
Google no longer providing original URL in AMP for image search results - zenexer
https://twitter.com/zenexer/status/1265633022709301249
======
TechBro8615
How does anyone think this is a good idea? It should be clear which news site
I am reading when I'm reading an article. Otherwise, how do I know which bias
to apply? On iOS, the title bar says "google.com" whether I'm reading an
article from CNN.com or WashingtonExaminer.com.

Of all the anti-competitive actions google has taken around search results,
AMP is by far the worst. I hope they get smacked down for it in the upcoming
anti-trust lawsuit. And kudos to Apple for refusing to change the URL bar like
Google does on Android.

~~~
lightswitch05
I couldn't agree more that AMP is terrible. I do everything I can to avoid it.
Using DuckDuckGo certainly helps, but I will still occasionally stumble on an
AMP site. I've created a hosts block list to help me avoid AMP as much as
possible. It currently has 3,569 unique domains (works great with a PiHole!).
I'm really concerned about Chrome's 'signed exchanges' where they can fake the
URL completely. I hope Firefox will never support it.

[https://www.github.developerdan.com/hosts/](https://www.github.developerdan.com/hosts/)

~~~
hjek
Even better than blocking AMP is just redirecting to the proper page[0].

[0]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/amp2html/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/amp2html/)

~~~
lightswitch05
Yes, that is even better! Unfortunately it doesn’t work on iOS, or I would
have never created my list. Literally the only thing I miss about Android was
being able to use browser extensions like uBlock Origin with Firefox on
Android. Safari has its built-in content filters but it’s not the same.

~~~
httpsterio
Sadly, Ublock Origin is literally the only Firefox extension available on
Android atm.

~~~
smichel17
Not quite literal: It's recently up to 6 addons -- the others are https
everywhere, privacy badger, noscript, dark reader, and search by image.

Note to others: this is about the upcoming rewrite, available as Firefox
Preview and Firefox Beta.

~~~
httpsterio
Firefox Beta and Firefox Preview are a bit different. Preview and Focus are
both currently a bit more experimental, they're stable but they're not
guaranteed to be kept alive. Firefox Beta and Nightly are both the current
latest versions of what will be merged into the stable.

There's a big rewrite being done and the current stable Firefox for Android
which supports basically all addons that the desktop version does, will be
deprecated soon-ish. Preview has a broader support.

Beta and Nightly only support uBlock Origin, literally.

Preview supports six addons in all, but Preview isn't a promise of whats to
come as they consider it a pilot.

~~~
smichel17
Huh, I stand corrected. I assumed that since the geckoview / the new UI had
come to beta, that it supported the same addons as preview.

------
WhyNotHugo
This is pretty much what we've been saying would happen since the day AMP was
fire presented to the public.

I really hope this AMP thing never becomes anything mainstream, it's an
atrocious attempt at monopolizing the internet as a whole.

~~~
dgellow
I believe it’s already mainstream :(

~~~
nothis
I'm seeing AMP in random links non-techy people post all the time, it's
depressing and it's become basically 50% of URLs I see posted.

------
0x006A
AMP really has to go away, its a MITM attack on the internet. Google
discontinues so many services, why is AMP not one of them yet?

~~~
AlexandrB
The worst thing I've seen recently is amp URLs for reddit threads. It's one
bad thing (new reddit UI) wrapped in a worse thing (AMP), and getting back to
classic reddit takes a lot of gymnastics. The stupid part is that the amp page
is indistinguishable from the (new) reddit page (the AMP page comes complete
with the "download our app" popup). So I don't see how it's providing any
speed/experience benefit.

~~~
jereees
I can never get the Open In Reddit app button to work. I’m on iOS and have the
latest version of the official reddit app. Which btw is painfully filled with
ads.

~~~
a-wu
Use the Apollo app. Much better than the official Reddit app. It's more like
what Alien Blue was before Reddit killed that.

~~~
hackmiester
Does that make the “open in app” button on the AMP pages work? Because I have
the same problem and I’m basically willing to try anything.

