8 ms·

History of AMP and Why Everybody Is Against It?

37 points by throwaway1849 4y ago

snowwrestler 4y ago
This title makes more sense if the question mark is removed? Otherwise it seems like a request for information rather than an offer to provide information? I’m Ron Burgundy? EDIT: the blog post title has now been edited to remove the question mark; it would be good if someone could edit the HN title to match.
- wombat-man 4y ago
  Yeah, I think that was a mistake?
  - ihuman 4y ago
    Probably, because the article's title doesn't have one?
    - snowwrestler 4y ago
      It doesn’t anymore. It did when I posted my comment (I checked first).
- lewiscollard 4y ago
  I think there's some kind of automatic title re-writing happening on HN, which sticks a question mark on the end of titles that contain the word "why" and "is". I think the goal is to make titles less clickbaity. In practice, it mangles them such that they look like the author has a weak understanding of English punctuation and/or grammar :(
  - snowwrestler 4y ago
    In this case, the original blog post title ended in a question mark (now removed).
  - cyanydeez 4y ago
    I now just hear valley girl when I see question marks.
- ogogmad 4y ago
  There are some people who don't know the difference between "!" and "?"? I'm serious?
bin_bash 4y ago
I recommend AMPlosion for iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amplosion-redirect-amp-links/id1585734696 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amplosion-redirect-amp-links/i... Best $2 I ever spent.
- nerdjon 4y ago
  Second this. One of the few times I have had zero hesitation (well outside of... does it work?) in spending money on the App Store. I have recommended this to everyone I know, and even offered to give them $2 if they don't understand why but trust me enough to do it. Just to help APM have as quick of a death as possible.
lkxijlewlf 4y ago
Has AMP been around long enough that we need to know the history of it? Just kill it and be done.
- sanderjd 4y ago
  Isn't it over five years old now?
- tyingq 4y ago
  It's effectively dead now that "not having it" doesn't kill your organic traffic. It lingers only because poorly funded media websites have to pay someone to help them migrate off of it.
api 4y ago
AMP is a transparent attempt by Google to evolve the web toward a Google-controlled walled garden platform. It was one of those things that I said "I hope this fails" as soon as I read a synopsis of it.
pineconewarrior 4y ago
Google is now working on a new "web bundles" technology, similar to signed exchanges. I think this approach will fare better.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  Unlike AMP, that requires browser support, and several browser vendors have signalled they won't support it.
watwut 4y ago
I know it is not real question, but because I get limited page instead of a real one when google provides AMP.
_vdpp 4y ago
It seems like another “standard” that puts an immense burden on everyone else so the big players can save .01% on their bandwidth/power costs.
- sanderjd 4y ago
  It puts a burden on developers at companies that publish content, but users really like its fast pages with less bloat.
  - NineStarPoint 4y ago
    Maybe it’s just my bubble, but even my friends who don’t work in tech dislike amp pages for pretty much the same reason as those who work in tech. That being that greater than half the time when we click a link we didn’t want the AMP site, we wanted the actual website. The “less bloat” often times means less functional website. It might come down to most people I know having high quality internet connections though, such that the load times aren’t as big a concern.
    - sanderjd 4y ago
      Definitely a bubble thing if your friends are aware of what AMP is.
SquareWheel 4y ago
Seems like somebody just googled "reasons why amp is bad" and copy-pasted them into a blog post without any further context.
NikolaNovak 4y ago
As a user (not publisher / developer): * Based on occasional Hacker News coverage, and first principles, I was ready to dislike AMP * After reading this article, I am wondering if I should explore it more and embrace it, because as a user, literally every single one of their defined "problems & issues" is a net benefit to me. Harder for publishers to embed ads? Great. Harder for publishers to run own code and track you and run more analytics? Awesome. Harder for publishers to "present their brand value"? Brilliant. After thinking about it, it works great for me. When I want a specific website I go to a specific website. When I randomly peruse news and articles, I want minimum ads, minimum differentiation and "brand value", minimum code. I don't care about who what where how they are. When I watch Google News Carousel, I'm OK to be in walled garden. Google News Carousel is not "The Internet" for me, it's the equivalent of facebook or twitter or instagram. Basically, the author just managed to completely sell me on AMP!
- sanderjd 4y ago
  Yep, users love it. People on HN hate it because we're weirdos and many of us interact with it on the publisher side rather than the user side. It's like asking cashiers what they think of self checkout.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    Nah, we hate it because it does weird stuff like slowing down adblocker users. I don’t care about AMP work-wise, we never considered using it. But I hate it as a user, and back when it briefly became a thing, I used extensions to route me to the actual link instead of the google hosted page.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    - sanderjd 4y ago
tyingq 4y ago
These have been changed, but at different times... - It was required to show up in the carousel - It injected a banner at the top of your content that pushed your content down. The banner featured an "[X]" button that seemed like it might dismiss it, but it sent you back to Google instead - The real url was deliberately hidden, and initially not even an actual link, but just text. - It hijacked swipe events to navigate to competitor pages, and hijacked the back button in certain cases also And, the AMP spec still requires loading a piece of google controlled javascript onto your page...that does whatever it wants. What's not to hate? At one time, it was basically a protection racket. "Use this objectionable thing, or your organic traffic will drop".
- notahacker 4y ago
  Plus in practice, adverse selection involving the sort of websites that actually bothered with AMP; basically everyone who created pages purely for Google juice to drive their profits rushed to create AMP pages whereas much-loved evergreen content generally wasn't available in that format (unless spitting out AMP pages was baked into updates to their CMS platform) and was of course pushed further down the page with the organic search results as a result.
shp0ngle 4y ago
The weirdest thing about AMP is that it requires google JS on your website. If they got rid of that, I would be totally for it
- pornel 4y ago
  Google AMP also implied having your site copied and hosted on Google's servers. This was one of the most contentions points, because it wasn't merely a markup standard, but takeover of traffic.
  - shp0ngle 4y ago
    Eh, I don’t really care about that, as long as the cache is invalidated reasonably often. But it seems the (obfuscated and minified) JS is still required.
dqpb 4y ago
The main reason I don’t like AMP is that it’s apparently broken. This is a daily experience of mine: 1. Open Google Chrome (iPhone) 2. Open Google News 3. Open a Google AMP page 4. Fails to load 5. Follow link to publishers site
corrral 4y ago
They screwed up scrolling on iOS (Google loves to do this—gmail is also terrible), they screwed up sharing links, and a lot of sites (notably Reddit) had joke-tier implementations that seemed designed to annoy the user. And that's before we get into the obvious power grab that it was.
ppetty 4y ago
This part is really misleading: "AMP is a new markdown language which can be compared to HTML." AMP according to amp.dev: "AMP is a web component framework to easily create user-first experiences for the web." ... which is also misleading. To say "easily" is presumptuous or optimistic. You can do a lot with AMP but to have AMP pages that validate & adhere to rules around CSS inlining and file size limits, for example, isn't trivial. I think that's really why developers aren't fans. Pragmatically can you know the effort is worth it? For any significantly large news or media site AMP is a big investment & I think that's why product owners and stakeholders waffle over whether or not to provide AMP experiences. And then finally, what if it actually works? Then the focus becomes for how long? Can't know that either ...

