[HN Gopher] The End of AMP?
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The End of AMP?
        
       Author : colinprince
       Score  : 175 points
       Date   : 2021-03-23 21:15 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.lafoo.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.lafoo.com)
        
       | satyrnein wrote:
       | Once AMP is not favored by Google Search, and ideally Signed
       | Exchange works in all browsers (to fix the domain name issue),
       | AMP might actually become an unambiguously good thing: just
       | another option to speed your page up.
        
         | tyingq wrote:
         | Did Firefox and Apple change their position on signed
         | exchanges? Both were pretty negative about it as I recall.
        
       | jonnydubowsky wrote:
       | The author of this post (Dwayne Lafleur) has a linked post on
       | additional changes being made in the Google update.
       | 
       | All pages with high Page Experience scores are eligible to be in
       | the featured top news carousel.
       | 
       | This effectively means that publishers will no longer be forced
       | to use AMP and can instead provide fast, rich experiences on
       | their own domains.
       | 
       | His call to action is pretty straightforward:
       | 
       | "Get to work right now to ensure that your site has a great user
       | experience AND has a great user experience score. Avoid
       | unnecessary JavaScript, plugins and bloat, and make your site
       | easy-to-use". https://www.lafoo.com/javascript-is-driving-your-
       | visitors-cr...
        
       | millstone wrote:
       | Google could defuse some of the AMP pushback by offering users a
       | setting to disable it. Why haven't they done so?
        
       | Lucasoato wrote:
       | > Let me package that up for you - Google, the most dominant
       | search engine globally - used that dominant market position to
       | encourage publishers to adopt technology so that Google could
       | store and serve publisher's content on Google's domain.
       | 
       | It's absurd, how could regulators and authorities let this
       | happen? Let's also mention how hard and counterintuitive is
       | getting to the original site from the amp version.
        
         | brutal_chaos_ wrote:
         | Tech literacy isn't exactly rampant. It's sad really and part
         | of the reason we have memes like the "internet is a series of
         | tubes" and laws like the DMCA in the US.
        
           | ocdtrekkie wrote:
           | Literacy isn't the problem, campaign finance is. Google
           | spreads around money to both sides of the aisle at basically
           | the legal maximum level.
        
         | godelmachine wrote:
         | >> _Let 's also mention how hard and counterintuitive is
         | getting to the original site from the amp version_
         | 
         | I stopped using Chrome as my primary browser and moved to
         | Firefox for exactly same reason - AMP.
        
           | Angostura wrote:
           | I simply moved to DDG as my default search engine on mobile
           | for the same reason.
        
         | JumpCrisscross wrote:
         | > _how could regulators and authorities let this happen?_
         | 
         | Tech companies were ridiculously popular until recently.
        
         | turdnagel wrote:
         | The unofficial motto of the tech industry is "ask for
         | forgiveness, not permission."
        
         | Barrin92 wrote:
         | >how could regulators and authorities let this happen
         | 
         | because they have been asleep at the wheel for almost two
         | decades now, letting tech companies privatize and eat away at
         | the open nature of the internet, so now we have to live in tech
         | giant fiefdoms where they can determine the very form and
         | content of everything displayed on the web because they're the
         | ones who control every access point and standard.
        
           | Lammy wrote:
           | I'm curious why you assume it's accident or inaction. If I
           | wanted to surveil Internet traffic with all five of my eyes,
           | what better way would there be then rehosting all the content
           | so people had to connect directly to me?
        
           | noja wrote:
           | > because they have been asleep at the wheel for almost two
           | decades now
           | 
           | Lobbying.
        
             | toxik wrote:
             | It's simply very difficult to regulate the internet, laws
             | are an extremely blunt tool and while I agree that more
             | could have been done, I'm also convinced that regulation
             | would have stifled innovation.
             | 
             | The AMP mess is not the death knell of the open internet,
             | perhaps the sick idea of a rotting company
        
           | treis wrote:
           | For as much as I hate Amp it's way better than what came
           | before it. Especially for ad heavy sites that typically rank
           | high in Google searches for random stuff. The only time for
           | me it's not an improvement is for reddit where it is a huge
           | annoyance.
        
             | pembrook wrote:
             | Google could have simply made page weight a more important
             | factor in the ranking algorithm if that was their goal.
             | 
             | The minute these publishers weren't getting as much
             | search/news traffic anymore, they would have capitulated,
             | making their sites run faster immediately, the same way
             | they quickly capitulated to AMP.
             | 
             | As proven by AMP, when Google says jump, the entire
             | interest responds by saying "How high?"
             | 
             | Can anybody give me a single non-nefarious reason for why
             | AMP was necessary instead of simply enforcing page
             | weight/loading-speed factors via the algorithm?
        