~~~
a-wu
Unfortunately no. But there's an "Open in Apollo" option from the share sheet
which works for me. It's just an extra tap to open the share sheet from the
AMP page.

~~~
aaomidi
Also an easy JB for iPhones was posted this week. With that you can make
Apollo your default reddit application.

------
zenexer
Malte Ubl from Google responded via Twitter:[0]

> _Just heard from the Image Search team that this is an oversight and they
> 'll add the feature! Sorry about that and thanks for the report!_

[0]:
[https://twitter.com/cramforce/status/1265688067706245120](https://twitter.com/cramforce/status/1265688067706245120)

~~~
TheKarateKid
Sounds like classic Google "Oops after oops":
[https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-
has...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-
sabotaged-firefox-for-years/)

~~~
zenexer
Yup--check out the follow-up thread.
[https://twitter.com/Zenexer/status/1265696063345786881](https://twitter.com/Zenexer/status/1265696063345786881)

Me: When can we expect to see a fix? As of right now, there’s no easy way to
visit the original URL.

Malte Ubl: I don't have a timeline. The share menu should help getting the
underlying URL!

Me: I’m sure I don’t need to explain how this looks; regardless of your
intentions, it comes across as a fairly hollow response. The issue gets a lot
of negative attention on HN, someone from Google responds that it was just an
accident and will be fixed, but there’s no fix.

Malte Ubl: Sorry, no way to do it in fewer than a couple days.

Me: That sounds like a timeline to me. :)

~~~
chipperyman573
I agree with everything you're saying and every single point you're trying to
make here, but, as someone who's been on the other end, your responses are
_exactly_ why people hate posting about this stuff publicly. He doesn't have
the authority to speak on it (alone) but you trapped him into accidently
saying something he wasn't trying to say (in fact he only said it to be nice
and reply to your question - which he had no obligation to even acknowledge).
There was nothing he could have said that would have made you (or me or any of
us on HN) happy, no information he was allowed to give out, but on his own
volition he chose to respond to and validate your questions, and you reacted
by saying "Aha! I got you now!"

That said, it seems likely to me that if this somehow stopped advertising
revenue, it would have been fixed before HN even noticed. "No way to fix it
for at least a few days" seems very untrue, that department just isn't lead by
someone who cares enough about this issue to make it happen. It's not the
tweeter's fault, though.

~~~
memo_ree
Great points - also, reading between the lines of his tweets, it sounds like
the bug was pushed by a team he doesn't lead, so the best he can do is ask
them "Please fix this, people are really pissed (at my team) because of this".
But to the Image Search team, it's like, why should they do a costly rollback?
It's easier for them to just sit back and say nothing, and let AMP soak up the
blame on HN. Then they can fix the bug on their normal schedule, without their
deadlines being affected.

~~~
tbodt
Also they can't just roll anything back, the URL has been missing for almost 2
years since they rewrote the image search frontend

------
ralmidani
I got a new computer (Mac Mini) last week and, as the ritual usually goes, I
opened Safari and was about to type “google.com/chrome”, then stopped myself
and went to “getfirefox.com” instead. It’s been a while since I gave FF a
serious look, and so far I haven’t felt like I’m missing anything.

Next up, I need to change my default search engine to DDG.

What’s a good privacy-oriented, web-based email service? I’ve heard of
ProtonMail but haven’t used it.

~~~
nothis
>What’s a good privacy-oriented, web-based email service? I’ve heard of
ProtonMail but haven’t used it.

Been Firefox user out of conviction for 10+ years, made the switch to
DuckDuckGo as my main search engine with about a year ago, no regrets. But
Gmail? It's sticky.

I have so much stuff tied to my email account and it just sucks looking for
alternatives. I'd even happily pay. The main difficulty is finding a service
that's as mature, feature-wise, as Gmail and a sensible way to migrate all my
stuff (email-logins for major websites, informing clients of the new address,
etc).

I think the best compromise is using two accounts for a couple of years,
heavily focusing on the non-Gmail one and dropping Gmail once you had no
interaction with it for a while. But all the obvious alternatives people post
don't quite cut it for me, I've been searching for ages.

~~~
californical
I've been "meaning" to switch off of Gmail for years, with all of the issues
with Google. I switched to Firefox/Safari a couple years ago, then DDG a year
ago..

Finally, a week ago, I switched my email to fastmail. Bought a new domain for
10 years explicitly for that purpose.

I'm slowly migrating everything to them... Every day or two I think of
something else that needs to be migrated, and do it. I don't feel a need to
rush because I just have them both simultaneously.

I have to say though, Fastmail feels better than Gmail in every way. The UI is
fast and snappy, looks clean (with a few themes), includes a calendar and
notes. The first month is free, so I figured I'd try it before I decided to go
all in. After about 20 minutes I was sold and bought a year subscription...