37 points by throwaway1849 4y ago

This title makes more sense if the question mark is removed? Otherwise it seems like a request for information rather than an offer to provide information? I’m Ron Burgundy? EDIT: the blog post title has now been edited to remove the question mark; it would be good if someone could edit the HN title to match.

wombat-man 4y ago
Yeah, I think that was a mistake?
- ihuman 4y ago
  Probably, because the article's title doesn't have one?
  - snowwrestler 4y ago
    It doesn’t anymore. It did when I posted my comment (I checked first).
lewiscollard 4y ago
I think there's some kind of automatic title re-writing happening on HN, which sticks a question mark on the end of titles that contain the word "why" and "is". I think the goal is to make titles less clickbaity. In practice, it mangles them such that they look like the author has a weak understanding of English punctuation and/or grammar :(
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  In this case, the original blog post title ended in a question mark (now removed).
- cyanydeez 4y ago
  I now just hear valley girl when I see question marks.
ogogmad 4y ago
There are some people who don't know the difference between "!" and "?"? I'm serious?

bin_bash 4y ago

I recommend AMPlosion for iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amplosion-redirect-amp-links/id1585734696 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amplosion-redirect-amp-links/i... Best $2 I ever spent.

nerdjon 4y ago
Second this. One of the few times I have had zero hesitation (well outside of... does it work?) in spending money on the App Store. I have recommended this to everyone I know, and even offered to give them $2 if they don't understand why but trust me enough to do it. Just to help APM have as quick of a death as possible.

lkxijlewlf 4y ago

Has AMP been around long enough that we need to know the history of it? Just kill it and be done.

sanderjd 4y ago
Isn't it over five years old now?
tyingq 4y ago
It's effectively dead now that "not having it" doesn't kill your organic traffic. It lingers only because poorly funded media websites have to pay someone to help them migrate off of it.

api 4y ago

AMP is a transparent attempt by Google to evolve the web toward a Google-controlled walled garden platform. It was one of those things that I said "I hope this fails" as soon as I read a synopsis of it.

pineconewarrior 4y ago

Google is now working on a new "web bundles" technology, similar to signed exchanges. I think this approach will fare better.

lern_too_spel 4y ago
Unlike AMP, that requires browser support, and several browser vendors have signalled they won't support it.

watwut 4y ago

I know it is not real question, but because I get limited page instead of a real one when google provides AMP.

