[HN Gopher] Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement m...
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Google no longer requires AMP, but the replacement might be worse
Author : pseudolus
Score : 163 points
Date : 2021-06-28 14:48 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| djtriptych wrote:
| I've been working on core web vitals for the better part of a
| year at a major news outlet. I have seriously mixed feelings.
| There's probably an hour-long talk about this in me but briefly:
|
| - It's really nice and maybe unprecedented to have an alignment
| of business, user, eng, and seo goals. Google is using it's
| monopoly to change roadmap priorities across the industry. The
| web vitals themselves are unquestionably good for the user.
|
| - Google's guidance on how the scores work and when changes will
| be incorporated into rankings / carousel eligibility has been
| overall poor. The info is out there but changes constantly and
| comes from myriad sources.
|
| - Similarly, the way these scores are measured are a bit of a
| secret sauce. It's impossible really to model user behavior /
| devices in a way that ensures you will hit your performance
| targets. Google provides a lot of tooling/instrumentation, but
| the measurements sometimes conflict with one another.
|
| I could go on. I'm the mst senior FE guy at this company and it's
| really consumed most of my work hours since last June, but that's
| kinda par for the course in publishing. Google swings it's weight
| around and publishers react.
| Fuzzeh wrote:
| Core web vitals is a joke. Literally 4 days ago it started
| bitching to me about breadcrumbs telling me that data-
| vocabulary.org schema deprecated
|
| Google ; New Breadcrumbs issue detected for site xxxxx 24 Jun
| 2021*Breadcrumbs
|
| So I look into it, knowing I'd fixed that ages ago....
|
| Google ; Last crawled : 13 Nov 2019
|
| Triggering stuff because you eventually got round to looking at
| it 19 months later? and it's all like that full of massive
| holes that make zero sense.
|
| Google; "This product doesn't show how many reviews it has"...
| Me; "It has no reviews" Google; "ERROR! ERROR! ERROR! ERROR!
| zero is not a valid number!!!!" Me; "Fuck you Google" Google;
| "This product doesn't show how many reviews it has"...
|
| I'm not even going to get into how shitty pagespeed insights
| is* - it's not even close to lighthouse. It tells you to
| increase your caching but doesn't use caching in performance
| measurements. I presume google has a giant ass that it pulls
| most of the figures out of on each run. I live in an area of
| the UK with one of the worst mobile phone signals known to man,
| pages load in < 2 seconds google consistently claims at least
| double.
|
| I really don't enjoy spending hours of my days having to check
| that Google haven't moved the goalposts yet again.
|
| * I lied, I am.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| * The web vitals themselves are unquestionably good for the
| user*
|
| Fast pages are good, but Google is using their tools like Page
| Speed to push you to adopt Google's ideas of fast, like using
| WebP for images. So now you might have a bunch of cruft in your
| page to support multiple image types.
|
| Also, as user, I hate lazy loading. I can scroll faster than
| images load. I'd rather everything load in the beginning, and
| have images there as I scroll.
| walshemj wrote:
| The cruft in webpages is not from having support for multiple
| image types.
|
| its look at any site in chrome dev tools.
| onli wrote:
| You can not scroll faster than images load. You can maybe
| jump via the scrollbar faster to a page position than images
| load, but that's it.
|
| That's at least with the HTML5 async image standard in
| Firefox. It's up to the browser after all, so if yours loads
| images too slow the issue might be there. And sure, if the
| images are huge they will take a long time to load, but
| that's also covered by the core web vitals.
|
| A site I built a while ago is a good test case for that imho,
| https://www.sustaphones.com/. Long list, many small images,
| loaded from a CDN. I can maybe provoke a flicker with the
| scrollbar, but not with regular scrolling.
|
| _Edit:_ That 's for broadband. With a 56K modem or something
| that's of course a different story. But loading a bunch of
| images in advance on the modern web is also not a good option
| then.
| kuschku wrote:
| On slower networks, it's common to load a page, do
| something else until the page is 100% done, and then expect
| to be able to view the whole page without any further
| loading.
| onli wrote:
| I'm aware :) My HP Veer had a funny "feature" where after
| some inactivity it would reload the page when you then
| scrolled it.
|
| It depends though on the content page and on how slow the
| network is exactly, doesn't it? I often enough preferred
| to have the text already and decide based on that whether
| to wait for the images. Async with non-jumping base
| content (which the core web vitals also cover) is great
| for that.
|
| And with it being a browser feature, even if Google
| pushes for it the user can always deactivate it. On real
| browsers at least.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| I'm not talking about browser features, I'm talking about
| the lazy loading JavaScript libraries that many (most,
| I'd wager) use.
| mdoms wrote:
| What absolute nonsense. It doesn't matter which "async
| image standard" you use, you're fundamentally limited by my
| internet connection. I agree completely with GP, I would
| rather open a page in the background, give it some time to
| load all of the images and then browse it. Lazy loading is
| a pain.
|
| Your test case is totally meaningless, the images are under
| 3kb. Full (non-lazy) image loading is far more important on
| websites with lots of large images.
| onli wrote:
| If you implement lazy image loading yourself in JS you
| will see that the implementation actually makes a big
| difference in how noticeable it is. The browser does a
| good job with it. Of course your internet connection can
| limit you, but it just won't do so on regular broadband
| connections for sound image sizes.
|
| You can always construct a theoretical case where it does
| not work great. But on those pages and connections
| loading all the images in advance will usually also lead
| to a bad experience.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _You can not scroll faster than images load._
|
| The typical WordPress lazy loading script doesn't start
| loading the image until it is scrolling into view. Try a
| typical food blog, scroll moderately slowly and you'll
| still get to see every single image load.
| djtriptych wrote:
| WebP is good iff it improves rendering times (which it does).
| That's not google's fault really. Any way you can come up
| with to optimize images is valid under Core Web Vitals. I
| really don't think any of it is skewed towards Google's
| solutions except the testing/measurement methodology. I would
| love open source data collection across browsers for
| instance.
|
| Lazy-loading can be implemented sloppily, but browser-native
| lazy loading is now good enough to be considered optimal.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _browser-native lazy loading is now good enough to be
| considered optimal_
|
| The problem is that Google Page Speed dings you for not
| having lazy loading implemented via JavaScript.
|
| _WebP is good iff it improves rendering times (which it
| does). That 's not google's fault really._
|
| The problem has been, until recently, Safari didn't support
| WebP, so you had to implement a fallback to jpg. More
| complicated HTML, more images to compress and manage, all
| for a very marginal improvement.
| dang wrote:
| If you want to write something about your experience with this,
| I'm sure the community here would appreciate a fact-based
| third-party article. If you wrote it in the same style as your
| comment here, we would put such an article in the second-chance
| pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), so it would get
| a random placement on HN's front page. Email me at
| hn@ycombinator.com if you'd like some tips about that.