They have this really cool feature with subdomain forwarding so you can
organize things into folders automatically. As I've been migrating emails,
I've been giving each service it's own unique email address. Eg
`amazon@stores.domain.com` will automatically add the email to my "stores"
folder, and I'll see it came from Amazon. I can put unlimited anything before
the @ sign, which will be really nice for signing up for one-off forums. If
they sell my email address or send spam, I'll know exactly who did it and can
just block that address.

They also have a bunch of other features for organization like the "\+
addressing" that Gmail has. I definitely recommend checking them out though. I
feel so good having an email that won't get shut down

~~~
nothis
I've seen fastmail pop up a lot, I should definitely give it a shot. I have to
look up that subdomain forwarding, it sounds neat.

------
psanford
AMP results are annoying enough on mobile that I switched my default search
engine to duckduckgo on my phone.

~~~
ashtonkem
For reportedly being there to accelerate the web, AMP pages remain
consistently slower and less reliable than the original websites for me.

~~~
omnifischer
examples?

Every site in Germany is 10 X bigger in normal browsing compared to AMP.

~~~
catalogia
AMP might be faster if you browse the net with javascript enabled by default
and with no content blockers enabled. But if you don't do those things, AMP is
a clear net-negative.

~~~
mcv
Yeah, but Google doesn't want you to do that. You're here to watch ads, peon.

------
chrischattin
I switched all my default search to DuckDuckGo a few months ago because of
stuff like this. No regrets here. If you haven't tried it recently, give it a
shot. It's gotten tons better in the past few years. Once you get used to it,
it's as good as Google search.

~~~
alesua93
I've been using DDG as my default search engine for more or less a year now,
and tbh I find myself using the !g bang way more often than I'd like.
Basically anytime I'm searching for something dev related or anything that's
broad enough that without my personal user info it would be hard to return the
results I'm looking for. Which is kind of the crux of the issue I believe. For
everything that's wrong with Google as a company in terms of privacy-related
issues, the truth , at least for me, is that many times (not all) it ends up
being... quite convenient I guess.

YMMV though, maybe I need to step up my searching game to obtain better
results using DDG. That's definitely something I should work on.

~~~
ravenstine
Replace !g with !s to get Startpage results, which is basically proxied Google
results. Although I would advise just not relying on Google at all. The
perception is that it's better, but in recent years I've found Google results
to be total trash.

~~~
alesua93
Yeah, definitely, I'll try to replace !g with !s in the future. It is my
intention to replace whatever google services I can. But admittedly, since
this change is mostly motivated by personal ethics and a desire not to give
away my private info (as opposed to issues with the platforms themselves, in
terms of functionality), it is a bit rough to adjust to some changes.

------
rsanheim
AMP is the worst. It breaks the web and should just die.

~~~
clubsoda
Tell me about it. Our company moved to it and its been horrible with any third
party application or marketing pixel.

My boss tried to warn VPs of AMP being a nuclear option. Instead of fixing the
website they rather put a bandaid over it.

~~~
ergothus
> Our company moved to it and its been horrible with any third party
> application or marketing pixel.

Isn't that part of the point though? 3rd party marketing and tracking pixels
are NOT things that improve the experience or performance for the visitor.

~~~
AlexandrB
> 3rd party marketing and tracking pixels are NOT things that improve the
> experience or performance for the visitor.

But neither is AMP. This seems like a pure land grab to send more info to
Google and less to other adtech companies.

------
googleimagesguy
Hi all! I'm an engineer who worked on this feature. I can't speak to the
general concerns about AMP, but I can say that we didn't remove the original
url here intentionally - we actually never added it to the Images version.
Sorry for the oversight, we're working on bringing it back now!

~~~
pembrook
I’ve been trying to get a straight answer out of google for a while on this,
wondering if you can clear it up.

Does Chrome mobile’s “articles for you” section prioritize AMP content along
with Google news?

From my experience this seems to be the case. I find it alarming as the only
sites that support AMP are often the big clickbait news fear factories.
Meanwhile the little sites who never bloated their pages with tracking scripts
in the first place end up getting screwed.

------
Grimm1
Google is really showing it's anti-competitive hand here. AMP is a plague.

------
thebouv
I'd really love to hear the perspective from engineers working on this inside
of Google.

How do they perceive the work that they're doing?

Do they see the harm it causes, or do they only believe in the promise of the
good it gives?

~~~
ravenstine
It's been a while since I read the AMP project website, but my impression was
that it was written by people who drank a lot of the Kool-Aid. There's
probably a lot of people working there who believe that AMP is good, but we
can't discount the compliance created by the exorbitant pay and prestige of
working at Google.