_vdpp 4y ago

It seems like another “standard” that puts an immense burden on everyone else so the big players can save .01% on their bandwidth/power costs.

sanderjd 4y ago
It puts a burden on developers at companies that publish content, but users really like its fast pages with less bloat.
- NineStarPoint 4y ago
  Maybe it’s just my bubble, but even my friends who don’t work in tech dislike amp pages for pretty much the same reason as those who work in tech. That being that greater than half the time when we click a link we didn’t want the AMP site, we wanted the actual website. The “less bloat” often times means less functional website. It might come down to most people I know having high quality internet connections though, such that the load times aren’t as big a concern.
  - sanderjd 4y ago
    Definitely a bubble thing if your friends are aware of what AMP is.

SquareWheel 4y ago

Seems like somebody just googled "reasons why amp is bad" and copy-pasted them into a blog post without any further context.

NikolaNovak 4y ago

As a user (not publisher / developer): * Based on occasional Hacker News coverage, and first principles, I was ready to dislike AMP * After reading this article, I am wondering if I should explore it more and embrace it, because as a user, literally every single one of their defined "problems & issues" is a net benefit to me. Harder for publishers to embed ads? Great. Harder for publishers to run own code and track you and run more analytics? Awesome. Harder for publishers to "present their brand value"? Brilliant. After thinking about it, it works great for me. When I want a specific website I go to a specific website. When I randomly peruse news and articles, I want minimum ads, minimum differentiation and "brand value", minimum code. I don't care about who what where how they are. When I watch Google News Carousel, I'm OK to be in walled garden. Google News Carousel is not "The Internet" for me, it's the equivalent of facebook or twitter or instagram. Basically, the author just managed to completely sell me on AMP!

sanderjd 4y ago
Yep, users love it. People on HN hate it because we're weirdos and many of us interact with it on the publisher side rather than the user side. It's like asking cashiers what they think of self checkout.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  Nah, we hate it because it does weird stuff like slowing down adblocker users. I don’t care about AMP work-wise, we never considered using it. But I hate it as a user, and back when it briefly became a thing, I used extensions to route me to the actual link instead of the google hosted page.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  - sanderjd 4y ago

tyingq 4y ago

These have been changed, but at different times... - It was required to show up in the carousel - It injected a banner at the top of your content that pushed your content down. The banner featured an "[X]" button that seemed like it might dismiss it, but it sent you back to Google instead - The real url was deliberately hidden, and initially not even an actual link, but just text. - It hijacked swipe events to navigate to competitor pages, and hijacked the back button in certain cases also And, the AMP spec still requires loading a piece of google controlled javascript onto your page...that does whatever it wants. What's not to hate? At one time, it was basically a protection racket. "Use this objectionable thing, or your organic traffic will drop".

notahacker 4y ago
Plus in practice, adverse selection involving the sort of websites that actually bothered with AMP; basically everyone who created pages purely for Google juice to drive their profits rushed to create AMP pages whereas much-loved evergreen content generally wasn't available in that format (unless spitting out AMP pages was baked into updates to their CMS platform) and was of course pushed further down the page with the organic search results as a result.

shp0ngle 4y ago

The weirdest thing about AMP is that it requires google JS on your website. If they got rid of that, I would be totally for it

pornel 4y ago
Google AMP also implied having your site copied and hosted on Google's servers. This was one of the most contentions points, because it wasn't merely a markup standard, but takeover of traffic.
- shp0ngle 4y ago
  Eh, I don’t really care about that, as long as the cache is invalidated reasonably often. But it seems the (obfuscated and minified) JS is still required.

dqpb 4y ago

The main reason I don’t like AMP is that it’s apparently broken. This is a daily experience of mine: 1. Open Google Chrome (iPhone) 2. Open Google News 3. Open a Google AMP page 4. Fails to load 5. Follow link to publishers site

corrral 4y ago

They screwed up scrolling on iOS (Google loves to do this—gmail is also terrible), they screwed up sharing links, and a lot of sites (notably Reddit) had joke-tier implementations that seemed designed to annoy the user. And that's before we get into the obvious power grab that it was.

ppetty 4y ago

This part is really misleading: "AMP is a new markdown language which can be compared to HTML." AMP according to amp.dev: "AMP is a web component framework to easily create user-first experiences for the web." ... which is also misleading. To say "easily" is presumptuous or optimistic. You can do a lot with AMP but to have AMP pages that validate & adhere to rules around CSS inlining and file size limits, for example, isn't trivial. I think that's really why developers aren't fans. Pragmatically can you know the effort is worth it? For any significantly large news or media site AMP is a big investment & I think that's why product owners and stakeholders waffle over whether or not to provide AMP experiences. And then finally, what if it actually works? Then the focus becomes for how long? Can't know that either ...