| djtriptych wrote:
| Thanks! I'll run it by stakeholders internally and see if I
| can de-anonymize :)
| eli wrote:
| Getting wildly different numbers from different tools is super
| annoying but I'm pretty sure the data they'll actually use in
| rankings is crowdsourced from Chrome users:
| https://web.dev/chrome-ux-report/
|
| Which of course you can only see weeks in retrospect.
| djtriptych wrote:
| Yeah not only is there a 28 day lag time, but _new_ content
| on your site is grouped with "similar" URLs, using some
| secret Google special sauce to determine other pages on your
| site to use as a baseline. This has been one of the most
| frustrating parts.
|
| Or to take it further, it's still nearly impossible to use
| google's tools and determine that a particular DIV or Ad is
| causing damaging shift _in aggregate_.
|
| Worse, it's impossible (and probably will always be) to tell
| the dollar value of getting all the web vitals to "green".
| They are pretty agressive targets for most publishers I
| think, but it's unclear exactly how much these fixes are
| worth (in additional traffic, seo performance, carousel
| inclusion, etc).
|
| This is a bit "the nature of the beast" when dealing with
| Google rankings, their most valuable corporate secret, but
| still, this is a big, hard, expensive job, with relatively
| clear inputs and measurement, but with totally opaque outputs
| / ROI.
| topicseed wrote:
| AMP was great for those with very low speed internet. The
| philosophy and implementation of AMP can be questioned (URL
| masking, content stored away from the origin) but it did show
| that users really wanted to click on pages that loaded fast.
|
| Core Web Vitals, as a publisher myself, are a nightmare. But at
| least we know what goes wrong as it's clearly laid right in front
| of the developer's eyes. So we go and fix thing after thing. And
| some pages just won't get fixed because of some ads.
|
| The point is CWV do make the web better. Those vital metrics are
| actually making sense (CLS, LCP).
|
| I understand the reticence and reserve at who is behind both
| these efforts that AMP and CWV are, but they forced me to make my
| websites faster, cleaner.
|
| Was it a panicky few months trying to get this sorted? Yes. Did
| we have to speak to ad networks so they fix up some ad delivery?
| Yes. Will Google really rank us better thanks to that? Maybe.
| Couldn't we have done it from our own accord? The incentive
| wasn't big enough I guess.
|
| But today, the fact is, the experience on all of our websites is
| very much clearly improved.
| rozab wrote:
| >it did show that users really wanted to click on pages that
| loaded fast.
|
| How? No user has ever chosen to open a link as AMP.
| topicseed wrote:
| Well, my click-through rates on mobile for many of the same
| pages without AMP have dropped for the same position. Yes,
| after fixing CWV I removed AMP as keeping two layouts
| optimised was draining as a small publisher.
| fddddd wrote:
| adblockers like uBlocker Origin was even better for low speed
| internet than amp.
| topicseed wrote:
| Well, I do appreciate my ad revenue to pay my team members
| and myself so I won't be the one recommending that.
| kuschku wrote:
| Of course, harming people always pays well, doesn't make it
| something you should be proud of.
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| I read the comment in a different light. He or she is not
| exactly proud just admitting to the current circumstance.
| Specifically with this phrase
|
| > so I won't be the one recommending that.
| netr0ute wrote:
| Hot Take: If your website needs ads to survive, it wasn't
| that good to begin with.
| Google234 wrote:
| Let me guess, you also install paywall bypass extensions?
| topicseed wrote:
| Cold Take: I never mentioned survival, so take this word
| back to your imagination.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Turning of javascript completely breaks so many sites, but it
| is much, much, much faster to browse the web that way. I run
| Ublock Origin and it is great, but you are often still paying
| the javascript price.
| godshatter wrote:
| > And some pages just won't get fixed because of some ads.
|
| This makes me wonder if the choice between leaving in ads that
| lower page rank due to CWV and removing some ads to get a
| better page rank will lead to less advertising overall. I can
| only hope, I guess.
| topicseed wrote:
| I definitely removed ads on some pages, but because they were
| monetized differently. I think even small publishers are
| going to be more aware and granular at the page-level.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Maybe browsers should accept the text/markdown mimetype natively,
| instead of AMP. Covers 80% of the usecases, with a drastic
| reduction in complexity and pageload times.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Which Markdown though? Common mark, Gitlab, etc? Do we get any
| extensions? I like tables.
|
| HTML is not bad and it is easier to parse than markdown, the
| trouble is javascript and the ways ads abuse them. Strip that
| out, set the size of images and you can create a better
| experience for your users without changing all browsers.
|
| However if we can get wild requests for new content types, then
| I would love text/latex, so that I could create a website that
| fits the real size of your browser and render a gorgeous
| output.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Accept headers can negotiate extensions I suppose, but
| browsers can decide what they'd like to support, same as the
| rest of HTML standards.
|
| In the last decade, I've seen browsers drop content types
| (FTP) and adopt media formats (WebP). But no new publication
| formats. If my browser can render PDF, why shouldn't it
| render Markdown?
| logicalmonster wrote:
| I hate this idea that the technology needs to be dictated by
| Google. If it's displayable in a web browser, that's all that
| should matter to a good search engine.
|
| Just change the algorithm to reward fast websites even more.
|
| If page speed currently counts for say 5% of a site's value in
| the algorithm, bump it up to 10%, 15%, 25% etc, whatever it takes
| until sites that pump in piles of garbage JS trackers and
| monstrosities start removing that stuff.
|
| Sites that insist on leaving in garbage trackers and bloated
| designs will not show up as much. Problem solved without
| dictating technology.
| willio58 wrote:
| Is there anything official from Google saying Amp is no longer
| affecting mobile search result rankings? I haven't been able to
| find anything.
| eli wrote:
| Here's a better criticism: the Core Vitals metrics that affect
| SEO rank on Google are sourced _only from Chrome browsers_.
|
| So an even more disproportionate amount of site performance work
| will now be focused just on what makes Chrome happy. Experimental
| Chrome features that boost performance metrics will be embraced
| in the name of SEO. Safari and Firefox can't offer that.
|
| It's another way Google uses their control of the search market
| to cement their browser as the de facto standard.
| jsnell wrote:
| How do you propose they source that data from other browsers?
| Do you e.g. think Apple and Mozilla would provide them with a
| suitable feed, at a high enough granularity to be useful?
|
| And if they did, what do you think the public reaction would be
| to such data sharing?
| eli wrote:
| I don't think that I'm obligated to solve a problem just
| because I observed it.
|
| But yes, I think it's plausible that other browser makers
| could allow users to opt in to this sort of data reporting.
| It would lead to a more equitable web.
|
| I'm also not totally convinced that page performance should
| play a significant role in rankings in the first place.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| How about testing sites themselves with those browsers and
| benchmarking that?
