I'm trying to imagine the uproar if Apple had done AMP instead of Google. Somehow AMP has some staunch defenders, but everything, and I mean everything about how it's been approached has felt very anti-web and pro-Google. The overall concept may be sound, but the implementation, and the inability to escape it, has significantly hurt my opinion of Google. In fact, I no longer use Google's search because of it.
Do you think there would be an uproar? Apple introduced reading mode, built-in content/ad blocking, etc. AMP actually fits in the profile of Apple -- prioritizing a fast, usable solution.
This author notes that they "feel bad" about consuming AMP content. Which is extremely weird given that content creators intentionally volunteer their content to AMP (aside from this user who got famous claiming that Google was stealing their content because they had enabled a Wordpress plug-in haphazardly).
If Google blacklisted non-AMP content, or even just deranked it, sure there's an argument, but as of yet this notion that it's some content theft is quite strange.
Google's intention with AMP is obvious, and obviously not anti-web: Facebook is becoming a primary medium where users are accessing a lot of content. I personally read all news via Facebook now, where they've integrated it heavily with a built-in browser and now instant articles (Facebook's AMP). Compared to this, the traditional web is just an obnoxious mess, not because of the web but because of the abuse that AMP restricts.
> given that content creators intentionally volunteer their content to AMP
This is certainly not true. The reason no many content creators and publishers moved to AMP is to not hurt their SEO.
If you check most of the AMP articles targeted to publishers, it's addressed as get on the AMP wagon now or else you are doomed when Google starts ranking AMP pages higher.
I don't think its comparable to Apple. Apple is trying to make the user experience of existing content better (where it is located)
Google is taking the content and serving it themselves.
The problem is sites being slow in the first place, but Apple isn't commandeering the content itself like Google is by creating a mode where the browser can enhance legibility of any article.
> If Google blacklisted non-AMP content, or even just deranked it, sure there's an argument, but as of yet this notion that it's some content theft is quite strange.
They do kind of do this. AMP pages get highlighted and populate the top results( at least for me) which kind of has the same effect as reducing the rank of normal websites.
There are two things here that I feel are being conflated.
There's the AMP library and format. That is a huge part of what you're talking about with speed, annoying popups, etc. It's an open source library and people can use it or not.
Then there's Google grabbing all of the AMP pages, rewriting them and putting them on a Google domain.
You cannot opt out of the second part. There's not a lot of abuse I can think of that's being restricted by this, and it feels like it would be a simple problem to fix.
AFAIK AMP is just a list of Do's and Dont's that google qualify as AMP content. Even other search engines like DuckDuckGo and Bing could use it if the choose so. You can access AMP outside of google and host it yourself. You can go AMP-only if you o please. Instant Articles from Facebook on other hand is tied into facebook's platform.
I'm not using it too, but not because of that (and I was unaware of amp before). DDG shows instant wiki, stackoverflow, lyrics previews, while google only does that for wiki. I don't use gmail because of crappy ui, ux and designs. I wouldn't use annoying youtube if dailymotion was not blocked. Translate is only bearable for english. Local maps are way better in navigation/street/company info (probably not true for US/EU).
Summarizing, I clearly see no value in google services for me today and it was surprisingly easy to get rid of it completely.
Edit: and in search regard, ddg/yahoo links lag far less than google's redirects and ddg never presented me "you're a robot, enter captcha to not get to our search service anyway" for hours.
Same here. On the other hand it has not, as far as I know affected my life - nobody in my country seems to be working on AMP projects, nobody I consult for has ever asked for it, I don't think I ever end up on an AMP page. Really for me it seems like a technology that is failing fast, but what I hear from the U.S seems to threaten the opposite.
You can compare Google's AMP to Apple's efforts with Apple News. It also is locked down and anti-web, but it's also entirely opt-in both for publishers and users.
same it's amazing how different responses would be depending on the company who did an action. just goes to show the power of good pr. pretend to do some moonshots which you shut down a few years later and you can get away with anything
Google Search on Mobile is no longer a web search engine that hyperlinks to the resulting page, but rather an search-integrated newsreader that loads itself when you click on a result that's marked with AMP. This is understandably a big change from how things used to be, but it isn't going to get better anytime soon.
