8 ms·

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" versio

by 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 think every Web site begging its users for money is a solution that will scale out. Wikipedia also has the advantage of not needing to pay its contributors.
- maccard 6y ago
  Such as? I agree with the OP, for what it's worth. In the vast majority of cases amp content loads quicker, is presented better, and is less obtrusive, even browsing with an adblocker
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    Such as using page speed and the presence of annoying elements (ads, etc) as a ranking signal but without forcing websites to use AMP which involves having Google as a proxy.
    - adventured 6y ago
      This one makes it all the more obvious what Google is actually doing. They have a search monopoly and supposedly are heavily biased on speed as a ranking factor. Well golly gee, if you want the Web to be a lot faster, smash sites with brutal speed ranking penalties until they get the message. It wouldn't be difficult nor would it take much time to get the point across (in fact it would be trivially easy). There is no other logical explanation other than Google's intentions are gatekeeper (and plausibly much worse in time: hostage taker), not primarily to make the Web a better place (that's merely the lie they're pitching as a cover story).
      - muro 6y ago
        I think the positive approach (use amp, the page will load faster, which users like) is a good alternative to the negative (downranking). It's not just "make your page faster, or else!", but provides a good solution, too. As I user, I love amp. As a developer, I understand the concerns (though I don't think they materialized in the way HN sentiment goes).
        dmitriid 6y ago
        It doesn't provide a good solution. It's Google's arbitrary proprietary subset of web technologies. It's only fast because Google preloads all of JS while you search. It aggressively hides the origin source, depriving sites of user traffic. Google prioritizes AMP content over any other content even if that other content may be better and/or load faster.
hnarn 6y ago
What AMP could have been, which in my mind would have been a lot better, is some type of open standard that Google offers free hosting for, but does not require Google to use. The m.foo.com usage has been around for ages in Internet time, it could do with some standardization and tooling to ensure it gives the quickest page loads possible.
afavour 6y ago
> I like that AMP forced publishing companies to take a hard look at page performance, for the first time in a while. True and false. It forced companies to pay attention to page performance... and then create an entirely separate version of every page they have, using up valuable developer time that could have been spent making the original pages faster. Google should (and now/soon are?) assess the performance of the page and rank it accordingly, not force everyone to make two versions of their site. But this is where the sneaky part of AMP comes in: they wanted that side-swiping carousel that meant you never engaged deeply with any one site and instead stayed on google.com (and kept those google.com ad cookies, natch). There was no way to force people into that without AMP.
- muro 6y ago
  All that "valuable developer time" didn't make any difference - AMP did.
  - SirSourdough 6y ago
    I mean sure, Google put the gun to every website and said “We are using our monopoly power to ensure your business will fail if you do not conduct business as we see fit”. Really, really positive way of bringing about change.
  - afavour 6y ago
    ...how do you think those AMP pages got made other than with valuable developer time? AMP versions of sites aren't just magicked out of thin air! Without "valuable developer time" there are no AMP sites. I think the point you're actually making is that without AMP forcing these sites to be faster, they would still be slow. Which I agree with. But as I said in my original post, Google ranking sites according to their performance would have the exact same effect as forcing AMP on people, except that it would let sites choose their own implementation rather than be strong-armed into one controlled by Google.
    - muro 6y ago
      Of course. The parent argument was that the time spent differently would have the same effect. Many years of crappy slow mobile pages show differently.
GrumpyNl 6y ago
You dont need amp, just build better pages.
tootie 6y ago
I think it's a missing piece of a lot of sites that AMP is trying to fill. Users landing from search don't have the same set of priorities as organic traffic. Have a page rendition explicitly for search visitors that is different than what you show to engaged users makes sense a lot of the time. Like the old 90/9/1 rule. AMP tried to fill that 90% segment with some generic rules that could be overlayed on any site. It's like the Squarespace of SEO pages. Easy to get to market, but not a natural fit and not worth it for any site that has enough resources to do their own version.
eloff 6y ago
I use firefox on mobile. AMP is completely unusable - I can't use google news anymore.
blackbrokkoli 6y ago
If only there would be like...some incentive...for people to optimize their webpages towards usability. Like if we image a...giant monopolistic search engine...rating pages along certain parameters? Maybe Google should just build something like this if usability is in their interest. Someone pitch this idea to them!
metabagel 6y ago
I find the opposite to be the case. AMP websites often don’t scroll down in my mobile browser (Firefox), so I have to click on the link to the original article in order to be able to read it.
MrStonedOne 6y ago
That wouldn't be issue if google let people turn it off. They do not, and they will not. I don't like amp. I don't like that unrelated amp results get promoted over the actual content i was looking for (that can't be amped because it's dynamic content) in search results, I don't like that have to use to inferior search engines on mobile to get rid of it, and I don't like how watered down amp sites are.