               | treis wrote:
               | Good in theory but liable to be endlessly gamed. Using
               | something like Amp is easy to implement even if it's not
               | ideal.
        
             | Analemma_ wrote:
             | And who, pray tell, serves all those annoying ads and makes
             | those ad-heavy sites rank high in searches, thus
             | controlling the nudges that push people onto AMP? Are you
             | seeing the problem yet?
        
               | treis wrote:
               | Usually Google ads aren't that bad. It's the 3rd rate ad
               | networks and websites that have the annoying dark
               | patterns and crappy performance.
        
           | dna_polymerase wrote:
           | > letting tech companies privatize and eat away at the open
           | nature of the internet, so now we have to live in tech giant
           | fiefdoms where they can determine the very form and content
           | of everything displayed on the web because they're the ones
           | who control every access point and standard.
           | 
           | Wooow slow down buddy. Nothing like that is hapening. I can
           | still hook up my computer to the internet and start serving
           | websites right away. Google can't do anything about that.
           | Neither can Facebook, or any GAFAM.
           | 
           | However Google did change your behavior is entirely on you.
           | You can live without them just fine. Until that is changed I
           | can't see any need for regulation.
        
             | ethbr0 wrote:
             | "Google just blocked my site as deceptive"
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26326528
        
               | abraae wrote:
               | The site in that article was set up to allow random
               | malware to be uploaded and effectively hosted. So not a
               | good example.
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | georgeecollins wrote:
           | But also a few times on this site in the past few years when
           | someone complained about AMP, technical people on HN would
           | also say that Google was doing the right thing to make mobile
           | pages more responsive.
           | 
           | Google was saying they were trying to solve a real problem,
           | and it isn't easy (for me at least) to have known their true
           | goals. Now if you read the the Texas anti trust suit -- and I
           | recommend it to anyone who is interested-- it seems pretty
           | clear that their motive for AMP was to improve their ad
           | revenue.
        
             | JumpCrisscross wrote:
             | > _their motive for AMP was to improve their ad revenue_
             | 
             | It can be both. AMP legitimately sped up a lot of crappy
             | news sites. That put pressure on non-AMP sites to get their
             | game together. It was probably a net positive at first. But
             | then Google abused their position.
        
               | Angostura wrote:
               | All they needed to do, in my opinion was to let it be
               | known that sites that were optimised for mobile
               | accessibility and fast loading would prioritised in
               | mobile search result placement, above slow, inaccessible
               | sites.
        
               | ethbr0 wrote:
               | > _But then Google abused their position_
               | 
               | Absolute market dominance corrupts absolutely. Even, and
               | in spite of, efforts to the contrary from within the
               | company.
        
         | vxNsr wrote:
         | Well, let me break it down for you: The US political landscape
         | looks like this:
         | 
         | Republicans want deregulation everywhere, no matter the cost,
         | the second you talk about limiting big business or monopoly
         | busting they run away.
         | 
         | Democrats on the other hand rely heavily on favors from the
         | tech establishment to keep their agendas front and center and
         | hide any downsides, this means letting BigTech(tm) have free
         | reign.
         | 
         | Thus both parties are incentivized to look the other way. Only
         | recently did the Republicans wake up to TOO BIG = bad; but
         | their solutions are all terrible and thankfully were never
         | entertained by any meaningful majority. Meanwhile the democrats
         | are working very hard to cement the current big tech
         | conglomerates into having control and power so you can expect
         | more of the same.
        
           | setpatchaddress wrote:
           | The parties have changed since whenever you last read up on
           | this (four years ago? ten years ago?).
           | 
           | Gop politicians (for Republicans call themselves this) don't
           | care about deregulation anymore -- they just want to funnel
           | money and power to the wealthy.
           | 
           | Dem politicians now seem very excited about breaking up
           | Facebook and Google.
           | 
           | Both parties want to hurt Google and Facebook for perceived
           | political bias. Gop politicians want this because Google and
           | Facebook sometimes allow some left-of-center voices to
           | occasionally penetrate their newsfeeds. Dem politicians want
           | this because Facebook has been a vector for QAnon and other
           | wingnut-terrorist radicalization.
        
             | whatshisface wrote:
             | That's a great summary after you symmetrize it by summing
             | it with its transpose.
        