| jsnell wrote:
| Ok. So the first problem is that people would end up
| optimizing for entirely the wrong thing. Rather than
| optimize for the machines and networks that are actually in
| use, you'd optimize for high CPU Linux servers with no GPU
| connected over high bandwidth and low latency networking.
| Not low CPU mobile phones over LTE or dodgy WiFi.
|
| Second, you wouldn't complain that it's an unfair advantage
| to pages in the Google AMP cache, due to a better network
| location? An unfair advantage to pages hosted on GCP? An
| unfair disadvantage to iOS due to there being no iOS server
| hardware that could be used for testing?
| noobquestion81 wrote:
| Agreed that if you did a shitty job benchmarking you
| could get shitty results.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| Then don't go with the stupidest most naive way of
| benchmarking, and actually try to replicate some real-
| world scenarios? This would be utterly trivial for
| Google.
| jsnell wrote:
| Synthetic benchmarking with actual end-user network
| conditions, or actual end-user browser+hardware
| combinations is in my opinion functionally impossible.
| (And you've excluded real world telemetry as an option).
| Just how do would you fairly benchmark Safari on iPhone
| performance on billions of web pages?
| blowski wrote:
| That's phrasing the problem in a format where the only
| solution is Google. Re-phrasing it as "What else can a search
| engine do to stop being gamed?" opens up a lot more options.
|
| The real problem here is not 'gamed search engines' but too
| much centralisation, with Google owning the search engine,
| the browser, and the ad platform. This solution makes that
| problem worse, not better.
| jsnell wrote:
| Sorry, no. You're moving the goalposts. The criticism from
| eli was not e.g. that using page speed as a ranking
| criteria is intrinsically bad. It was that the data was
| sourced _only from Chrome_ (including the italics).
|
| It's like I've fallen into a crazy parallel dimension. For
| more than *five years* HN commenters have been ranting
| about how AMP is not needed, and all that's needed is using
| page speed as the signal. And now when that happens, it's
| suddenly an outrage.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| So... you're thinking that HN is gaslighting you because
| you don't see that it's Google controlling the web and
| publishing that's the issue.
| gerash wrote:
| I remember that. Every other post on HN used to be how
| bad AMP is for the future of human civilization and how
| Google should have used page performance in their ranking
| instead. Well, Google did just that and now eli et al.
| moved the goal post.
|
| The morale of the story is it's impossible to make
| everyone happy.
| dado3212 wrote:
| It's true of any contentious content. The commenters who
| engage are usually the ones who want to push back against
| the main article (otherwise you just get a highly upvoted
| post with minimal comments because it's hard to come up
| with a value-adding way to say "yes, this"). But you end
| up getting different people commenting on both sides,
| with neither half as invested when the source agrees with
| them. Grouping them together as a cohesive "HN" obscures
| that division, and makes it seem like the position
| suddenly reverses.
| eli wrote:
| HN isn't a monolith and someone will always find
| something to complain about. (I'm happy to be the someone
| here.)
|
| Google has such a dominant position in both search and
| browsers that, yeah, they're going to need to work extra
| hard to make sure one doesn't unfairly advantage the
| other.
| blowski wrote:
| If someone goes from regularly punching me in the arm to
| kicking me in the shins, I'm not going to say "gee thanks
| for not punching me in the arm any more".
|
| Shifting from one technology to another is not a solution
| when all the options vacuum and hoard data to further
| entrench Google's position. A real choice would be Google
| splitting the different parts of their business model
| they are leveraging to lock out competitors, but since
| that's not good for their shareholders, I don't expect to
| see it any time soon.
| ehnto wrote:
| The entire premise of the speed metrics influencing search
| results is to make sure Google search is a fast experience.
| A decade ago, it seemed at first that the point was a
| benevolent attempt to make the web a better place using
| their influence, but I can't accept that anymore.
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| What data? They don't need any data. It's goddamned Web page.
|
| Google is a bunch of hypocrites and hacks. Remember when they
| threatened to punish "non-mobile-friendly" sites, and then
| DISABLED ZOOMING on their OWN mobile version?
|
| Google = jagoffs
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| > How do you propose they source that data from other
| browsers?
|
| Easy. Google should not be operating the monopoly search
| engine _and_ the monopoly web browser. They need to spin off
| search or Chrome as a separate company. Then they can source
| their data from wherever they like. Then every browser is an
| "other browser".
| dannyw wrote:
| I hope the EU competition authority gets Google to change this.
| At least inside the EU.
| wil421 wrote:
| Does that mean more pop ups to accept?
| fddddd wrote:
| lol. google is sweeping the entire internet not catering to
| chrome users under the rug and you're concerned with popups
| on the top 10 bigger sites
| undfg wrote:
| Cookie laws have destroyed my web browsing experience
| much more than amp ever has.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It's not the laws that have destroyed the experience,
| it's the reckless and senseless selling of data. Websites
| don't need to show any popups, they choose to.
|
| Honouring DNT should be trivial, no user interaction
| needed to stop tracking and therefore the need for 99% of
| these popups.
| gjvnq wrote:
| There is a good solution: force DNT to be honoured.
| speedgoose wrote:
| If you think about the GDPR, it's not about cookies at
| all but consent for tracking.
|
| Many websites prefer to destroy their usability to get
| your consent in various deceptive ways. You can
| definitely have technical cookies and no cookies banner.
| _nalply wrote:
| It's the malicious compliance of the laws hat has
| destroyed our web browsing experience.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| I hope not. Regional based internet could become the next
| major factor when it comes to inequality.
|
| For example, don't hire people from Region A because they
| can't access the best resources located in Region B.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| Hm? I think Parent is just hoping Google is required by law
| not to rank results this way. It would not bar access to
| anything.
| nicce wrote:
| I guess the difference comes, when law requirement
| happens on EU only, not globally. So the question is,
| which is worse; not regulate at all or regulated only in
| one area. It bars access from some point of view, it
| might not exist if you don't see it from search results.
| buran77 wrote:
| There's no question. What you're suggesting is "I shot
| one leg, might as well shoot the other". There's no
| reason why it would be better if everyone suffers the
| same fate rather than about half a billion people having
| it better. Having to provide a better service for so many
| users just puts pressure on a company by showing every
| other user not benefiting yet that it's possible, that
| they can ask and expect more.
| wyager wrote:
| This is the future the EU chose when they started imposing
| EU law on foreign internet companies.
| lwhi wrote:
| No.
|
| This the future foreign internet companies chose when
| they put profits above all else.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Foreign internet companies aren't obligated to operate in
| the EU. If they don't like the rules they can choose not
| to participate.