~~~
Mindwipe
There also seems to be a healthy amount "oh, well that's more of a Google
search issue, not AMP as such so I have nothing to do with that" denialism.

I note that Terrence Eden did excellent work getting the concept of "how do
users opt out of AMP results" on to the steering group, but it is notable that
no work appears to have happened on it for more than a year now.

------
pgt
Google seems to be slowly self-immolating.

I've stopped using Google Chrome and Google Search. The only time I use Google
Search now is when DuckDuckGo doesn't quite deliver and then I do so using an
incognito window. Next step will be to ditch Gmail, and then Google Cloud &
Firebase.

This might sound silly coming from a lone developer in South Africa, but my
experience is that we live in the future, and developers with a mass intuition
is rarely wrong. If the trend continues, then in 10 years' time this will be
the popular view.

~~~
StreamBright
>> when DuckDuckGo doesn't quite deliver

Which is 90% of the time when you are looking for IT questions. Unfortunately.
I am hoping they are going to get better, it would be so good to finally stop
google search.

~~~
JoshTriplett
I use DDG exclusively, and many of my searches are technical. I haven't found
any cases where DDG fails to find something that Google finds.

I'm not suggesting that it never happens, but it's certainly not anywhere
close to 90%, or even 9%.

~~~
iso1631
The main reason I occasionally venture into google is for news -- "!gn
something specific" can return better results if I'm looking for a specific
article I recall seeing a couple of weeks ago. That said there's also far more
rubbish in the google news source, it's far less useful on the whole than DDG,
but occasionally it reveals the right result.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Ah, that makes sense.

I've generally found what I wanted via the DDG news search, but I haven't used
it enough to seriously evaluate its quality, unlike the main search engine.
I've also had reasonably good luck with "past week" or "past month" searches
on DDG, but those aren't news-specific.

------
infinityplus1
Why can't they just give a simple setting which lets users disable AMP? This
is the most annoying about being forced to use AMP.

~~~
inetknght
Who's being forced to use AMP? The user? Remember, _the user is the product_.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Basically, Google is penalizing webmasters who do NOT support AMP (also by
rewarding competitors who DO support it); if you depend on Google search
results for a significant portion of your traffic, not having AMP will impact
your business.

~~~
inetknght
Problem here is twofold. First Google being anticompetitive. Second being
companies thinking they need Google for their income.

~~~
rusticpenn
The companies are mostly right though.

------
markosaric
Time to share this one again before it's too late:

How to fight back against Google AMP [https://markosaric.com/google-
amp/](https://markosaric.com/google-amp/)

And the original thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21712733](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21712733)

------
tyingq
I wonder if it's being A/B tested. I still see the URL, and can click on it
from the little "i" icon at the top left. Android, Chrome, USA.

Surely a terrible idea though. AMP already has a PR problem.

~~~
epistasis
A/B testing whether or not people have finally gotten tired of fighting for
the web. Once they can go for a few months without anybody speaking up,
they'll move on to further stages.

~~~
teraku
It's illegal to do that in the EU, so probably only affects non-EU
terretories.

~~~
bootlooped
A/B testing is illegal in the EU?

~~~
teraku
Not A/B testing, but not showing the original link is illegal in the EU.

------
kittiepryde
My unpopular opinion. I love AMP. Mobile internet for me ( maybe on worse
devices ), was becoming a non-thing for me. AMP let's me check the news again.

My opinion might be because I don't have much understanding of it as a
framework, but from a non power user perspective, I've found the UX to be
amazing.

~~~
Bahamut
AMP in part made me switch to Apple News - it's buggy and doesn't respect
browser history (major usability failure on Google's part).

~~~
macintux
Regrettably Apple News will occasionally drop sections of the content it
doesn’t know how to render properly, leaving the news article bafflingly
incomplete, and usually it’s not obvious that something is missing.

~~~
reaperducer
It is a problem, but depending on what publications you read, how often it
happens can vary.

The reason is that, like AMP, Apple News only supports a subset of HTML. It's
up to the publishers to adhere to those limitations. Some choose not to make a
special Apple version or change their main content to be Apple-friendly, so
Apple News does what it can to show what it can.

It's not ideal, but it's better than being reliant on Google.

Also, if you see an article that doesn't look right, there's an option to
report that article to Apple. One of the options is "Content missing."

------
benja123
I have never liked AMP and I really don't like this. I also find myself
wondering if this has any security implications.

I mean if AMP effectively disguises the original URL could it not be used for
phishing?

To be clear I know very little about AMP and if this is the case

Regardless it just adds complexity and makes it that much harder to teach
people what is an acceptable URL when it comes to email links etc...