           | mistersquid wrote:
           | Democrats have been very vocal and, more recently, active
           | about bringing antitrust actions against big tech for the
           | last 4 years now, with Senator Elizabeth Warren campaigning
           | for President on a tech trust-busting platform.
           | 
           | Rather than link to those campaign promises, I'll point out
           | that the current legislative strategy for restoring
           | competition to the tech sector is being spearheaded by
           | Democratic Representative David Cicilline. [0]
           | 
           | Additionally, Professor Tim Wu's appointment to the National
           | Economic Council by the Biden administration speaks volumes
           | of the urgency for antitrust action on the part of the
           | Democratic party. [1]
           | 
           | [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-big-tech-
           | antitrust/u-...
           | 
           | [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/technology/tim-wu-
           | white-h...
        
             | LegitShady wrote:
             | I'm inclined to think democrats talking about anti trust in
             | relation to tech firms are more looking for influence than
             | honest-to-god anti trust.
             | 
             | It's much easier to get companies to move your way if you
             | threaten them with broad investigations into their
             | activities. They're much more likely to behave the way you
             | want later.
             | 
             | That doesn't change the real danger these companies
             | represent to the continued freedoms and viability of
             | society, given the current social media feedback loop and
             | the death of journalism as a result of tech.
             | 
             | We're in uncharted territory.
        
               | mistersquid wrote:
               | > It's much easier to get companies to move your way if
               | you threaten them with broad investigations into their
               | activities.
               | 
               | It's also much easier to enforce antitrust by initiating
               | antitrust legislation.
               | 
               | Currently, the strategy of broad investigations is
               | yielding to multiple focused pieces of legislation
               | spearheaded by David Cicilline (link in GP).
        
             | IncRnd wrote:
             | > Rather than link to those campaign promises, I'll point
             | out that the current legislative strategy for restoring
             | competition to the tech sector is being spearheaded by
             | Democratic Representative David Cicilline.
             | 
             | I wouldn't say Cicilline is spearheading anything. However,
             | it's good that after 26 years as a politician, Cicilline
             | now "is _preparing_ to come out with 10 or more pieces of
             | legislation targeting Big Tech companies " [0]
             | 
             | But, don't forget that Ciccilline went to prison after he
             | "pleaded guilty to conspiracy, obstruction of justice and
             | making false statements for his role in the courthouse
             | corruption scheme" [1]
             | 
             | Regarding fiscal competance, Fitch Ratings also downgraded
             | Providence's ratings, and Cicilline was accused of "hiding
             | the scope of the city's fiscal woes through 'illusory
             | revenues, borrowing and other tricks.'"
             | 
             | [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-big-tech-
             | antitrust/u-...
             | 
             | [1]
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cicilline#Controversies
        
           | api wrote:
           | > the second you talk about limiting big business or monopoly
           | busting they run away
           | 
           |  _Unless_ big business is de-platforming right-wing content,
           | in which case this principle is instantly forgotten and we
           | need regulation and monopolies need to be broken up...
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | hctaw wrote:
         | Which regulators? Which laws or policies have they broken?
         | 
         | The failure here is more that regulation covering this stuff is
         | very unclear. Is it anti-trust? Telecommunications?
         | 
         | And if it is antitrust, what is anti competitive? How is the
         | consumer harmed? How are others being prevented from competing?
         | 
         | Basically you can't just say "Google bad" here. Regulators need
         | to go from that to "Google bad, and illegal." That last thing
         | is not clear right now
        
         | Black101 wrote:
         | The reddit bot that automatically de-amp website URLs is pretty
         | nice... https://ns.reddit.com/user/AmputatorBot
        
         | cambalache wrote:
         | Hey but google put a rainbow on its webpage and a BLM banner so
         | that is the only important thing
        
         | adrr wrote:
         | Is AMP really that bad? There isn't annoying modals that take
         | over the screen. No ads inject themselves into my scroll.
         | Videos players that work and don't have two minutes of prerolls
         | and the main content just buffers forever. I just hate it
         | messes up the url.
        
           | Pxtl wrote:
           | AMP _is_ an annoying modal that takes over your screen.
        
           | skeletal88 wrote:
           | Yes, I fucking hate it. Every time I search for something on
           | mobile and the result is something from reddit I only get to
           | see only a part of the first post and some of the comments,
           | to read more I have to click "read more". Why would this ever
           | be helpful to anyone? What purpose does it serve other than
           | waste the users time and make him do more clicks?
           | 
           | Also - has anyone ever been happy to land on an AMP page, and
           | think, "wow, this is really useful, I'm glad I'm on this
           | weird page, instead of the original one" ?
        