| [deleted]
| wyager wrote:
| If you choose to conflate "sending packets to the EU"
| with "operating in the EU", you are choosing a future
| where the internet is siloed off and the web ceases to be
| a global network. I am not passing judgment - merely
| stating a fact.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Do the restrictions govern how packets may be sent? Or do
| they deal with taxes, handling user information, etc?
| wyager wrote:
| The restrictions don't need to directly restrict how
| packets get sent - if they impose tax/regulatory costs
| for packets getting routed a certain way, the end result
| will be the same.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| This is a bit like complaining about restrictions on
| "sending atoms to the EU" when they decide to impose
| tariffs or safety regulations on consumer goods.
| Businesses shouldn't get to flout regulations just
| because they happen to be digital.
| wyager wrote:
| Cool opinion. I'm not disagreeing with it. I don't care.
| I'm just explaining that a logical entailment of your
| opinion is that the internet will be siloed off. Stop
| trying to convince me that your opinion is right. It's
| totally irrelevant whether or not it's right.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| If you serve something in another country, you abide by
| their rules. Be it a physical product or a virtual one,
| which includes a website or webservice.
| nzmsv wrote:
| This is not, strictly speaking, an obvious forgone
| conclusion.
|
| Imagine that I call you over the phone, old school style,
| with voice. Would you or would you not want the
| governments on either end of the phone line to eavesdrop
| on our conversation so they can make sure it meets their
| local laws? What if we communicated by SMS? Email?
| Posting on a message board?
|
| Some people will have an "obviously yes, I want the
| government to be in charge, are you dumb?" reaction.
| Others will say "of course I want privacy, are you dumb?"
|
| Early Internet chose privacy. Modern internet is
| increasingly choosing regulation. But this is far from
| the obvious truth you are claiming it is, if only because
| the prevailing opinion changed in recent memory.
| esrauch wrote:
| I think I disagree with the premise of your argument that
| we're choosing between one of "pervasive wiretapping
| level invasiveness" or "internet companies cant be
| regulated"
|
| Do you want the government to bug you and watch every
| interaction you have in your local store to find out if
| the store is breaking the law? But then how does the
| government know if the store is just not paying their
| taxes, or selling drugs?
|
| Laws can be enforced without resorting to wiretapping
| everyone by just not accepting you can't catch every
| single violation; that true both online and offline.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| I agree, some laws are dumb and stupid, some inhumane,
| some simply impractical, and we should be above them.
| Sadly we aren't because we don't have an army and
| populace. If only I was in charge I would... But the sad
| reality is that I'm not.
| Lio wrote:
| Actually I'd quite like it if my government could block
| foreign phone calls that attempt to spoof local numbers.
|
| If only as a way of stopping foreign criminal gangs from
| scamming the vulnerable.
|
| The main reason this can't happen is because of
| international agreements that were made long before the
| internet age or this type of crime became a thing.
| nzmsv wrote:
| And there are others who, when faced with the trade-off,
| would choose differently.
|
| It's amusing how on another thread the general consensus
| may be a celebration of Let's Encrypt while over here I
| seem to come off as crazy (and thus deserving of
| downvotes simply for saying "not everyone agrees with
| you").
| bruce343434 wrote:
| You are probably receiving downvotes because you're
| making a non sequitur. The web is, unlike phonelines,
| encrypted. At best it's a strawman or just a false
| equivalence.
| wyager wrote:
| This concept is a recent legal development. It's not
| obviously correct.
|
| Whether or not you think it's correct, the obvious and
| inevitable conclusion is that the web will be siloed off
| and cease to be a global network.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| True, and we could already see this with the great
| firewall of China and the intranet of North Korea. And
| today, there's many American sites which serve me a 451
| unavailable due to legal reasons, or just a permanent
| redirect to some "we care about our European visitors"
| weasel words.
| sjtindell wrote:
| Gambling sites and cryptocurrency exchanges come to mind
| as region locked services.
| scott_w wrote:
| It's really not. The concept of "your house, your rules"
| can be found in ancient Roman texts. Being a foreigner
| didn't suddenly exempt you from the laws of the land.
| wyager wrote:
| The difference is that sending a packet to someone's
| house probably isn't the same as physically being inside
| their house.
| scott_w wrote:
| You think it's unusual for a government to limit or put
| stipulations on what you can send into their country?
| nybble41 wrote:
| _Unusual_ , no. _Unjust_ , yes, and impractical besides.
| If (unlike me) you accept the legal fiction that a
| country's government "owns" everything within its self-
| proclaimed official borders, with all the corresponding
| rights of a property owner within that domain, then they
| can either block the communication at the border or
| impose requirements on those living within, provided that
| anyone who doesn't care to agree to those rules is free
| to leave without further penalty. In any case, their
| jurisdiction does not extend to any party (or _parties_ )
| to the communication outside their physical borders.
| scott_w wrote:
| It's unjust for a government to regulate what enters its
| borders from another country? So you're suggesting that
| the U.K. should allow assault rifles to be sold from the
| USA, in spite of the fact they're outright illegal to own
| inside the borders of the U.K.
|
| Why is it unjust when literally the entire U.K.
| population is in support of this position?
| nybble41 wrote:
| > Why is it unjust when literally the entire U.K.
| population is in support of this position?
|
| Obviously not "literally the entire U.K. population" if
| someone in the U.K. isn't following the rule.
|
| This is a complex subject and I'm not going to get into
| it here, but the Cliff's Notes version is basically that
| the U.K. government is not a party to this transaction,
| is not harmed by it, and does not represent (as in:
| having a formal, revocable agent/principal relationship
| with) anyone who is either a party to the transaction or
| harmed by it, and thus has no standing to interfere. The
| justice or injustice of the matter is unaffected by
| whether the government's interference would be _popular_.
| scott_w wrote:
| Put simply: your logic is insane and no government adopts
| it, for good reason.
|
| Longer version: governments adopt rules based on what
| works for them and their population. This includes rules
| that govern what can and can't be sold in a business
| transaction. This is a principle as old as government
| itself. It makes sense that governments then apply these
| rules to things going in and out of its borders. It would
| be nuts to ban the sale of guns inside a country but
| allow them to be sold into the country, for example.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > This includes rules that govern what can and can't be
| sold in a business transaction. This is a principle as
| old as government itself.
|
| If we're talking about a "business transaction" as in an
| exchange of physical goods across the border, then I
| agree. I said that it was unjust, not that it was without
| precedent. You seem to be under the mistaken impression
| that I believe in the concept of government itself. _The
| core of what government is, and does, is unjust._ Arguing
| that governments have always done things this way carries
| zero weight with me.
|
| Applying these rules (or any rules) to the non-commercial
| exchange of information, or even to commercial services
| involving no exchange of physical property, is the
| recent, and more immediately concerning, development.
|
| > It would be nuts to ban the sale of guns inside a
| country...