~~~
SquareWheel
It uses Signed HTTP Exchanged.

[https://blog.amp.dev/2018/05/08/a-first-look-at-using-web-
pa...](https://blog.amp.dev/2018/05/08/a-first-look-at-using-web-packaging-to-
improve-amp-urls/)

~~~
benja123
Thanks!

------
typenil
For anyone on the fence about using DuckDuckGo instead of Google, if you don't
find what you're looking for, it's easy to revert to a Google search by typing
"!google" with your query.

DDG has improved a lot with time, so I almost never fall back to Google
anymore.

For some technical searches that DDG can't find, I find codeseek.com is better
than both Google and DDG

~~~
npmaile
if typing "!google" is too much of a hassle "!g" also works. you can also do
pretty much any letter and it will search another service from bing to yahoo
to images to maps to wikipedia to whatever.

~~~
goblin89
I often use !hn in DuckDuckGo, which redirects to this website’s search.

------
alextheparrot
Started using DuckDuckGo just to avoid AMP, the search results aren’t as good,
but at least the results are usable.

------
cletus
Previously I'd considered AMP a storm in a teacup. Now I think it's enough
that I'll switch my mobile device to DDG, something I thought I'd never say.

For some reason on my iPhone AMP pages just don't fit on the screen. Maybe
it's because I have a large default zoom/font. But this actually makes them
unreadable because pinch-to-zoom is almost always disabled. I have a bookmark
workaround for that but honestly I don't think it's ever worked.

Only recently did I discover a workaround for this: on Safari you can force
touch to bring up a preview of the original site then click on it to bring
that up.

If this change breaks that functionality then something has to change. That
could be by using a browser to pretend to be a desktop browser or it could be
DDG. I'm not sure yet.

Why do I, as a user, not have the ability to opt out of this horrible broken
mess?

I'm all for having Web pages that render fast. I really hope for Google's sake
that rendering speed alone is what affects ranking and there isn't some boost
for AMP directly because that has anticompetitive written all over it. It
would be forcing sites to adopt AMP or suffer downranking (to be fair,
companies are typically terrible at designing fast-rendering websites).

So if if DDG gets me out of AMP and I can somehow set it so I get Google
search results by default (instead of Bing) without using !g on every search
then honestly at this point, I'm in.

------
logicallee
I Googled "how to turn off amp results" and the top article is a 2017
article[1] that lists some workarounds, such as using duckduckgo or installing
DeAMPify, "an Android app that lets you bypass AMP links so you can always
load the original link." As far as a first-party way to disable it, the
article says:

>"Late last year [2016], Google said that it’s working to let users disable
AMP in Google search, but there doesn’t seem to be any official kill switch
yet. Meanwhile, you can use any of the above workarounds to get around Google
AMP pages."

Can any Googler chime in on why it would take more than 4 years to figure out
the code to turn off a feature like AMP for signed-in users who don't want it?
I would have thought that this is something anyone could do in 20 minutes, but
I do realize that Google has thousands of highly paid and experienced
engineers so maybe there is something that takes a lot longer, that I didn't
realize. Could you shed some insight on what makes this difficult?

[1] [https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/disable-google-amp-google-
sear...](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/disable-google-amp-google-search-
android-iphone/)

------
noad
This is exactly what people speculated would eventually happen when they first
announced AMP. Google continues to disappoint and harm the internet in a very
predictable way, year after year.

------
watwut
Personally, I hate AMP. Especially when it comes to reddit results.

------
dtcaciuc
If I tap on the share button on the top right of the AMP frame, it seems that
I am able to copy the original URL (although it's the specialized
amp.knowyourmeme.com version of the page)

------
dastx
For those who are okay to install addons on your browser, there is Redirect
AMP to HTML addon[0] on Firefox. I'm sure there is something similar for
Chrome.

[0] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/amp2html/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/amp2html/)

------
axegon_
I never looked deep into this but I remember that back in the day there was
the "View original image" link in image search and I think they got rid of it
because of some EU directive that stated that they can't link an image
directly but rather provide a link to the original source, that is the
website? Or am I completely wrong?

~~~
arusahni
That was a result of the Getty Images lawsuit [1].

