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The way I see it, the constant pressures from ads departments is the issue and having to make an appeal to Google is not a good solution. We should not have to

The way I see it, the constant pressures from ads departments is the issue and having to make an appeal to Google is not a good solution. We should not have to rely on having Google back us up on what constitutes a “good” page. So, I don’t agree that it’s “really, really important.” If anything, it’s a sad picture of digital journalism. I think what’s really, really important is having the freedom to design your site without having to worry about Google’s arbitrary judgment of that design and not needing to rely on pleasing a search engine to show up in its results. AMP definitely does not hold anyone accountable. Look at Reddit. Absolutely atrocious UX after AMP from what is just a basic forum. Instead, AMP makes everyone - regardless of content, design, or purpose - obey the same Google-approved standard of design, using Google-approved fonts and Google-approved CSS. In my view, AMP is the UX disaster because I hate the way it looks and have to remove the AMP from every news article I read. Oftentimes, publishers have a better idea of how their content should look than Google does. Especially smaller ones which have a strong focus on design.

nightpool 5y ago
> Google-approved fonts and Google-approved CSS This is just completely false. You can use webfonts and custom CSS on AMP. There are some common-sense limitations, like limiting the total size of the CSS, but I've never run into an issue where I had a design that I couldn't achieve on AMP due to CSS constraints. > the constant pressures from ads departments is the issue The problem is that sales departments don't work in isolation—they're beholden to the broader pressures of the marketplace. It's a classic coordination problem—the industry is caught in a race-to-the-bottom of ad quality, and as long as you can make a few extra bucks per month by adding more and more intrusives ads, you're going to do so. Google has the ability to set different incentives for publishers, because they control a lot of traffic, which turns into revenue.

nightpool 5y ago

> Google-approved fonts and Google-approved CSS This is just completely false. You can use webfonts and custom CSS on AMP. There are some common-sense limitations, like limiting the total size of the CSS, but I've never run into an issue where I had a design that I couldn't achieve on AMP due to CSS constraints. > the constant pressures from ads departments is the issue The problem is that sales departments don't work in isolation—they're beholden to the broader pressures of the marketplace. It's a classic coordination problem—the industry is caught in a race-to-the-bottom of ad quality, and as long as you can make a few extra bucks per month by adding more and more intrusives ads, you're going to do so. Google has the ability to set different incentives for publishers, because they control a lot of traffic, which turns into revenue.