|
| I agree with you up to that point. But if they want to
| ban the import of "wireless handheld hold punchers" or
| any other contraband they should do that _at_ the border,
| by stopping the shipments--which at that point consist of
| the buyer _inside_ the country attempting to import their
| own property after the sale--and not by attempting to
| impose their internal rules on foreign sellers. Residents
| could buy them but would have to keep them outside the
| country, perhaps using them only while visiting the
| country the goods were in at the time of the sale, or
| somewhere else where they are legal.
| scott_w wrote:
| Except the entire debate started because of the statement
| that this is new legal precedent.
|
| I'm not interested in whether you believe in government
| or not because that's debating a fantasy world that
| simply doesn't exist.
| wyager wrote:
| I don't care if it's "unusual" or not - I'm just pointing
| out that the legal model you're espousing will inevitably
| result in a siloed internet. Don't shoot the messenger.
| scott_w wrote:
| I'm not espousing a legal model at all. I'm just pointing
| out that literally no government in history has ever said
| "you can send whatever you want into our country with no
| restrictions."
| wyager wrote:
| That's how the internet worked in most countries until
| recently.
|
| In any case, once again it's irrelevant. Whatever your
| justification for it, this behavior will lead to internet
| siloization.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > your house, your rules
|
| You're not _in_ their "house". You're just communicating
| with someone who is. If some foreign government has a
| problem with that communication they should take it up
| with the party who is physically within their
| jurisdiction--not that I believe they have any just
| standing there either.
| scott_w wrote:
| You're trying to do business in another country with
| different rules. If you want to sell food into the EU,
| you need to comply with their food safety regulations.
|
| Why does this magically change when someone utters the
| words "the internet?"
| nybble41 wrote:
| > You're trying to do business in another country with
| different rules.
|
| You are not doing business _in_ another country. First,
| there may not be any "business" involved at all. More
| importantly, however, _you are not in the other country_.
| The other person is. If physical property is involved
| then someone--not necessarily _you_ --is going to need to
| worry about import/export regulations when moving it
| across the border. When it comes to virtual services and
| websites, however, those concerns rooted in physical
| transportation do not apply.
|
| > Why does this magically change when someone utters the
| words "the internet?"
|
| It makes no difference whether you're communicating over
| the Internet or by phone or two-way radio or postal mail
| or carrier pigeon, or by shouting to each other across
| the border. So long as you're only exchanging data and
| not physical goods they can implement technical measures
| to block the communication at the border, or order their
| own residents not to communicate with you--in which case
| I would advise them to make arrangements leave the
| country posthaste--but you yourself remain outside their
| jurisdiction.
| scott_w wrote:
| This is not about "data" moving over borders. This is
| about services being provided from one country to
| another. This is something governments already regulate
| within their borders (and have for centuries).
|
| This is something that's already heavily regulated for
| other industries e.g. financial services. There's nothing
| novel about the GDPR in that aspect.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > This is not about "data" moving over borders. This is
| about services being provided from one country to
| another.
|
| Services which involve nothing but data, and thus still
| fall under the category of "data moving over borders".
| And, consequently, freedom of speech.
| scott_w wrote:
| No service involves "nothing but data." This has nothing
| to do with freedom of speech, it's governing the rules of
| business transactions between two entities across
| borders. Stop throwing out spurious terms to try and
| cloud the debate.
| wyager wrote:
| > No service involves "nothing but data."
|
| May I introduce you to services such as Wikipedia.com and
| news.ycombinator.com?
| wyager wrote:
| Your model is nonsense - physical goods are not the same
| as digital goods.
|
| Regardless of whether or not your model actually makes
| sense, an inevitable consequence of your model is that
| the internet will become siloed at a national level. It
| sounds like you're fine with that though.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| cunthorpe wrote:
| So the problem is that "Google is in charge."
|
| Sorry but I don't think that's "worse" than AMP at all. Google
| was in charge of that _and_ it hijacked URLs.
|
| Clickbait.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| It's not just Google, it doesn't matter if the company in
| change is all sunshine and rainbows today, who knows what they
| will do tomorrow (looking at you freenode). Centralized level
| of control like this is anathama to the whole future of the
| web.
| Spivak wrote:
| I feel like you picked a bad example because while Freenode
| is a centralized service the community immediately routed
| around the crazy in the span of like two weeks.
| Centralization isn't really that big of a problem in
| practice, it's lock-in.
| swiley wrote:
| The replacement they're whining about is "core web vitals" IE the
| metric you can view at[1]. This is what AMP should have been in
| the beginning and I was surprised they did something else, it
| made Google search unusable on mobile.
|
| [1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en
|
| This means that your hand-coded-in-vim static pages will rank
| near the top.
| klodolph wrote:
| There is one metric where hand-coded-in-vim pages tend to do
| poorly, and that's cumulative layout shift. If you have images
| on your page (a reasonable assumption) and just stick <img>
| tags in there, you can get dinged on cumulative layout shift
| because the layout will shift as images get loaded.
|
| I use a somewhat hand-coded-in-vim approach, but there's some
| post-processing that adds width/height attributes to <img> tags
| which mitigates this particular problem.
|
| Edit: Not sure why everyone is telling me to add "height" and
| "width" attributes, because that's what I wrote in the comment,
| above. Just to explain how this works--the width and height
| attributes describe the "intrinsic size" of the image.
| pradn wrote:
| I had no idea about this, thanks!
|
| It's surprisingly hard to set up good images in a hand-coded-
| in-vim website. You're supposed to include multiple image
| sizes and set up the code for loading each in HTML. So what
| could have been simply adding an <img> tag now turns into a
| chore involving ImageMagick.
| DamonHD wrote:
| My hand-coded-in-vim pages have always had height and width
| attributes, going back to the 90s. It's just become
| fashionable again.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I would imagine it's best practice to define height and width
| attributes for <img> tags, no?
| klodolph wrote:
| Yes, it's just tedious to do by hand, which is why, in
| practice, people who write HTML by hand often don't do it.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I think it's one of the more elegant styling things in
| HTML, you don't need to use the more verbose style=, it's
| just plain Jane height= and width=. I've never left it
| out, and I've written a few HTML pages by hand.
| Tomte wrote:
| Include height and width attributes to your <img> tag and the
| layout shift problem is solved.
|
| Those are used to determine the aspect ratio, so even when
| resized via CSS the browser knows how much space to reserve
| in the layout.
| klodolph wrote:
| They are used to determine the intrinsic size. The aspect
| ratio is also affected by the CSS rules, and doesn't
| necessarily equal the aspect ratio of the intrinsic size.
| jacobr wrote:
| The width and height attributes are used by the browser
| to determine the aspect ratio
| https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/03/setting-height-
| widt...
| klodolph wrote:
| That's a simplification--they determine the intrinsic
| size.