After all, most people on mobile spend their time inside apps, probably from some Google competitor like Facebook. Within these apps, they click on links, which increasingly load inside webviews; the framing app collects info on where people go, and uses this to sell targeted advertising. Facebook is a king in this space, and is now the second largest server of internet display ads, after Google.
Google's assault on Facebook's encroachment is twofold: drive people to Google's apps like the Google Now Launcher (now the default launcher on Android) or the Google app present in older versions of Android and available for iOS, and deploy the same content-framing techniques from their own search engine webpage on mobile user-agents, where the competition is most fierce, and they can also position it as legitimate UX improvement -- which, to their credit, is largely true, as bigpub content sites on mobile were usually usability nightmares and cesspits of ads.
I understand that the author and quite a few others are peeved at this behavior and that there's no way of turning it off. But it's really not in Google's best interest to even offer the option, because then many people will just turn it off, encouraged by articles like the author's own last year where he was caught off-guard and before he gained a more nuanced appreciation for what's really going on.
The bottom line is this: Google is inseparable from its ad-serving and adtech business -- it is after all how they make most of their money -- so if you are bothered by their attempts to safeguard their income stream from competitors who have a much easier time curating their own walled garden, you should cease using Google Search on Mobile. There are other alternatives, who may not be as thorough at search, but that's the cost of the tradeoff.
"on mobile" these days can be anything from a 3'' device with 512MB RAM to the device you mention.
It's very easy to assume that everyone has the latest device in an affluent society that doesn't have much of a problem buying the latest and greatest, but I can assure you this isn't the case in most of the world.
You're failing to see that Google is used everywhere in the world and not all countries (in fact, very few) have markets where the standard device is what you describe or where everyone has blazing fast LTE available everywhere.
For example, there are places here in Colombia where 2G is the norm, that's the kind of people AMP is helping, not the bay area kid that has the latest iPhone and 100Mb Wi-Fi
I feel the same way. 99% of what I do requires the non-mobile site. Most links I open are github pull requests and the mobile site doesn't give the option to approve with a message, second most common is Circle CI which again is worthless in mobile form, third most common is JIRA, which again, I have to click "request desktop" in the menu to be able to search and do everything I expect.
So in all the biggest apps like Gmail, Slack, etc. I now have to click a link and it shows up in process, then I have to pick the menu option to view it in real Chrome, then I have to pick the menu option to request desktop site. So they've added two clicks and two page loads to almost every site I visit.
> "on mobile" these days is a device with a quad core, 3GB of RAM, and a 1080p + screen.
You left out the most important reasoning for AMP, which is the network. Even in the US, cellular networks are almost invariably slower/higher latency/less reliable than wired (or even wifi) networks. In other areas of the world where most users are not on 4g it's a huge difference.
"The bottom line is this: Google is inseparable from its ad-serving and adtech business -- it is after all how they make most of their money -- so if you are bothered by their attempts to safeguard their income stream from competitors who have a much easier time curating their own walled garden, you should cease using Google Search on Mobile."
Thank you for this - it's a good summary.
I would go further and suggest a deeper bottom line - the desire of google/facebook/et.al to become "the phone company".
There was a long period of time when end users did not even own the telephone in their home and were not allowed to touch the wiring. We should act as if that level of control and captivity of the audience is the driving force behind the actions these firms take.
> if you are bothered by their attempts to safeguard their income stream from competitors who have a much easier time curating their own walled garden, you should cease using Google Search on Mobile.
You're making excuses for Google, but forgetting about smaller, independent companies. It is not in our interests to have our content appified and restricted inside of Google's walled garden. When a big company like Google (or its competitors) attacks the open WWW, then web publishers should oppose it.
There's a lot of complaint about Google AMP and Facebook Instant Articles, e.g. walled garden, anti-open-web and whatnot.
