little icon > I hate that there is no way for me to disable it as a user > I hate that it has muddied the waters in what the url bar means > I hate that it has trained users to not question fake url bars. > I hate that cloudflare so thoroughly jumped on its dick > I hate that we invented a way to fake the address in the url bar just for this stupid fucking feature. > I hate that we now have a system where somebody can share a page url with a friend, and that friend can view it on the same device model using the same browser with the same settings, and will get a different page because one was viewing an amp page but shared it's real url. > I hate that every fucking amp page is lower featured in some way, and almost never works in desktop mode. > And most of all, I hate that it leads to everybody offloading shit onto google's servers. > AMP is not fast because it's served from google's CDN. AMP is fast because it's incompatible with 99% of the bullshit client cpu heavy tracking and ad libraries, so they don't get included inside AMP pages.
- lern_too_spel 6y ago
  > AMP is fast because it's incompatible with 99% of the bullshit client cpu heavy tracking and ad libraries, so they don't get included inside AMP pages. That is wrong. AMP is fast because it prerenders. Everything included in AMP is designed to enable safe prerendering. That is the entire point of AMP markup.

w3clan 6y ago

> Google’s thesis is that the mobile-web is dying and people prefer to use apps – therefore making the web faster and more app-like will retain users. I am not sure, if this is your opinion about Google's view on AMP or is exactly the Google view on AMP, but, Whatever it be, I almost died laughing - what's wrong with these people(Google)? Either Google is assuming, - people would only need 1-2 digit numbers of app in their device and rest all of the websites/platform are just hawkers on the street. OR, - world is going to be exploded with extreme scalable storage system on mobile/user's devices where people would be able to store hundreds of apps. The only reason PEOPLE PREFER TO USE APPS in most of the case is the ability of OFFLINE USE CASE for FREQUENTLY used apps, and we know FREQUENT uses are for limited numbers of apps. Such thesis that people "prefer to use apps" requires citation and contradicts Google's own "search engine" which helps people to explore the world for data. Is that a reason? google prefers to steal the data from various website and show the results in their search engine result page?

dheera 6y ago

> Google’s thesis is that the mobile-web is dying and people prefer to use apps At least this user doesn't prefer apps, it's just that websites downright refuse to make their mobile pages useful, and keep throwing popups for you to get the app, and Chrome on mobile doesn't support extensions to block said popups. Most mobile websites also suck at supporting common navigation modes like swiping between tabs. They entirely could, but they refuse to spend resources developing it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deft 6y ago

The damage is done. AMP has been criticized since its inception, the author is no hero for realizing it after making it this way for years.

ffritz 6y ago

Besides the obvious, I have an additional problem with AMP that I never see getting mentioned: It completely fucks up redirects on mobile Safari. It requires two or three swipe back gestures to actually return to Google.

wolverine876 6y ago

It's trendy to despair, and I want to call it out. I've seen it recently in prominent journalists talking about disinformation, in the former Google AI researcher's exit message to colleagues, in lots of people talking about politics and government and democracy and public affairs (such as racism). 'Let's leave the city - what's the point of being here?' It seems that people want to say: 'it's useless to try', and 'I don't know what to do' ... sometimes they say they will quixotically continue (to drag out the despair, I suppose). Perhaps it's a consequence of the pandemic, which creates depressing environments for much of the world. Perhaps it's a the reactionary concept of the 'SJW' (a negative term, which mocked their supposed uselessness) seeping into broader society. Whatever, despair is a pretty f*g stupid trend. Really? Despair? That's cool now? You sound smart now? I promise you that you will never accomplish anything you don't believe in. Remember the American Dream - anyone can accomplish anything they believe in and work hard for. A friend of mine (now hip to despair) once said, 'the biggest obstacle most people face is that they don't believe' - my friend was right. Who would even choose despair, given the options - what an unhappy life. I believe. I believe we can do it. I believe that the biggest obstacle is all these people standing around talking about despair, and that we outnumber the actual bad people 100 to 1. I believe democracy and freedom and believing in people has an incredible history of success and we can solve these problems too. I believe we can make the open web work on mobile. I believe we can solve disinformation - it's just a matter of engagement, of finding out what engages them and where; they reading that crap for the content. I believe in the city - the land of opportunities, on every block, at every corner, in every cafe and bar. I love the city, I love people. Let's do this! LET'S GOOOOOO! (And I'm not being ironic. I am dead serious. Why are you standing there talking about irony? Is it so rare that someone could be earnest and enthusiastic these days? I'm going to leave you behind; I'm going to make the future while you despair. Let's go!!!!)

frongpik 6y ago
Bad guys are powerful because they are organized. Like you said: an organized 1% can wipe floor with the rest 99%. You can set up a nonprofit org funded by membership fees and call it say "a software engineering guild". That's very legal and very cool. Come up with the mission statement, rules (e.g. one vote per member), basic background checks for new members, figure how you'd protect it from bad actors, and get a few hundred people to join. I'd have no problem with 1k a year in fees. Make sure to provide plausible deniability to members. Maybe call them shareholders: we already own shares from hundreds of companies, nothing wrong with adding one more to the list. With those fees you'll be able to hire law firms and various lobbyists to rock the boat. Luckily, our gov doesn't permit private armies, so you won't need to compete on that front. You'll become the number 1 target for FANG, but if you set up the org right, it will survive even if you have to leave. This type of organizations act like lenses that focus energy of thousands of people into a laser beam.

musicale 6y ago

> AI remain convinced that AMP is poorly implemented, hostile to the interests of both users and publishers, and a proprietary & unnecessary incursion into the open web. That kind of says it all, doesn't it?

Triv888 6y ago

thank you for stopping making this awful and hurtful product...

nrvn 6y ago

Amp is a hackity hack of the modern web, a poster child of some people who try to justify their mere existence in bright google conference rooms and email chains. It seems like inside google(and outside of it as well) people tend to have forgotten that web performance is all about intelligent work with web standards. And throughout years people-who-care-about-perf introduced and advocated various techniques and changes to engines, standards and languages used across web development to improve end user experience. Prefetching, preloading, multiplexing, minifying, lazy loading, PWA, CDN, et al. Instead of teaching how to build web properly google puts its enormous resources to what serves as a search result preview for end users, and the only beneficiary of the AMP is google itself. Care about your users, their experience and performance of your website? Ditch https://amp.dev/ https://amp.dev/ Discover https://web.dev/ https://web.dev/