|
| The aspect ratio is determined by a combination of CSS
| rules and the intrinsic size.
| eli wrote:
| Tip: Add "height" and "width" attributes even if the rendered
| size will be different because of CSS.
|
| The CSS sizing will still take precedence but the
| height/width attributes let the browser know the aspect ratio
| without having to download the image so it can layout the
| page faster.
| swiley wrote:
| Having two CSS rules in a single selector is something you
| absolutely can do in vim. You can even chuck it in a one line
| style tag. IMO cumulative layout shift _should_ be ranked
| down, it 's extremely frustrating.
| jwommack wrote:
| Don't even need the exact number just the aspect ratio.
| jeffbee wrote:
| That's an extreme claim that requires some backing evidence.
| Mobile search quality is the main metric google uses to judge
| its search products. The idea that google search is "unusable
| on mobile" is pretty silly, if you're literally the only person
| who ever noticed.
| swiley wrote:
| You probably did what I did and mostly missed what was
| happening the past couple years by using duckduckgo the whole
| time. I formatted my phone at some point last year and the
| search engine reverted to google, it really was unusable but
| not something people who wouldn't know better would get too
| upset about.
| swiley wrote:
| (by last year I mean 2019.)
| nonbirithm wrote:
| I also don't understand why more people aren't making a
| firestorm over how user-hostile Google search is at times.
| They don't even follow their own rules. The "People also
| searched for" popup causes layout shifts nearly every time
| you go back to the search page. It's infuriating.
|
| I know this is only orthogonal to AMP, but it sounds like the
| kind of thing Core Web Vitals was meant to disincentivize.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I find "Web Core Vital" to be fairly useless (outside of trying
| appease Google.) I can make a page load slower and feel worse for
| anyone visiting the site...and the "Core Vitals" score will
| increase. So, how is this about the user experience? You can
| inline all of your CSS to increase your score, but what about
| users that visit more than one page? Now they have larger
| payloads per page. Then at that point what is the point of
| rewarding all inlining, but then throwing a fit about not using a
| CDN with a long caching parameter? It's not consistent.
|
| Why not just use overall page size and ttfb instead of this
| nonsensical metric that isn't a great measurement, in my
| experience, of website performance/user experience; outside of
| keeping everyone guessing what Google might do next, what's the
| point? I also find it extremely ironic that many of Google's own
| products are complete failures on the metric.
|
| I've even found that you can trick the metric by essentially
| loading a blank page where a browser will feel the page is fully
| loaded, then having a delay that loads the page.
| tyingq wrote:
| I vehemently disagree that "Core Web Vitals" would be worse. I'm
| as wary of Google as the author, but Google's page performance
| tools have a reasonably good history of staying in their lane of
| just measuring performance.
|
| Having "page performance" as a non-trivial weighted factor in how
| pages are ranked just makes sense to me.
|
| Even if CWV is somewhat flawed, I'd much rather optimize for that
| than give control of my pages to Google ala AMP.
| [deleted]
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Search.brave.com is surprisingly good, at least for me so far. I
| haven't had to use google in the last week for anything, my
| results have been on par
| judge2020 wrote:
| In case you're trying to find what the replacement is:
|
| > Unfortunately, there are problems with AMP's replacement as
| well. And those problems go right back to what was wrong with AMP
| in the first place: Google is in charge of it.
|
| So the problem isn't core web vitals nor AMP itself, but the fact
| that everyone uses Google and they control the results on
| google.com.
|
| We can now go back to our regularly scheduled discussion about
| how this is bad.
| ehsankia wrote:
| The article is also surprised that people are still using AMP
| now that it's no longer required, because in the author's mind,
| AMP is so god dang awful that when given the chance, everyone
| would immediately want to get rid of it.
|
| Some people are so deeply lost in their hatred of AMP that they
| cannot even consider for a moment that maybe, just maybe, AMP
| actually does work well for some people.
|
| I'm glad it's no longer required, and if people are correct
| that AMP truly sucks, then surely it'll slowly fade away over
| time.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| My opinion is regularly "unpopular" here on HN, but I happen
| to love AMP. Sometimes constraints can be a blessing. Don't
| want to over engineer? Use AMP.
|
| Of course you can over engineer anything, but why would you
| when [almost] everything you need is easy to grab a la carte.
| uncomputation wrote:
| How is having to use "amp" attributes and loading a script
| from ampproject dot org simpler than just _not_ doing that
| and everything works with every browser and without
| JavaScript and you don't have any dependencies on Google
| servers? AMP as a subset of existing HTML is fine, but at
| that point it's just a style guide. AMP as the existing
| invasive species it is just adds more complexity to an
| already complex web "ecosystem." Google did not invent or
| even perfect maintainable web pages so why should I have to
| "grab" anything from them on the supposedly decentralized
| web?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Google's amp cache presumably enforces the "you can only
| use these specific html tags and this limited subset of
| javascript" (or whatever the requirements are). That's
| valuable.
| tyingq wrote:
| To me, nobody would willingly give up the most important
| part of their page's real estate (the top X pixels) and the
| branding value of what it says in the url bar...unless
| there was a tradeoff that made it worth it. As far as I can
| tell, carousel placement was that tradeoff. Until recently,
| you weren't allowed in unless you were on AMP.
|
| Also, I'm not sure this is well known, but if you navigate
| to a web page from the carousel, Google traps the left and
| right swipe events on YOUR page. Either sends to user to a
| competitor. That's a pretty big compromise you would only
| make because the traffic boost from the carousel was worth
| it.
| nightpool wrote:
| As a web developer, I really value the extra speed that
| having my page served from an AMP cache + predictive
| prefetching gives me. And now that signed exchanges have
| shipped, giving up the top X pixels and the URL bar are
| no longer required trade-offs to get that value.
| tyingq wrote:
| _" now that signed exchanges have shipped"_
|
| For Chrome, yes.
| nightpool wrote:
| That's a good point. Webkit's opposition to Signed
| Exchanges (ironically, canonically expressed in an HN
| comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19679621)
| means that I'm stuck with AMP for good performance on iOS
| for the foreseeable future.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Not just WebKit. Mozilla is opposed, too. And they have a
| whole document on Web Packaging: https://docs.google.com/
| document/d/1ha00dSGKmjoEh2mRiG8FIA5s...
| nightpool wrote:
| Sure, I've read Mozilla's standard-position document and
| I understand their objections, I'm just saying that
| Webkit's objection is the major blocker to _me
| personally_ adopting sxg (since Firefox is basically 0%
| of my mobile traffic)
| jeffbee wrote:
| There's nothing about AMP that requires anyone to give up
| any part of their page. The presentation you are talking
| about is a feature of only certain AMP hosting services.
| A lot of organizations host their own AMP sites, like
| Conde Nast magazines. Example:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/qualcomms-new-
| snapdr...