Here's something simpler from a non-developer, average-consumer point of view. I recently began taking BART to work daily (new job). For those who don't know, BART is Bay Area's subway system, and (at least on the east bay side) cell reception is notoriously spotty.
When I'm on the train, which includes 2 hours of my day everyday (unfortunately), I'd be browsing on say Facebook, and look at links that my friends post. Instant articles almost always load successfully (and quickly) and external links to actual sites almost always fails to load or loads insanely slowly.
Yes, when you're at home or in the city with good mobile reception, these things make no sense and you'd rather hit the original site directly. Give them their ad revenue, etc. to support them, right. But for the average consumers who actually have problems like slow internet (like the average joe who rides public transportation and wants to read on their phone), things like AMP and Instant Articles actually help. I can only imagine outside of silicon valley (where I live), how much more significant of a problem slow internet/slow mobile data actually is.
P.S. I don't work at Google or Facebook, and I know this sounds like propaganda, not to mention this is exactly what they would like to tell you as the "selling points" of these features, in order to continue building their walled garden empires. Fully aware of it, but I did want to bring up why they exist and why I even actually like them.
Yeah, but maybe there's a better way to get you your nice BART outcome, you know? I think that's really part of the pushback here. We haven't really given social permission for Google to convert the web to AMP by force.
> ...convert the web to AMP by force. @themodelplumber
Complete hyperbole. Google's not forcing anyone to use AMP. They're not forcing developers or users to use AMP.
There is no force. There is only usability. Users prefer usability. Developers prefer people use their products. If a user does not, or cannot, connect to the developer's product the developer loses. If a user cannot connect easily and speedily to a page, they will not consider the product.
I rock an LG V20 and I use Chrome mobile. AMP lets me connect to the content I wish to consume speedily and easily. I connect at a significantly faster rate than without AMP. Thus...
I <3 AMP. I don't care who controls it. As long as I can connect to the content I want, I'm good.
We haven't really given social permission for Google to convert the web to AMP by force.
Google is not the problem here.
As a user this choice is not yours; you get what the publisher wants to publish. If a publisher chooses to build an AMP version of their content they are telling Google that's what they want you to see when you click through to a story they've published.
We, the users, don't get a say in this beyond choosing not to view the content from publishers who use AMP.
Exactly. You can ask Google/Facebook to provide hotspots inside trains, ask the network provider to make cell reception better inside the subway etc. There are ways to achieve a better outcome instead of locking down how you consume the internet.
Convenience is not enough to make monopoly a right choice. This is a road towards monopoly (duopoly or just powerhouses holding the power - name it as you want it).
Yeah, many Google and FB services are great, but should you fully depend on them?
Please, web developers, as a minimum, set up your websites so that they do not depend on Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon or Apple for their functionality. That means, for example, use DoubleClick or AdSense or GoogleAnalytics if you like, but please do not use jquery from Google's CDNs. If you do that, and the site is dependent on that functionality to work (i.e. for text to be displayed), those of us who don't allow Google CDNs will not be able to use the site.
The same for WebAssembly: use it if you like, but please don't make your actual content unnecessarily dependent on the use of services from these multinationals. It makes the Web less free.
Thing is, if you're a news site, your news isn't going to show up on Google's news platforms if it doesn't support AMP.
As a customer, I don't like this behavior at all. I do not like AMP, mostly for the small issue that it's very difficult to link to the base page. Minor consistent inconvenience, major feature rage.
But I can't imagine what it's like for a web developer. You need to support a whole other platform just to maintain your audience, which is also your lifeblood. Also, that audience won't actually see your page; just the text with some Googly UI. Avoiding it would be fantastic, but it also wouldn't be a realistic option.
One of the comments in Alex Kras's linked page asks "Can’t you make a direct link to your site’s page auto generated on your article templates?" [0] which seems a very reasonable, though perhaps not ideal, solution that doesn't require Google to make AMP optional, something I think Google is very unlikely to do.
It depends on what you do with that blob; if you use it to request some required encrypted content, for example, users won't be able to do much about that.