           | kybernetikos wrote:
           | I block a bunch of 3rd party javascript trackers and the
           | like. AMP degrades in a horrible way if you do this - it
           | seems to give me multiple seconds of a completely white page,
           | presumably for no reason other than to punish me. I closed so
           | many amp pages assuming they were broken before realising
           | that they do appear if you leave them long enough.
        
           | paxys wrote:
           | Other than the usual reasons why everyone hates it, the most
           | frustrating for me is that sharing articles with others used
           | to be super simple (copy address from browser, paste into
           | messaging app), but now I have to hunt for the actual non-AMP
           | URL which is impossible to find.
        
       | flying_sheep wrote:
       | I was thinking why the f*k all the websites were turning into
       | g*gle.com domain? That breaks all the link sharing. I thought if
       | this is the problem of the mobile Safari. Turns out it is G*gle's
       | evil plan to dominate all the WWW traffics :-/
        
         | ec109685 wrote:
         | Safari will auto-expand the AMP link to the deep link, so at
         | least within iOS's default browser and using its share sheet,
         | AMP doesn't break link sharing.
        
       | ec109685 wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | osrec wrote:
       | I sure hope it is the end of AMP (even though it was launched by
       | a close friend of mine at Google).
       | 
       | Quite honestly, the concept never really made any sense to me,
       | and often the load speeds were just as poor as the original
       | website itself.
       | 
       | One thing that really bugged me was how disorientating it was for
       | the user; on some AMP pages, you literally could not tell if you
       | were on a legitimate website or some spoofed version. The AMP bar
       | at the top was about as trashy a UI design as I've seen since
       | 1997. And, God help you if you wanted to share the link - it was
       | hard to know if the AMP link would be "persistent" or "sticky"
       | enough to share, or whether you should go to the actual
       | underlying web page (which the AMP bar did a great job of hiding)
       | and share that.
       | 
       | But what is most annoying of all is that smart people at Google
       | were kidding themselves that their botched up implementation of
       | AMP was a great thing to have launched upon the world. It really
       | was not. I bet it didn't really do much for their bottom line
       | either.
        
       | godelmachine wrote:
       | Just in case someone is excitedly expecting that AMP is going
       | away (like I did :p), sorry beforehand to burst your bubble -
       | 
       | >> _Part of the Google update is that all pages with high Page
       | Experience scores are eligible to be in the featured top news
       | carousel. This effectively means that publishers will no longer
       | be forced to use AMP and can instead provide fast, rich
       | experiences on their own domains_
        
         | tyingq wrote:
         | It may end up being the same thing. Publishers reluctantly used
         | AMP because of the carousel placement. Depending on the effort
         | to revert, removing the incentive may effectively kill AMP.
        
           | underwater wrote:
           | Publishers absolutely want to take people to their main site,
           | not the AMP facsimile. If Google actually do what they say
           | here, this will kill AMP.
        
         | georgeecollins wrote:
         | This is disturbing. I think it is up to people like the ones
         | who read hacker news to at least raise awareness of the issue
         | with ordinary people. A lot of people are uncomfortable with
         | the monopoly power of Google but aren't sure exactly what is
         | wrong with it.
        
       | pembrook wrote:
       | Occam's Razor is extremely useful here. But not in the way you
       | might think.
       | 
       | The most efficient and least expensive solution for Google, if
       | they actually cared about making the web faster, would have been
       | to simply enforce page-weight rules via the search algorithm.
       | 
       | The fact that they _didn 't do that,_ tells us that Google is
       | either:
       | 
       | A) Stupid and inefficient, because creating AMP cost 100X more
       | than a simple search algorithm change
       | 
       | Or
       | 
       | B) Trying to achieve something else with AMP, something that is
       | worth the extra cost, and that they weren't telling us about.
       | 
       | After seeing the Texas lawsuit against them, it's pretty clear to
       | my eyes that the answer is B.
        
       | valine wrote:
       | Google AMP breaks full screen safari and reader mode on iPhone.
       | I've gotten so fed up with it that I've set google.com to always
       | load as desktop. Search results are smaller and harder to read,
       | but it's well worth the tradeoffs IMO.
        
         | jibbers wrote:
         | I'll be that person. Have you tried DuckDuckGo? No AMP and
         | their "bangs" are great.
        
           | valine wrote:
           | Yeah I try every ddg every six months or so. Their results
           | are getting better but I still find myself using g! enough
           | that it's annoying.
        