1: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-
after...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after-google-
removes-view-image-button-bowing-to-getty/)

------
wombat-man
Sharing AMP links is the worst. I probably wouldn't mind if they had a way to
provide short links that cardified okay in slack, but lately I've been just
sharing the link to the original.

if anyone else prefers to share the original link, you can probably find the
article by searching on duckduckgo. Using their search more often now these
days.

------
coronadisaster
Haven't tried it, but there is this Firefox extension to help you stay away
from AMP: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/amp2html/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/amp2html/)

------
adrianmonk
I can kind of understand why Google wants to do AMP. Mobile web performance
and all. It probably scores better at some metric that someone believes
passionately in (to the exclusion of all else). I don't think it's worthwhile
overall, but I can understand it.

What I can't understand is why it has to be managed _so badly_. Just put the
damn URL there for people who want it. Allow opt out for people who want that.
Super easy.

Even if the plan is to cynically use leverage to railroad through adoption of
AMP, you're not going to win over the people who despise AMP. There's nothing
to be be gained by twisting arms like this. You're only making enemies. Just
throw a bone to the people don't like AMP, and the rest of the people will go
along with AMP anyway because they don't care.

------
lonelappde
Correction:

The original URL is provided by the Share button on the right. But it's not a
link. (To visit it, you'd have to copy and paste back into the browser. You
can't share a link to the app you are shared from )

So the _URL_ is available as always, but the _link_ is not.

------
abraxas
For those of us who had no fucking idea what AMP stands for here's the link:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Mobile_Pages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Mobile_Pages)

------
projproj
If you're looking for a decent replacement to images.google.com, I run
[https://canweimage.com](https://canweimage.com). It gets results from
Wikimedia Commons. There's also just
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page).
I built canweimage because Wikimedia Commons used to be harder to navigate
(once you searched, you then had to click through categories and subcategories
to see image results). Looking at it just now, and that doesn't seem to be the
case anymore!

------
nojito
I always chuckle to myself when people are quick to attack amazon/facebook as
being the _real_ evil companies....while google has been slowly taking over
the internet these past 10 years.

~~~
rrmm
They're all companies. They'll take as much as they can. It's just how
companies are. Don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing them.

------
anoraca
This is so unfriendly to users. I don't understand the push to obscure URLs.
They are sometimes hiding the URLs in search results also which is
infuriating. One more reason to use DuckDuckGo.

~~~
drawkbox
Another thing that is extremely annoying is the hiding of urls in Chrome.
Hiding the protocol and the rest of the url besides the domain. When you go to
click up in the url/address bar to change a section of the site the protocol
re-appears and messes you up.

Or when you click in on some mobile and the whole url disappears and you just
wanted to change part of the url.

Yes Google there are still people that want hackable urls, I remember when
that was something they pushed, clean urls that make sense so you can type in
where you are going.

AMP might be the thing that actually brings anti-trust, so not needed and very
anti-competitive using their monopoly position to stifle competition and
innovation rather than extend innovation and compete on product. Google should
reward fast sites not band-aid it with an anti-competitive AMP. AMP also
creates lots more work for content companies and it is only useful for Google.
Essentially content companies are doing Google's work for them.

McKinsey and the management consultants have taken over large swaths of Google
with stuff like this and AMP.

Here's hoping some pirate product people/engineers put up a flag and start
returning to product over management metrics.

~~~
umaar
Yeah the hiding of the protocol in the URL was a pain to deal with. I updated
Chrome today and looks like there's a way to turn this off:

1\. Enable chrome://flags/#omnibox-context-menu-show-full-urls

2\. Right click the address bar

3\. Select 'Always show full URLs'

Instead of seeing: news.ycombinator.com You'll now see:
[https://news.ycombinator.com](https://news.ycombinator.com)

I made a Tell HN post about it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322705)

~~~
drawkbox
Looks like they finally added it back in to version 83 of Chrome with the flag
and then setting, it was originally removed in version 70.

The long dark days of url shrouding and obscuring are over. We won the battle.

------
minikites
Google is an evil and destructive force in technology and it genuinely baffles
me that people trust their email and smartphone operating systems to be
guarded by an advertising company.

------
Mindwipe
It is a huge shame that the AMP AC seems to have completely dropped any work
on the following focus card on their Github -
[https://github.com/ampproject/meta-
ac/projects/1#card-194203...](https://github.com/ampproject/meta-
ac/projects/1#card-19420310)

Overwhelmingly that's the main user request for AMP. The lack of progress and
the fact that it disappeared from the 2020 priorities with no progress speaks
volumes.