| tyingq wrote:
| Yes, I'm speaking exclusively of Google's AMP cache,
| which I assume dwarfs any other in numbers of notable
| users.
|
| Edit: As for Conde Nast, I found this article:
| https://technology.condenast.com/story/the-why-and-how-
| of-go... The diagram[1] suggests the Google AMP cache is
| (or was) in front of users, and they also say this:
|
| _" AMP helps us satisfy these needs. AMP increases the
| visibility and discoverability of our content by allowing
| it to be included in Google's Top News Carousel, as well
| as improving the experience of regular Google search
| results"_
|
| That sounds a lot like what I said.
|
| [1] https://media.condenast.io/photos/59a57e16cf742825d0b
| 02891/m...
| jeffbee wrote:
| The article directly contradicts your claim. People can
| use Google's CDN without losing control of any part of
| their content. It's just a CDN.
| tyingq wrote:
| So, from Chrome mobile, I searched for "springsteen anti-
| vaccine". The first carousel entry is a CondeNast
| property, vanityfair.com, with an AMP lightning bolt
| icon.
|
| I click it, and get this: https://imgur.com/a/2W3oWSW
|
| The top bar is Google controlled. The url in the omnibar
| is a google url. So I'm not seeing how Conde Nast is a
| good example here. Before they very recently rescinded
| the requirement, using a non-Google AMP cache meant you
| didn't get into the carousel.
| jeffbee wrote:
| What you're complaining about is that Google frames the
| carousel results, which is a completely legitimate
| complaint, but which is not really related to AMP as
| such.
|
| Edited to add: An example of where the same content is
| not framed by the same search engine is on Chrome
| Mobile's new tab page "articles for you". Many of these
| are directly links to unframed AMP content, such as what
| I'm seeing right now: seekingalpha.com/amp/...,
| thehill.com/...?amp etc
| tyingq wrote:
| My point is that I believe Conde Nast chose AMP mostly so
| they would be in the carousel and not lose traffic since
| the carousel pushes down the organic results. The quotes
| from them I copied in up-thread comments seem to align
| with that. I also believe they would have passed on AMP
| if the carousel wasn't there, but I obviously can't prove
| that.
| corty wrote:
| I would like to introduce my set of constraints called
| "cortyNet":
|
| - no JavaScript
|
| - you get 100kB for HTML and CSS
|
| - all decorative and non-essential images are included in
| those 100kB
|
| Happy hacking!
| tssva wrote:
| I'm not a web developer but as a user I love AMP. For
| whatever issues it has it did significantly help mobile
| performance. Could developers have solved that issue with
| AMP? Yes Did developers solve the issue prior to AMP
| forcing them to? No.
| tyingq wrote:
| _" Some people are so deeply lost in their hatred of AMP that
| they cannot even consider for a moment that maybe, just
| maybe, AMP actually does work well for some people."_
|
| My assumption is that AMP is most heavily used by news
| organizations because of the requirement (recently rescinded)
| for carousel placement. Anecdotal, but I've talked with
| people at these organizations, and they definitely don't like
| AMP. They tolerate AMP solely for the carousel placement.
| That requirement is gone now. But, given the low margins in
| those places, it may be some time before they migrate off.
| rchaud wrote:
| Not just news, any website that still monetizes on the ad-
| supported "blog" model. So, videogame websites, sports
| websites, entertainment/gossip sites, you name it.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| > "because in the author's mind, AMP is so god dang awful
| that when given the chance, everyone would immediately want
| to get rid of it"
|
| You must be a mind reader, then, because _nowhere_ in the
| article does the author state or imply that. Indeed, they go
| out of their way to point out why it 's unlikely in the
| extreme that any publisher will bother, and points out why
| that's essentially a victory for Google -- indeed this might
| be the essential point that the author is making in this
| article.
| djrogers wrote:
| > The article is also surprised that people are still using
| AMP now that it's no longer required
|
| It feels like we read different articles, because the in one
| I read the author spent a lot of time explaining that AMP
| would probably be around for a while for a number of
| predictable reasons.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I've decided that while Google ostensibility makes it possible to
| search the world's knowledge*, that's just the bait. Google's
| main product is selling ads in what amounts to a glorified yellow
| pages.
|
| *In reality, about 1% of human knowledge, by some estimates.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| You make it sound like searching 1% of human knowledge is not a
| fucking big deal. The Harry Potter books created an awesome
| series of magic, with instant teleportation, flying objects and
| invisibility coats. Yet they had nothing comparable to Google,
| which would have destroyed the plots to at least 3 books since
| the answers could have been found trivially that way.
| cratermoon wrote:
| It's not that 1% isn't astounding, it's that choices, human
| and automated that go into deciding _which_ 1% is cataloged.
| Are the Harry Potter books really more valuable than 99% over
| everything else humans know? Or does Google simply provide a
| catalog of the things that can be pressed into service to
| generate revenue, either for themselves or their ad-buying
| customers?
| [deleted]
| justinph wrote:
| Fun think about core web vitals and amp: AMP pages will _always_
| win core web vitals, because they're measured from google's CDN,
| where they can be pre-rendered. Unless the page is
| motherfuckingwebsite.com, the AMP version is going to score
| better in every metric than a non-AMP version. Core Web Vitals
| just cements AMP as a shortcut to performance.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| That seems pretty unlikely. Do you have any information that
| backs this up?
| justinph wrote:
| Yes. Years of experience with AMP and measuring website
| performance on a very high traffic website.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Have you directly compared the live version against that in
| the AMP Cache?
|
| The idea that PSI preloads the page before starting the
| test doesn't make much sense at all, and doesn't mesh with
| my own experiences (in the same space).
| [deleted]
| al2o3cr wrote:
| The power of the web lies in its decentralisation, it
| lies with its messiness, it lies with its edge nodes -
| that is, with you and me.
|
| The only reason I've ever seen a news site take more than 2.5s to
| load was when it was stuffed to the gills with adtech and
| trackers; caping for them is literally the _opposite_ of "the
| spirit of the web".
| asadkn wrote:
| It's funny that Google says they care about performance, yet the
| number one reason for bad performance on many site is Google
| Adsense ads.
|
| Did no one in Ads team get the memo to optimize performance?
| celestialcheese wrote:
| 100% this. Maybe I've missed something in their documentation,
| but it's been incredibly frustrating getting their ads to not
| kill performance
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| > Did no one in Ads team get the memo to optimize performance?
|
| They were too busy raking in the billions.
| walshemj wrote:
| Nope its not the major issue
| vehiclesuggest wrote:
| Lol! Just setup and optimized AMP on our website and now I am
| hearing this news.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| _> The logic behind AMP goes like this: web developers suck at
| making fast websites, let 's strip out all the stuff people don't
| need and cache it on our super-fast servers._
|
| Web developers don't suck at making fast websites. Publishers
| demand tons of ads and tracking scripts. If the person signing
| the paychecks wants the page to have 15MB of sketchy third-party
| JS, then the page will have 15MB of sketchy third-party JS. AMP
| succeeded because Google brandished a stick that publishers cared
| about more: exclusion from the Top News carousel.