by muglug 6y ago

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 think every Web site begging its users for money is a solution that will scale out. Wikipedia also has the advantage of not needing to pay its contributors.
maccard 6y ago
Such as? I agree with the OP, for what it's worth. In the vast majority of cases amp content loads quicker, is presented better, and is less obtrusive, even browsing with an adblocker
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Such as using page speed and the presence of annoying elements (ads, etc) as a ranking signal but without forcing websites to use AMP which involves having Google as a proxy.
  - adventured 6y ago
    This one makes it all the more obvious what Google is actually doing. They have a search monopoly and supposedly are heavily biased on speed as a ranking factor. Well golly gee, if you want the Web to be a lot faster, smash sites with brutal speed ranking penalties until they get the message. It wouldn't be difficult nor would it take much time to get the point across (in fact it would be trivially easy). There is no other logical explanation other than Google's intentions are gatekeeper (and plausibly much worse in time: hostage taker), not primarily to make the Web a better place (that's merely the lie they're pitching as a cover story).
    - muro 6y ago
      I think the positive approach (use amp, the page will load faster, which users like) is a good alternative to the negative (downranking). It's not just "make your page faster, or else!", but provides a good solution, too. As I user, I love amp. As a developer, I understand the concerns (though I don't think they materialized in the way HN sentiment goes).
      - dmitriid 6y ago
        It doesn't provide a good solution. It's Google's arbitrary proprietary subset of web technologies. It's only fast because Google preloads all of JS while you search. It aggressively hides the origin source, depriving sites of user traffic. Google prioritizes AMP content over any other content even if that other content may be better and/or load faster.

hnarn 6y ago

What AMP could have been, which in my mind would have been a lot better, is some type of open standard that Google offers free hosting for, but does not require Google to use. The m.foo.com usage has been around for ages in Internet time, it could do with some standardization and tooling to ensure it gives the quickest page loads possible.

afavour 6y ago

> I like that AMP forced publishing companies to take a hard look at page performance, for the first time in a while. True and false. It forced companies to pay attention to page performance... and then create an entirely separate version of every page they have, using up valuable developer time that could have been spent making the original pages faster. Google should (and now/soon are?) assess the performance of the page and rank it accordingly, not force everyone to make two versions of their site. But this is where the sneaky part of AMP comes in: they wanted that side-swiping carousel that meant you never engaged deeply with any one site and instead stayed on google.com (and kept those google.com ad cookies, natch). There was no way to force people into that without AMP.

muro 6y ago
All that "valuable developer time" didn't make any difference - AMP did.
- SirSourdough 6y ago
  I mean sure, Google put the gun to every website and said “We are using our monopoly power to ensure your business will fail if you do not conduct business as we see fit”. Really, really positive way of bringing about change.
- afavour 6y ago
  ...how do you think those AMP pages got made other than with valuable developer time? AMP versions of sites aren't just magicked out of thin air! Without "valuable developer time" there are no AMP sites. I think the point you're actually making is that without AMP forcing these sites to be faster, they would still be slow. Which I agree with. But as I said in my original post, Google ranking sites according to their performance would have the exact same effect as forcing AMP on people, except that it would let sites choose their own implementation rather than be strong-armed into one controlled by Google.
  - muro 6y ago
    Of course. The parent argument was that the time spent differently would have the same effect. Many years of crappy slow mobile pages show differently.

GrumpyNl 6y ago

You dont need amp, just build better pages.

tootie 6y ago

I think it's a missing piece of a lot of sites that AMP is trying to fill. Users landing from search don't have the same set of priorities as organic traffic. Have a page rendition explicitly for search visitors that is different than what you show to engaged users makes sense a lot of the time. Like the old 90/9/1 rule. AMP tried to fill that 90% segment with some generic rules that could be overlayed on any site. It's like the Squarespace of SEO pages. Easy to get to market, but not a natural fit and not worth it for any site that has enough resources to do their own version.

eloff 6y ago

I use firefox on mobile. AMP is completely unusable - I can't use google news anymore.

blackbrokkoli 6y ago

If only there would be like...some incentive...for people to optimize their webpages towards usability. Like if we image a...giant monopolistic search engine...rating pages along certain parameters? Maybe Google should just build something like this if usability is in their interest. Someone pitch this idea to them!

metabagel 6y ago

I find the opposite to be the case. AMP websites often don’t scroll down in my mobile browser (Firefox), so I have to click on the link to the original article in order to be able to read it.

MrStonedOne 6y ago

That wouldn't be issue if google let people turn it off. They do not, and they will not. I don't like amp. I don't like that unrelated amp results get promoted over the actual content i was looking for (that can't be amped because it's dynamic content) in search results, I don't like that have to use to inferior search engines on mobile to get rid of it, and I don't like how watered down amp sites are.