------
techbio
I’m not an expert in the details of Chrome permissions vs. other browsers, and
setting aside for the moment the market power of Google/Alphabet, this seems
fairly fixable, along the same lines as email spam or ad tracker networks, and
a clear case for “caveat emptor”.

How about rewriting any AMP urls in the browser location bar to redirect to
the canonical location as an end-user extension, or as an in-content script?

------
pkamb
I don't understand why Reddit specifically puts up with AMP.

They already have a "good" mobile site. The AMP pages _break_ reddit results
and result in the constant annoyance of having to dismiss "Open in App?"
banners both in the AMP view and on the mobile site. Everyone hates the AMP
page. Why keep it? You already invested a ton of resources in the fast/nice
mobile app...

------
tobyhinloopen
AMP is a terrifying solution to an awful problem.

------
gtm1260
Am I the only one who likes AMP? Like 99% of news websites etc. are so
overloaded with crap to the point where it's impossible to read them on
mobile. I'm glad to see an AMP link, it means the content will load quickly.

I feel like we need a solution that works for everyone, not just news
companies and search giants, but users as well!

------
doener
"Just heard from the Image Search team that this is an oversight and they'll
add the feature! Sorry about that and thanks for the report!"

[https://twitter.com/cramforce/status/1265688067706245120](https://twitter.com/cramforce/status/1265688067706245120)

------
dontbenebby
Seems like a short sighted move since image search is one of the few times
I'll jump from DuckDuckGo to Google. Probably won't bother if I can't pull the
source image url

[https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=google+images](https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=google+images)

------
fossuser
I could buy their reasoning for AMP and site speed, if and only if they make
it easy to get the URL.

When it first came out you couldn't get the URL either and they added it after
people complained.

The removal seems to make it clear that it's really about control and keeping
things within the confines of their own system.

------
thdrdt
Is AMP popular in the US only? (I am from the Netherlands)

As far as I know I have never seen an AMP website. I use DDG as search engine
but !g a lot, so I assume I should have stumbled upon an AMP site at least
once.

But maybe it is also browser related? When I go to amp.cnn.com I get
redirected to editions.cnn.com in Firefox.

~~~
mthoms
AMP is "Accelerated Mobile Pages". Are you on mobile?

~~~
thdrdt
Yes I am.

------
pixelpoet
To think their motto used to be "don't be evil"... pretty insidious in
retrospect.

~~~
Cthulhu_
The thing is, from their point of view they aren't evil; they are "making the
web faster", they say (and they're not wrong) that most sites are so full of
crap like trackers and adverts that it negatively impacts your browsing
experience.

This Twitter post costs me 1.6MB of bandwidth and it keeps pinging for more
stuff, and that's with an ad blocker enabled. While we're talking just bytes
in terms of the main message.

Google is selling it as an improvement to the web, but that also says a lot
about websites.

But this has been Google's strategy for a while now; they push technology that
make the web faster and accessible to more people (like Chrome, HTTP/2 and 3,
webp/webm, google DNS, google fiber (discontinued), Android, etc) and score
goodwill, but at the same time they know if people can browse faster they will
run into Google ads more often, earning them more money.

AMP is no different; if a site that doesn't even have google ads takes 10
seconds to load, they earn nothing. If the same content takes <1 second to
load, WITH google ads, they earn money. And they earn money more often because
people can consume more content instead of wait for things to load.

~~~
ninkendo
Amp-the-standard is not the same thing as amp-the-google-UX.

I'd love for sites to adopt AMP, as a standard for web design which leads to
very lean sites without content pop-in. That'd be awesome! Give me a little
icon next to the search result that says "this site is AMP certified" so I
know it'll be fast.

But what I don't love, is that Google uses AMP as a trojan horse to keep me
inside the google search results as I browse the internet, by:

\- Rehosting the amp sites on their CDN

\- Pre-rendering sites I haven't clicked yet to make them load faster

\- Putting the site in some pop-over div which makes me feel like I'm still in
the google results (so I can pop right back quickly and spend more time on
google!)