|
| I'd also note that the whole reason this ad tech explosion even
| happened is a race to the bottom that Google itself facilitated.
| Google is selling us solutions to a problem that Google had a
| huge hand in causing.
| wutwutwutwut wrote:
| > If the person signing the paychecks wants the page to have
| 15MB of sketchy third-party JS, then the page will have 15MB of
| sketchy third-party JS.
|
| I was asked by management to add Google Tag Manager to the
| company site. When I saw that GTM included 15-20 tracking
| scripts I told them that unfortunately we can't include it
| until we have ensured that all of them act in accordance with
| GDPR. Legal was involved and agreed. Marketing gave up.
|
| You're technically correct, but people who write pay checks
| often can be argued with. They often don't want to be on record
| taking decisions which can cause issues, and legal typically
| don't want to sign of on including 15MB unknown scripts on your
| site accepting credit cards.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| _> You 're technically correct, but people who write pay
| checks often can be argued with._
|
| That's true, but the proliferation of ad tech junk is strong
| evidence that this is the exception rather than the rule.
| Capital will persuade labor to do its bidding far more often
| than not.
| lapnitnelav wrote:
| What's the solution? If anything, the proliferation of ad
| tech junk and 15MB of various ad-related things is probably
| better than just that 1MB of only Google Ads scripts, no?
|
| Or are we going to talk about how online advertising has
| been the economic backbone of the web? Not that I'm
| advocating for it, by hiding the true cost of things,
| publishers have brought this onto themselves really.
|
| So no more ads? That's probably going to kill a lot of
| sites, whether they are contributing anything to mankind or
| not.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| IMO, the only feasible solution is to regulate
| surveillance capitalism out of existence. The market is
| not going to solve this.
| wutwutwutwut wrote:
| Do you have strong evidence that developers think about
| these things and bring it up with legal? I'd not, then the
| only strong evidence is that developers are sloppy.
| paulcole wrote:
| What options or alternatives did you suggest to marketing so
| they could accomplish their goal?
| wutwutwutwut wrote:
| None? I have no clues what marketings goal are and frankly
| I don't care. If they want to insert some junk.js into
| their web page they need at least to ensure it is legal.
| paulcole wrote:
| If you work at the same company on the same product don't
| you both have the same end goal?
| wutwutwutwut wrote:
| Not really, no. There are 500 people in marketing
| organization and I doubt there are less than 20
| conflicting end goals within that organization. Unless
| you're going all fluffy and talk about company goal as
| said by the owners.
|
| Either way, if their process of reaching their end goal
| included steps which legal dismissed then they needed to
| go back to the drawing board and figure out a new
| strategy, right? It would be strange for me who doesn't
| work in their profession come and tell them how to solve
| their issues.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| You just have to browse the AMP pages on Google Assistant to
| see how easily they can be devolved into slow dumpster fires
| despite the rules to maintain speed.
| walshemj wrote:
| From experience its not the tracking code that is the major
| culprit.
|
| Like @djtriptych I do a lot of work on a major brand sites its
| poor FE design and implementation.
| ljm wrote:
| Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager need to take the blame
| here. Web developers are doing their damnedest to build a
| decent site or application, until marketing/growth steps in and
| makes GTM a requirement, and product want to try out the 6
| different analytics tools they're looking at.
|
| You can at least push back on the product somewhat, or use
| something like Segment to fan-out. But once Marketing gets GTM
| in place, all bets are off - they're doing god knows what to
| the site/application, completely outside of the purview of the
| usual engineering process, because they can inject whatever
| they hell they want into the page.
|
| GTM is essentially a backdoor but it gets a pass because
| marketing.
|
| Web devs emphatically, and by definition, do not suck at
| developing websites.
| BigBalli wrote:
| "some arbitrary set of performance standards"? Less than 3s load
| time, reasonable DOM size, and low FID are all widely accepted as
| a "good UX".
|
| Just another veiled article criticizing Google's dominance rather
| than a technical one.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| 3s load time is crazy high. You need to get below 0.1 second
| before it feels instant, which would be a huge upgrade compared
| to most websites (it should still feel instant if you load the
| ads after that, just so long that you don't change the layout
| on the page at all).
|
| I have a gigabit connection, so it is not a question about not
| downloading fast enough, I can browse wikipedia this way. It is
| a matter of not using so much javascript.
| Spivak wrote:
| Look, you're right that this is essentially Google making
| everyone eat their vegetables but isn't it a little wild that
| this single company has so much control over the internet that
| they can basically make sweeping decrees like this?
| wpietri wrote:
| I think that's a fair point. I'd love to see more of this
| done in coalition. Google doing solo not only can bend the
| web toward Google's corporate interests, but it undermines
| the growth of other social structures (e.g., citizen
| movements, nonprofit advocacy groups, regulators,
| governments) to solve problems like this.
| rchaud wrote:
| No, I don't think so. There are hundreds if not thousands of
| unique domains for nearly every single query. Very few of
| those are providing first-hand, unique information. Take
| Apple product announcements; there are hundreds of high-
| traffic blogs basically creating identical content rehashing
| a press release or writing posts about newly announced
| products.
|
| There has to be a way of prioritizing some of these sites
| over others. Same goes for sports, celebrity/gossip, news,
| etc. That would be most of the open web right there.
|
| Google also moved to mobile-first indexing some years ago.
| Was that unfair to mom-and-pop shops that didn't have a
| responsively designed site? Perhaps, but if the website is
| something that brings you business, it's a tool that should
| be sharpened when dull, and replaced when its rusty.
| pradn wrote:
| You're absolutely right that UX should have precedence for
| equal info. There's a reason why I like going to the
| slickly-made Verge instead of every other site for routine
| news like what was announced at a particular company's
| event. That, and I like their short summary videos.
| DamonHD wrote:
| Yes, I was prompted to plan turning off AMP for next month, even
| given CWV weirdness in GSC...
|
| http://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-site-technicals-49.html#2021...
| bingidingi wrote:
| Fast pages are good for the web generally, but Google treats the
| entire internet like pages of search results and this can punish
| some people who aren't building search results. There are lots
| and lots of good experiences on the web that are optimized for
| multiple page views because they're communities, educational, or
| some other kind of application - they're designed for people who
| stick around.
|
| I worry that if core vitals becomes too strong of a signal it
| will over homogenize things to the point that we're further
| ostracizing parts of the web that aren't built like fast results
| pages to get an answer and bounce off of. We need more
| _differing_ alternatives to Google.
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