       | ncann wrote:
       | As a user, I don't have any complaint for news sites using AMP.
       | But Reddit links using AMP is a crime against humanity, and I
       | search Reddit threads using Google a lot.
        
         | ehsankia wrote:
         | Absolutely, and honestly I blame reddit much more than AMP
         | there. AMP was clearly not created for the sort of dynamic page
         | like reddit. Honestly, looking at reddit's mobile page in
         | general, it's clear that they try to make it as awful of an
         | experience as possible to get people onto the app, which is
         | common with some sites.
        
         | AnssiH wrote:
         | I guess you probably do not read article comments?
         | 
         | For some reason I almost always want to read them, and most of
         | the time the AMP version does not have them, and most of the
         | time there is no way to get to the non-AMP version.
         | 
         | Example from my Google feed: https://www-tomshardware-
         | com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.toms...
        
       | luxuryballs wrote:
       | Amp sucks and IMO is a broken concept counter to the way the
       | internet is supposed to work... case in point the only thing I
       | use it for is to link Epoch Times articles since it bypasses the
       | required login prompt.
        
       | tamrix wrote:
       | I mean, at least make this opt-in if you want the Amp experience.
       | Forcing this on users should be a crime.
        
       | api wrote:
       | AMP has been #1 on my list of web/Internet things that I hoped
       | would fail since it emerged. It was a transparent attempt to
       | start walled-gardening the web.
        
       | bla3 wrote:
       | AMP exists not because it's impossible to build fast web sites
       | without it, but because it's possible to build slow web sites
       | without it. Which means most big sites not using AMP are slow
       | because most places don't have direct incentives for keeping
       | their stuff fast. Against all odds, AMP convinced these sites to
       | build an alternative experience that's reasonably fast. It's good
       | that AMP is no longer required to get good rankings for fast
       | pages. That was always a silly requirement. But from a user's
       | point of view, I'm grateful for AMP, despite that being an
       | unpopular opinion around here.
        
         | paxys wrote:
         | Sites didn't get fast "against all odds" but rather due to a
         | very clear incentive from Google - adopt AMP and you will be
         | ranked higher.
         | 
         | Instead of going that route, Google could have said on day 1
         | that they would just rank based on the site's experience score
         | (as they are doing now), and the end result would be the exact
         | same.
        
         | acdha wrote:
         | This is a valid point but ask whether Google couldn't have had
         | the same effect by telling everyone that page speed / bloat was
         | a strong ranking factor. AMP forced a large amount of
         | unreliable, slow JavaScript into the critical path so the
         | benefits could have gone even further.
        
           | ip26 wrote:
           | They had already done that, perhaps for years. I don't know
           | why it didn't work - perhaps there was a slowness oligopoly,
           | where everyone was slow and no one was strongly incentivized
           | to speed up.
        
             | Angostura wrote:
             | If that were the case, there wouldn't have been incentives
             | for them to implement AMP
        
             | acdha wrote:
             | They had it as a minor signal. They could have made it
             | stronger. Posit, for example, that they'd said the carousel
             | was only for sites which rendered in one second on mobile -
             | do you think AMP would really have done more than that?
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | marricks wrote:
         | Google could just penalize websites for being JS heavy or
         | loading slow but instead they built a walled garden they have
         | control over.
         | 
         | I get some happiness about it but hopefully we can have nice
         | things without such massive sacrifices.
        
         | underwater wrote:
         | Google have now said they'll allow any web page in the carousel
         | if it's fast. Which means companies have the same incentives to
         | invest in performance, with the added benefit that the faster
         | experience is on their main web site, not the AMP sidecar.
         | 
         | From a pure performance perspective AMP had one secret weapon:
         | Google could safetly prerender content before the user clicked
         | on it. This was offset by the fact that AMP made lots of other
         | page speed optimisations impossible.
        
         | tjoff wrote:
         | If that was their goal they could just have banned javascript.
         | Much easier and faster.
         | 
         | Would also improve the web dramatically.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | The slippery slope of bloat is back. "We're currently at a
         | score of 87 so surely a few more ad dollars are worth losing a
         | few points." (one year passes) "Adding just one more chumbox
         | will only drop us from 70 to 66 so we really can't turn it
         | down."
        
