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> 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 pa

> 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.
    - afavour 6y ago
      > The parent argument was that the time spent differently would have the same effect. Again, no. The argument was that time spent focused on page performance would have the same effect. If Google punished slow pages in rankings that is all the incentive needed, not the creation of an entirely new platform.
      - muro 6y ago
        Ah, I missed that, thank you. I'm still not convinced it would make so much of difference, but it's definitely more likely. Any good examples out there of sites which optimized for speed and achieved similar results?
Kalium 6y ago
> Google should (and now/soon are?) assess the performance of the page and rank it accordingly If the reading I've done is accurate, Google tried this for quite a long time before AMP. The issue seems to be that there are just too many other factors with higher ROI for speed to be prioritized consistently. IMO, AMP put companies in a position where speed mattered and most other things didn't. It focused minds in ways that using speed as a factor in ranking did not.
- dgb23 6y ago
  > The issue seems to be that there are just too many other factors with higher ROI for speed to be prioritized consistently. That argument makes zero sense to me. Either they rank faster and lighter sites higher or they don't. AMP is completely orthogonal to that.
  - Kalium 6y ago
    Overall, I think Google does prefer to rank faster-loading sites higher. With that said, as far as I can tell, the difference between two sites is almost never a simple as a single factor. There are hundreds of things that influence rankings. So companies can and do worry more about other concerns, including squeezing more ad income out of each pageview and getting into more search results in the first place. AMP took away a lot of the other things that companies would invest developer time in.
- watwut 6y ago
  And the result are ... crappy amp pages so I have to edit url to see actual page. Having to edit url would matter little on PC, but massively sux at mobile. And it is overall slower then however slow original page was.

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.
  - afavour 6y ago
    > The parent argument was that the time spent differently would have the same effect. Again, no. The argument was that time spent focused on page performance would have the same effect. If Google punished slow pages in rankings that is all the incentive needed, not the creation of an entirely new platform.
    - muro 6y ago
      Ah, I missed that, thank you. I'm still not convinced it would make so much of difference, but it's definitely more likely. Any good examples out there of sites which optimized for speed and achieved similar results?

Kalium 6y ago

> Google should (and now/soon are?) assess the performance of the page and rank it accordingly If the reading I've done is accurate, Google tried this for quite a long time before AMP. The issue seems to be that there are just too many other factors with higher ROI for speed to be prioritized consistently. IMO, AMP put companies in a position where speed mattered and most other things didn't. It focused minds in ways that using speed as a factor in ranking did not.

dgb23 6y ago
> The issue seems to be that there are just too many other factors with higher ROI for speed to be prioritized consistently. That argument makes zero sense to me. Either they rank faster and lighter sites higher or they don't. AMP is completely orthogonal to that.
- Kalium 6y ago
  Overall, I think Google does prefer to rank faster-loading sites higher. With that said, as far as I can tell, the difference between two sites is almost never a simple as a single factor. There are hundreds of things that influence rankings. So companies can and do worry more about other concerns, including squeezing more ad income out of each pageview and getting into more search results in the first place. AMP took away a lot of the other things that companies would invest developer time in.
watwut 6y ago
And the result are ... crappy amp pages so I have to edit url to see actual page. Having to edit url would matter little on PC, but massively sux at mobile. And it is overall slower then however slow original page was.