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This is disingenuous given that's not how Google AMP works when viewing an article on its search results: > Both sites are measurably worse on their AMP versio

This is disingenuous given that's not how Google AMP works when viewing an article on its search results: > Both sites are measurably worse on their AMP versions. The amount of data transferred is higher, the script execution is worse, and the page takes longer to load. So much for the promise of speed and a better user experience. AMP pages render instantly because Google is able to pre-cache their data. So you're not paying the same price at click as you do when you go to a non-amp page. Yes, AMP doesn't make sense as a tech to render your main site when a user directly visits it, but for embedding your content into another's experience, it does allow for very fast load times.

ehsankia 6y ago
The whole article is riddled with lies and misleading points. > they didn’t go to BBC’s website; they view a copy of the BBC’s content on google.com That's exactly what a CDN is. The only difference between AMP cache and CloudFlare is that the latter uses some DNS trickery to show BBC's domain name, whereas Google can't. Google solved this in Chrome, and there are other ways to solve this with Web Packages [1] and Signed HTTP exchanges which allows the content to be served from Google but with the original url, without DNS changes. [1] https://blog.amp.dev/2018/05/08/a-first-look-at-using-web-packaging-to-improve-amp-urls/ https://blog.amp.dev/2018/05/08/a-first-look-at-using-web-pa...
- majewsky 6y ago
  The difference is that the BBC is a customer of CloudFlare, and that contractual relationship provides a sound legal basis for CloudFlare serving the BBC's content. There is nothing of the sort between the BBC and Google in the AMP case, just a shaky implied-in-fact contract along the lines of "if you put AMP on your website, you consent to us pretending that we're you and serving it to people on your behalf".
  - tyingq 6y ago
    Cloudflare also doesn't shove their own UI into the top of your page and hijack left/right swipes on your page.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    I believe you can use AMP without the AMP cache, therefore the decision it's entirely in the hands of the website owner. But, surprisingly, almost everyone wants to use the free world scale fast cache.
    - Mindwipe 6y ago
      You can, but you didn't get any of the Google ranking advantages of doing so, because AMP was purely an anti-competition play.
      - ec109685 6y ago
        Google can’t embed random content from servers they don’t control onto the Google SERP.
SquareWheel 6y ago
Indeed. And preloading of pages isn't "cheating" either. Safe preloading is the entire reason for AMP's existence. They're designed to open quickly as embedded content. Doing a direct comparison is kind of missing the point.

ehsankia 6y ago

The whole article is riddled with lies and misleading points. > they didn’t go to BBC’s website; they view a copy of the BBC’s content on google.com That's exactly what a CDN is. The only difference between AMP cache and CloudFlare is that the latter uses some DNS trickery to show BBC's domain name, whereas Google can't. Google solved this in Chrome, and there are other ways to solve this with Web Packages [1] and Signed HTTP exchanges which allows the content to be served from Google but with the original url, without DNS changes. [1] https://blog.amp.dev/2018/05/08/a-first-look-at-using-web-packaging-to-improve-amp-urls/ https://blog.amp.dev/2018/05/08/a-first-look-at-using-web-pa...

majewsky 6y ago
The difference is that the BBC is a customer of CloudFlare, and that contractual relationship provides a sound legal basis for CloudFlare serving the BBC's content. There is nothing of the sort between the BBC and Google in the AMP case, just a shaky implied-in-fact contract along the lines of "if you put AMP on your website, you consent to us pretending that we're you and serving it to people on your behalf".
- tyingq 6y ago
  Cloudflare also doesn't shove their own UI into the top of your page and hijack left/right swipes on your page.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  I believe you can use AMP without the AMP cache, therefore the decision it's entirely in the hands of the website owner. But, surprisingly, almost everyone wants to use the free world scale fast cache.
  - Mindwipe 6y ago
    You can, but you didn't get any of the Google ranking advantages of doing so, because AMP was purely an anti-competition play.
    - ec109685 6y ago
      Google can’t embed random content from servers they don’t control onto the Google SERP.

SquareWheel 6y ago

Indeed. And preloading of pages isn't "cheating" either. Safe preloading is the entire reason for AMP's existence. They're designed to open quickly as embedded content. Doing a direct comparison is kind of missing the point.