4 ms·

In my experience, as a user, the performance improvement was more than "alleged".

selsta 6y ago
In my experience AMP website would always be missing features like comments or be bugged in other ways so I usually have to load the full website anyway. It just wastes my time and is one of the reasons why I switched away from Google search.
- admax88q 6y ago
  99% of the time I didn't want comments, I just wanted the content. AMP performance was a huge win for me as a user. I almost never wanted the "full experience" of a page. I wanted its core content, quickly. I agree AMP is anti-competitive, but if publishers made their default pages as lightweight as an AMP page _felt_ then they would have far more of a leg to stand on with users in regards to it being anti-competitive.
  - p49k 6y ago
    Publishers can’t make their default pages feel as lightweight as AMP pages because Google won’t preload their content like they do with AMP pages.
    - three_seagrass 6y ago
      Both Bing and Google support preloading and prefetching HTML5 specs, independent of AMP.
    - admax88q 6y ago
      On a desktop 1gigabit connection: https://bestmotherfucking.website/ https://bestmotherfucking.website/ Loads almost instantly. https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/21/europe/russia-navalny-poisoning-underpants-ward/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/21/europe/russia-navalny-poisoni... Takes almost 6 seconds to finish loading and settle (content stop moving around). Pre-loading is not the only reason amp is faster. On mobile its even more dramatic.
  - dbt00 6y ago
    That's all well and good when you're browsing search results, but then people copy and paste shitty amp links all over the place when they no longer have any advantages (because they're not precached).
sequoia 6y ago
Isn't this at least in part because google was caching the pages & serving them (possibly pre-loading them, I don't know) from their own Google CDN? So comparing the speed of loading a performant page from google's CDN from a SERP click vs. loading the page from the origin is not really a fair comparison. My website would be faster if it were in a warm google CDN cache as well :) https://developers.google.com/amp/cache https://developers.google.com/amp/cache
- HALtheWise 6y ago
  Yeah, but the only reason that AMP is able to preload the page from Google's (or Cloudflare's) CDN cache without leaking your information to the website is because of all the other design decisions.
  - fidelramos 6y ago
    It doesn't leak information to the website but even worse it leaks your information to Google.
- Drew_ 6y ago
  This is another purported benefit of serving AMP pages but doesn't this imply publications weren't already using CDN's previously or that Google's CDN is much faster than competitors? I would guess neither of those are true.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    The entire design of AMP is such that amp links can be safely preloaded by the browser, making effective load times 0ms, dinner the content is already on your device when your click the link.
wil421 6y ago
Performance only improved for sites that have 5 or 6 ads going across your screen as you scroll and an autoplaying ad video taking up a good potion of the actual content.
- recursive 6y ago
  In my anecdotal experience, non-AMP pages are/were strongly correlated with the type of ads you're describing.
vineyardmike 6y ago
There was a recent article on HN that alleged that google slowed down non-amp pages (by delaying the execution of the link-click) in order to further amp's perceived improvement.

In my experience AMP website would always be missing features like comments or be bugged in other ways so I usually have to load the full website anyway. It just wastes my time and is one of the reasons why I switched away from Google search.

admax88q 6y ago
99% of the time I didn't want comments, I just wanted the content. AMP performance was a huge win for me as a user. I almost never wanted the "full experience" of a page. I wanted its core content, quickly. I agree AMP is anti-competitive, but if publishers made their default pages as lightweight as an AMP page _felt_ then they would have far more of a leg to stand on with users in regards to it being anti-competitive.
- p49k 6y ago
  Publishers can’t make their default pages feel as lightweight as AMP pages because Google won’t preload their content like they do with AMP pages.
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    Both Bing and Google support preloading and prefetching HTML5 specs, independent of AMP.
  - admax88q 6y ago
    On a desktop 1gigabit connection: https://bestmotherfucking.website/ https://bestmotherfucking.website/ Loads almost instantly. https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/21/europe/russia-navalny-poisoning-underpants-ward/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/21/europe/russia-navalny-poisoni... Takes almost 6 seconds to finish loading and settle (content stop moving around). Pre-loading is not the only reason amp is faster. On mobile its even more dramatic.
- dbt00 6y ago
  That's all well and good when you're browsing search results, but then people copy and paste shitty amp links all over the place when they no longer have any advantages (because they're not precached).

sequoia 6y ago

Isn't this at least in part because google was caching the pages & serving them (possibly pre-loading them, I don't know) from their own Google CDN? So comparing the speed of loading a performant page from google's CDN from a SERP click vs. loading the page from the origin is not really a fair comparison. My website would be faster if it were in a warm google CDN cache as well :) https://developers.google.com/amp/cache https://developers.google.com/amp/cache

HALtheWise 6y ago
Yeah, but the only reason that AMP is able to preload the page from Google's (or Cloudflare's) CDN cache without leaking your information to the website is because of all the other design decisions.
- fidelramos 6y ago
  It doesn't leak information to the website but even worse it leaks your information to Google.
Drew_ 6y ago
This is another purported benefit of serving AMP pages but doesn't this imply publications weren't already using CDN's previously or that Google's CDN is much faster than competitors? I would guess neither of those are true.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  The entire design of AMP is such that amp links can be safely preloaded by the browser, making effective load times 0ms, dinner the content is already on your device when your click the link.

wil421 6y ago

Performance only improved for sites that have 5 or 6 ads going across your screen as you scroll and an autoplaying ad video taking up a good potion of the actual content.

recursive 6y ago
In my anecdotal experience, non-AMP pages are/were strongly correlated with the type of ads you're describing.

vineyardmike 6y ago

There was a recent article on HN that alleged that google slowed down non-amp pages (by delaying the execution of the link-click) in order to further amp's perceived improvement.