My point is that anyone can use an adblocker or Squid proxy filtering to block GoogleAnalytics, but if the site uses jquery from a Google CDN to render content, that cannot be blocked without making the site unusable. It's even worse if the Google CDN request is made with https, because then a redirection needs to be made inside the browser.
>The same for WebAssembly: use it if you like, but please don't make your actual content unnecessarily dependent on the use of services from these multinationals.
With this being said, it may actually be easier to figure out wasm than frameworkified JS since you can apply IDA-style reversing to it.
Open question: what existing tools and research are good at inferring the high-level behavior of stack machines? Eg, research papers, or (preferably open source) tools for reversing eg Java code. I want links I can throw at Ph.Ds.
3. Sometimes hides content mentioned in the article, with no ability to scroll horizontally to see it.
4. Confuses Chrome on Amdroid into over-hiding its top address/menu bar (forcing two swipes down all the way to the top to show) or forces it to show (won't hide on scroll down).
This is just coming from a user's perspective, fortunately it doesn't impact my work, but may in future websites I build due to it being almost 100% of the news articles I read.
I understand the frustration with AMP from a developer's perspective (SEO, stealing traffic..etc).
But as a user I tend to click links with a thunder bolt icon(AMP/Instant article) because they are just faster. I don't really recall any bad experience.
I suggest stop using google search altogether. https://duckduckgo.com/ is an excellent search engine and its trivial to make a google search via `!g` prefix when you are not finding what you are looking for.
I started using DDG a few months back and I've been very happy so far. Sometimes results aren't as great, so I just use !g to load Google. But even better, you can search across different websites! For example, !mdn for Mozilla Developer Network, or !yt for YouTube
Another thing you can do is use alternative browsers. On mobile I use Firefox Mobile, which has the benefit of allowing extensions, so you can install uBlock Origin! That makes a gigantic different in mobile web performance. On my laptop I've been using Safari as my main browser because it consumes far less memory, and it seems to handle mountains of tabs a lot better than Chrome.
I actually find DDG results to be better and more relevant a lot of the time nowadays. The only thing Google really has an edge on (for my use) is searching for academic articles, because of Google Scholar.
I moved off of gmail a few months ago, pretty happy about that but man duckduckgo fucking suuuucks. Really wish there was a nonprofit (with a strong privacy policy) wikipedia like .org solution that provided good results.
What problems are you running in to? I've been using duckduckgo at work for just over a year now (took a change of job as an ideal time to try a complete switch in search engine too), and it has been excellent. I've been getting almost as good results as I do from google on even from some fairly vague terms, and comparable to Google when I give it explicit text to search for. Unlike Google it also seems to pay a lot more attention to searching for what I'm asking for, instead of trying to play guessing games.
I always search for things on duckduckgo and basically always find good enough results. I can only guess that everyone who thinks the results are bad has been using Google so much that they get really user-specific results that they like, despite the bubble.
Oh yeah it sucks. The main problem for me is the broken autocomplete. E.g. you want to search "Sydney Thai Restaurants"; you start typing "Sydney Thai res" and you click the first suggestion because duckduckgo is auto-completing the word "restaurants"... except now your search is "London Thai Restaurant".
the thing is, if you expect DevOps- and testing-related results to a cucumber chef query[0], the search provider really needs to keep a file on you. otherwise you're going to get pages and pages of salad, end of story. this was the nature of the loss of relevancy i saw in DDG results when i started using it several years ago. instead of complaining about it, i took it as a wakeup call to the severity of my google bubble problem.
Having been camping in a field for the past week but still needing my internet fix I think I'm going to start giving ddg a real chance (still hate the name though) until Google gives me a setting to disable AMP results
I get the idea behind AMP but it's just far too late to the game for Google to be pushing it so heavily. Back on 2G internet I used Opera Mini, I don't use that now because I just don't need it anymore
Well lucky you for having an impossibly great internet connection. Do you seriously never go anywhere with slightly less-than-perfect coverage? Or travel by train?