         | random5634 wrote:
         | Same - despite all the hate I liked AMP.
         | 
         | Hackers / developers seem to insist on the non-AMP sites to
         | bloat sites to absolute trash and back. If I saw the amp logo,
         | I knew that was the one to click.
         | 
         | Abusing users with bloat is supposedly some great freedom worth
         | fighting for, but AMP forcing these developers into a much
         | smaller box that they can't screw with users as much on I just
         | loved AMP.
         | 
         | I think a lot of the HN hate comes because AMP I think
         | prohibits random third party javascript ad libraries. So
         | obviously it hits folks where it hurts, but the web is much
         | nicer to browse without all the junk.
        
           | Shared404 wrote:
           | > Abusing users with bloat is supposedly some great freedom
           | worth fighting for
           | 
           | The thing people were offended by wasn't the lack of bloat,
           | it was the fact that it was ceding even more control to
           | Google.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | tootie wrote:
       | I wonder if there's space for CDNs to fill in some of that use
       | case without the monopolism. Having a slimmed down experience
       | geared directly for people landing from search makes a lot of
       | sense.
        
         | Shared404 wrote:
         | Even better, just go straight to the slimmed down experience,
         | regardless of where the visitor is coming from.
        
       | BrianOnHN wrote:
       | Blah blah "AMP is bad."
       | 
       | I could agree with the performance sentiment if it were directed
       | at the real issue:
       | 
       | One-click-and-you-now-have-amp solutions, which is like 99% of
       | AMP pages using WordPress.
        
         | yrrr wrote:
         | Google sequestering the URL is bad.
        
           | BrianOnHN wrote:
           | Exactly, Google <-- is bad.
           | 
           | I don't see how this gets mixed up with AMP.
        
             | ravenstine wrote:
             | They're not separable, though. AMP entirely depends on the
             | existence of Google in order to see any benefit from it,
             | even without cacheing layer. Having worked for a few
             | companies that wanted to implement AMP, including one which
             | was a media firm, they both wanted AMP for the SEO
             | benefits. The "carousel" was like where they wanted to be,
             | and they didn't give a flying shit about improving page
             | performance; if they did, I would have explained to them
             | that we already could have good performance _now_ if they
             | stopped asking us to overload their pages with tracking
             | scripts, ads, and other useless crap, and allowed engineers
             | the time to address performance issues.
             | 
             | Without Google, AMP alone doesn't have the speed or the
             | technical advantage to make it worth it. Google's neatest
             | trick is their attempt at framing AMP as something akin to
             | an open-source project that has nothing to do with them
             | when, in reality, it has everything to do with them.
             | 
             | P.S. AMP _does_ give engineers an out by allowing them to
             | build pages from scratch without the cruft imposed upon the
             | OG pages by their employers, but this could be easily
             | avoided by product owners making better(and rather obvious)
             | decisions rather than always making the more exciting ones
             | that cause a lot of dilly dallying and technical debt.
             | Still, at the end of the day, on its own is just busy-work.
        
               | GuB-42 wrote:
               | > Having worked for a few companies that wanted to
               | implement AMP, including one which was a media firm, they
               | both wanted AMP for the SEO benefits. The "carousel" was
               | like where they wanted to be, and they didn't give a
               | flying shit about improving page performance;
               | 
               | And that's exactly why I can't hate AMP. Publishers don't
               | give a fuck about performance, and user experience in
               | general as long as they get clicks that can be monetized.
               | They don't want to keep users for their quality content,
               | they want to game search engine results and trap users
               | when they get in.
               | 
               | Things like AMP seems to be the only way to make
               | publishers care. Seen the other way, Google have seen the
               | mess, and took advantage of it and made AMP, which both
               | addresses the problem and get them a comfortable
               | position. If sites were fast the problem wouldn't be
               | there in the first place, and Google would have had to
               | find something else for their monopoly.
               | 
               | And sure, what you said in your PS is true.
               | Unfortunately, that's not how things are. I don't know
               | why, greed maybe? But if it is the case, it is the stupid
               | kind of greed, because now, publishers are struggling and
               | Google is making shittons of money.
        
               | fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
               | The advantage of AMP is precisely this: when an executive
               | wants to put fifty tracking scripts of various sorts on
               | an AMP page, the developers can say "this is impossible,
               | Google doesn't allow this". When it's on your site's own
               | page, the developer doesn't have this leverage.
        
       | meibo wrote:
       | > publishers will no longer be forced to use AMP and can instead
       | provide fast, rich experiences on their own domains.
       | 
       | Great joke. Visit any non-amp news site and tell me that one
       | again.
       | 
       | The only, major benefit AMP brought to the internet is that it
       | was legitimately light and fast.
        
         | Angostura wrote:
         | news.bbc.co.uk
        
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