AMP is so much faster than 90% of websites 90% of the time I can see why Google push it so much.
What made me move back to Google from DDG is the (by construction?) inability of the latter to learn what you're interested in. For things like documentation search, Google quickly starts tailoring results to $LANG.
Then you'd get bubbled and tracked just like if you use Google, although you'd avoid AMP. DDG uses Bing and other sources, it's not literally just a wrapping of Bing.
Does Bing have "bangs" such as !gm for Google Maps, !gh for GitHub, !wa for WolframAlpha and so on? With no user tracking?
I was a heavy user of address bar search prefixes, but it's amazingly convenient to not have to think about it until the very end of a query (or even add it in the middle).
DDG is probably worse than Google, but often it's good enough.
The !commands allow you to search more specific sites directly - if I know I want Wikipedia, which I often do, I can just type !w and search it directly. Similar for other things like IMBD, Wolfram Alpha, etc. It's just a convenience.
You can also search Google using a command, which is sometimes necessary when you're really crawling the depths of the internet for something old or weird, but nine times out of ten the straight DDG results will get you where you need in my experience.
"What I realized today, however, is that while I don’t so much mind AMP as a publisher, I really hate it as a user. I realized that EVERY TIME I would land on AMP page on my phone, I would click on the button to view the original URL, and would click again on the URL to be taken to the real website.
I don’t know why I do it, but for some reason it just doesn’t feel “right” to me to consume the content through the AMP. It feels slightly off, and I want the real deal even if it takes a few seconds extra to load."
I have subconsciously been doing the exact same thing for a while now, and I think this quote covers a good deal of public sentiment. It's weird to use AMP, yet slower without it.
Another main issue I have with AMP is that there is no speedy way to check the url, something I do quite frequently. Instead it's just Google's hosting for the site, with the source being only available by clicking on the link icon.
The author's argument against AMP comes down to "I don’t know why I do it, but for some reason it just doesn’t feel “right” to me to consume the content through the AMP. It feels slightly off". This is... not a strong argument.
The AMP saga has pretty clearly shown that users care about content while Web developers only care about URLs and what goes over the wire. This is a huge disconnect. It doesn't help that many Web developers show no empathy for the users' viewpoint.
Ultimately it probably is easier for Google to add an opt-out to appease a very small, very vocal minority than to educate them that the URL doesn't matter.
You're being downvoted but you're absolutely right, this article is just weak and it's only popular because it voices a popular opinion, but does a very bad job at justifying it.
I fully agree that it should be optional and people who dislike it should be allowed to disable it. But as you mention, the author provide absolutely no real argument other than "it feels wrong".
All user studies so far show that it's a net positive, and I'd rather stick to real data than feelings or anectodes.
I personally love it, but I also agree that those who don't should be allowed to disable it.
Thank you for valid criticism. I've added the following to the post. Hope it clears up my point of view a bit better.
Some people expressed a valid criticism that just saying “doesn’t feel right” is not good enough. While I agree, I don’t have any solid data to back up my argument. I believe AMP (to some extent) is a hack on top of existing browsers and the Web, to create a faster in-browser “browser”. As a result a number of small things (scrolling etc) don’t work on my iPhone as I would normally expect. Considering that this post received over 1000 up-votes on Hacker News, making it one of the top 300 posts of all time, leads me to believe that I am not alone.
Readit News
This author notes that they "feel bad" about consuming AMP content. Which is extremely weird given that content creators intentionally volunteer their content to AMP (aside from this user who got famous claiming that Google was stealing their content because they had enabled a Wordpress plug-in haphazardly).
If Google blacklisted non-AMP content, or even just deranked it, sure there's an argument, but as of yet this notion that it's some content theft is quite strange.
Google's intention with AMP is obvious, and obviously not anti-web: Facebook is becoming a primary medium where users are accessing a lot of content. I personally read all news via Facebook now, where they've integrated it heavily with a built-in browser and now instant articles (Facebook's AMP). Compared to this, the traditional web is just an obnoxious mess, not because of the web but because of the abuse that AMP restricts.
This is certainly not true. The reason no many content creators and publishers moved to AMP is to not hurt their SEO. If you check most of the AMP articles targeted to publishers, it's addressed as get on the AMP wagon now or else you are doomed when Google starts ranking AMP pages higher.
Doesn't Google already admit to prioritising AMP pages in search results?
Google is taking the content and serving it themselves.
The problem is sites being slow in the first place, but Apple isn't commandeering the content itself like Google is by creating a mode where the browser can enhance legibility of any article.
They do kind of do this. AMP pages get highlighted and populate the top results( at least for me) which kind of has the same effect as reducing the rank of normal websites.
There's the AMP library and format. That is a huge part of what you're talking about with speed, annoying popups, etc. It's an open source library and people can use it or not.
Then there's Google grabbing all of the AMP pages, rewriting them and putting them on a Google domain.
You cannot opt out of the second part. There's not a lot of abuse I can think of that's being restricted by this, and it feels like it would be a simple problem to fix.
It's pretty clear, I think, Apple would've approached this just like they did reading mode.
A purely local feature that you have to select manually and doesn't infringe on your privacy or break the ability to share links.
I found this comment interesting as well. I really like the instant load aspect and would much rather not waste time waiting for a slow page to load.
I think the author feels that the free hosting provided by AMP is overshadowed by the loss of personal ad revenue from the traffic.
I'm not using it too, but not because of that (and I was unaware of amp before). DDG shows instant wiki, stackoverflow, lyrics previews, while google only does that for wiki. I don't use gmail because of crappy ui, ux and designs. I wouldn't use annoying youtube if dailymotion was not blocked. Translate is only bearable for english. Local maps are way better in navigation/street/company info (probably not true for US/EU).
Summarizing, I clearly see no value in google services for me today and it was surprisingly easy to get rid of it completely.
Edit: and in search regard, ddg/yahoo links lag far less than google's redirects and ddg never presented me "you're a robot, enter captcha to not get to our search service anyway" for hours.
After all, most people on mobile spend their time inside apps, probably from some Google competitor like Facebook. Within these apps, they click on links, which increasingly load inside webviews; the framing app collects info on where people go, and uses this to sell targeted advertising. Facebook is a king in this space, and is now the second largest server of internet display ads, after Google.
Google's assault on Facebook's encroachment is twofold: drive people to Google's apps like the Google Now Launcher (now the default launcher on Android) or the Google app present in older versions of Android and available for iOS, and deploy the same content-framing techniques from their own search engine webpage on mobile user-agents, where the competition is most fierce, and they can also position it as legitimate UX improvement -- which, to their credit, is largely true, as bigpub content sites on mobile were usually usability nightmares and cesspits of ads.
I understand that the author and quite a few others are peeved at this behavior and that there's no way of turning it off. But it's really not in Google's best interest to even offer the option, because then many people will just turn it off, encouraged by articles like the author's own last year where he was caught off-guard and before he gained a more nuanced appreciation for what's really going on.
The bottom line is this: Google is inseparable from its ad-serving and adtech business -- it is after all how they make most of their money -- so if you are bothered by their attempts to safeguard their income stream from competitors who have a much easier time curating their own walled garden, you should cease using Google Search on Mobile. There are other alternatives, who may not be as thorough at search, but that's the cost of the tradeoff.
I don't want your stupid "mobile" website that doesn't work, your cut-down "optimized" walled-garden product.
I just want the normal web, in all its glory.
It's very easy to assume that everyone has the latest device in an affluent society that doesn't have much of a problem buying the latest and greatest, but I can assure you this isn't the case in most of the world.
You're failing to see that Google is used everywhere in the world and not all countries (in fact, very few) have markets where the standard device is what you describe or where everyone has blazing fast LTE available everywhere.
For example, there are places here in Colombia where 2G is the norm, that's the kind of people AMP is helping, not the bay area kid that has the latest iPhone and 100Mb Wi-Fi
What's even worse is that Google is pushing Chrome tabs in process now: https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/customtabs
So in all the biggest apps like Gmail, Slack, etc. I now have to click a link and it shows up in process, then I have to pick the menu option to view it in real Chrome, then I have to pick the menu option to request desktop site. So they've added two clicks and two page loads to almost every site I visit.
You left out the most important reasoning for AMP, which is the network. Even in the US, cellular networks are almost invariably slower/higher latency/less reliable than wired (or even wifi) networks. In other areas of the world where most users are not on 4g it's a huge difference.
Thank you for this - it's a good summary.
I would go further and suggest a deeper bottom line - the desire of google/facebook/et.al to become "the phone company".
There was a long period of time when end users did not even own the telephone in their home and were not allowed to touch the wiring. We should act as if that level of control and captivity of the audience is the driving force behind the actions these firms take.
This is not the default launcher on Android. Each OEM has their own launcher. It's also not even the default launcher in AOSP for obvious reasons.
You're making excuses for Google, but forgetting about smaller, independent companies. It is not in our interests to have our content appified and restricted inside of Google's walled garden. When a big company like Google (or its competitors) attacks the open WWW, then web publishers should oppose it.
Here's something simpler from a non-developer, average-consumer point of view. I recently began taking BART to work daily (new job). For those who don't know, BART is Bay Area's subway system, and (at least on the east bay side) cell reception is notoriously spotty.
When I'm on the train, which includes 2 hours of my day everyday (unfortunately), I'd be browsing on say Facebook, and look at links that my friends post. Instant articles almost always load successfully (and quickly) and external links to actual sites almost always fails to load or loads insanely slowly.
Yes, when you're at home or in the city with good mobile reception, these things make no sense and you'd rather hit the original site directly. Give them their ad revenue, etc. to support them, right. But for the average consumers who actually have problems like slow internet (like the average joe who rides public transportation and wants to read on their phone), things like AMP and Instant Articles actually help. I can only imagine outside of silicon valley (where I live), how much more significant of a problem slow internet/slow mobile data actually is.
P.S. I don't work at Google or Facebook, and I know this sounds like propaganda, not to mention this is exactly what they would like to tell you as the "selling points" of these features, in order to continue building their walled garden empires. Fully aware of it, but I did want to bring up why they exist and why I even actually like them.
Complete hyperbole. Google's not forcing anyone to use AMP. They're not forcing developers or users to use AMP.
There is no force. There is only usability. Users prefer usability. Developers prefer people use their products. If a user does not, or cannot, connect to the developer's product the developer loses. If a user cannot connect easily and speedily to a page, they will not consider the product.
I rock an LG V20 and I use Chrome mobile. AMP lets me connect to the content I wish to consume speedily and easily. I connect at a significantly faster rate than without AMP. Thus...
I <3 AMP. I don't care who controls it. As long as I can connect to the content I want, I'm good.
Google is not the problem here.
As a user this choice is not yours; you get what the publisher wants to publish. If a publisher chooses to build an AMP version of their content they are telling Google that's what they want you to see when you click through to a story they've published.
We, the users, don't get a say in this beyond choosing not to view the content from publishers who use AMP.
Yeah, many Google and FB services are great, but should you fully depend on them?
As a customer, I don't like this behavior at all. I do not like AMP, mostly for the small issue that it's very difficult to link to the base page. Minor consistent inconvenience, major feature rage.
But I can't imagine what it's like for a web developer. You need to support a whole other platform just to maintain your audience, which is also your lifeblood. Also, that audience won't actually see your page; just the text with some Googly UI. Avoiding it would be fantastic, but it also wouldn't be a realistic option.
[0] https://www.alexkras.com/please-make-google-amp-optional/#co...
How would using WebAssembly make the web less free any more than using other new features like Async/Await?
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Why is Google Analytics ok and not their CDN?
99% of websites won't function if they lose a key library.
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WebAssembly is an open-standard.
Sure, it has a text format, but it's the equivalent of Lispified Java bytecode. (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAssembly/Underst... (uninformative but current), http://loyc.net/2016/lesv3-and-wasm.html (2016, from when wasm wasn't finalized, but has some good concrete examples that look like the wasm in the first link))
With this being said, it may actually be easier to figure out wasm than frameworkified JS since you can apply IDA-style reversing to it.
Open question: what existing tools and research are good at inferring the high-level behavior of stack machines? Eg, research papers, or (preferably open source) tools for reversing eg Java code. I want links I can throw at Ph.Ds.
I can't imagine this accounts for more than a tiny number of visitors and people technical enough to do this will know what to reenable.
1. Obscures the web page's URL.
2. Makes manual zoom in/out impossible.
3. Sometimes hides content mentioned in the article, with no ability to scroll horizontally to see it.
4. Confuses Chrome on Amdroid into over-hiding its top address/menu bar (forcing two swipes down all the way to the top to show) or forces it to show (won't hide on scroll down).
This is just coming from a user's perspective, fortunately it doesn't impact my work, but may in future websites I build due to it being almost 100% of the news articles I read.
Check out this response from a Google AMP engineer about scrolling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14384938
Another thing you can do is use alternative browsers. On mobile I use Firefox Mobile, which has the benefit of allowing extensions, so you can install uBlock Origin! That makes a gigantic different in mobile web performance. On my laptop I've been using Safari as my main browser because it consumes far less memory, and it seems to handle mountains of tabs a lot better than Chrome.
The only options are: Google, Bing, AOL, Yahoo, Ask.
https://imgur.com/a/V9I4o
[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=cucumber%20chef%20salad&sort=b...
Upd: and https://github.com/asciimoo/searx
I get the idea behind AMP but it's just far too late to the game for Google to be pushing it so heavily. Back on 2G internet I used Opera Mini, I don't use that now because I just don't need it anymore
AMP is so much faster than 90% of websites 90% of the time I can see why Google push it so much.
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I was a heavy user of address bar search prefixes, but it's amazingly convenient to not have to think about it until the very end of a query (or even add it in the middle).
The !commands allow you to search more specific sites directly - if I know I want Wikipedia, which I often do, I can just type !w and search it directly. Similar for other things like IMBD, Wolfram Alpha, etc. It's just a convenience.
You can also search Google using a command, which is sometimes necessary when you're really crawling the depths of the internet for something old or weird, but nine times out of ten the straight DDG results will get you where you need in my experience.
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I don’t know why I do it, but for some reason it just doesn’t feel “right” to me to consume the content through the AMP. It feels slightly off, and I want the real deal even if it takes a few seconds extra to load."
I have subconsciously been doing the exact same thing for a while now, and I think this quote covers a good deal of public sentiment. It's weird to use AMP, yet slower without it.
Another main issue I have with AMP is that there is no speedy way to check the url, something I do quite frequently. Instead it's just Google's hosting for the site, with the source being only available by clicking on the link icon.
The AMP saga has pretty clearly shown that users care about content while Web developers only care about URLs and what goes over the wire. This is a huge disconnect. It doesn't help that many Web developers show no empathy for the users' viewpoint.
Ultimately it probably is easier for Google to add an opt-out to appease a very small, very vocal minority than to educate them that the URL doesn't matter.
I fully agree that it should be optional and people who dislike it should be allowed to disable it. But as you mention, the author provide absolutely no real argument other than "it feels wrong".
All user studies so far show that it's a net positive, and I'd rather stick to real data than feelings or anectodes.
I personally love it, but I also agree that those who don't should be allowed to disable it.
Some people expressed a valid criticism that just saying “doesn’t feel right” is not good enough. While I agree, I don’t have any solid data to back up my argument. I believe AMP (to some extent) is a hack on top of existing browsers and the Web, to create a faster in-browser “browser”. As a result a number of small things (scrolling etc) don’t work on my iPhone as I would normally expect. Considering that this post received over 1000 up-votes on Hacker News, making it one of the top 300 posts of all time, leads me to believe that I am not alone.