\- Breaking the swipe gesture

\- Breaking the URL bar

\- Breaking my phone's auto-hide for the URL bar

\- etc etc

------
ironmagma
OK, see if we keep using Google for image search, then. Bing was already
better at that anyway.

~~~
Aachen
Google gives me slightly better results (sometimes much better, much of the
time about equal), but I prefer Bing's interface. If you want to stop using
Google, Bing Images is a good option to replace the vast majority of image
searches.

------
googlemustdie
In my opinion everyone should do the following:

\- Install an Ad Blocker, so Google will not be able to make money on your
visits and chances you'll get a malware from ads will decrease \- If you use
Android, you can install Firefox and add uBlock Origin as extension, because
Google abuse their power and prevent people from installing Ad blocker on
Android. \- Stop paying money for Google Ads \- Stop using Gmail. There are
plenty of alternatives (ex. outlook.com) \- Use other search engines (bing.com
and yandex.com). I noticed they work in many cases better than Google. For
example, yandex.com is much better for semi-legal content which is blocked on
Google and not available at all. \- Stop using GCP. AWS and Azure are the
better cloud providers. \- Stop supporting AMP on your website \- Don't pay
money for integrating Google Maps into your website. There are much cheaper
alternatives. \- Office 365 is years ahead of Google Docs.

------
Egoist
Out of all Google projects that they put to the grave, they commit to this
stupid service.

------
Angostura
AMP is the _one_ reason why Duck Duck Go is now my default search engine on
mobile.

------
ibdf
There are so many times when using google news app where the story half loads,
or the main part of the story is missing... now I can't even go to the actual
site and read the new because the link is gone. Goodbye google news.

------
rjmunro
What about Facebook instant articles and Apple News? Are these better than
AMP?

------
wortwart
Okay, so besides all the "told you so", "Google is evil" and "I hate AMP":

Has anybody actually seen the behavior described in this tweet by some
anonymous guy? Because I can't confirm it so far.

~~~
ken
Yes, I tried the query in the sample, and it works exactly the same for me
here. Are you saying you also get a link to the original URL in the popup?

~~~
wortwart
I just tested again with Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi and Firefox on Android and can
confirm now, too (except for Firefox). First I only checked on desktop where
you get to the original website.

------
tripzilch
It's not often any more that when I search for an image that Google Image
Search is my last stop. I use DDG, so when I need an image I try any of !gi
!bi !yi or just !i

Generally Google Images are the worst.

------
kelvin0
Non-web coder here.

I searched 'google amp', and I can't really understand what it's supposed to
do?

Can anyone explain what problem AMP is supposed solve, or what features it
brings to the table?

~~~
radium3d
Amp is supposed to reduce file size and script overhead. Its seemingly
innocent goal was to speed up page loading on slower mobile devices and reduce
bandwidth usage. Google then cached entire amp versions of articles on their
servers and never load the original when searchers or Google news app users
click to read an article. It means the authors of the articles web pages never
get hit by readers. This is I think the main reason why website owners are
quite upset.

~~~
SquareWheel
You're only half right. While Amp is designed to create small pages, what's
more important is that they should be safely-embeddable. That means there's no
potentially unsafe scripts or asset requests. That why Amp uses a subset of
HTML as defined via WebComponents.

>Google then cached entire amp versions of articles on their servers

That's the Amp Cache. The cache allows vendors like Google, Microsoft, and
Cloudflare (who each run their own caches) to automatically preload these
pages in search results without there being any risk to the user. Yes, Bing
runs a copy too.

~~~
radium3d
"preloading" the entire article the way say, Google News app does for example
means that without going two touches deeper it essentially negates the user
ever needing to visit the site that originally authored the content removing
them entirely from the process. It's not very content-creator friendly. For
that matter, why use the internet if you don't trust anyone but Google,
Microsoft, Cloudflare, etc? Insanity. The internet may as well be considered
broken and useless if you can't trust your web browser to at least minimally
protect you from scripts automatically hijacking your computer with an "unsafe
script".

Also, I did mention scripts but left it short and sweet with the limited
support of scripting that AMP has to explain AMP in more simple terms.

~~~
SquareWheel
> ... it essentially negates the user ever needing to visit the site that
> originally authored the content removing them entirely from the process.

Yes, in this sense they are acting as a CDN. The original website is still
authoring the content however.

> The internet may as well be considered broken and useless if you can't trust
> your web browser to at least minimally protect you from scripts
> automatically hijacking your computer with an "unsafe script".

It's not just about malware. I'm sure most users would not be comfortable with
websites being able to track them after simply performing search results.
Actually going to a website is an action with more intent behind it.

------
votes
AMP makes work easier for Google (their indexing and content presentation
process). However it's presented as something that makes it easier for us the
general public.

------
wnevets
AMP is hated so much by HN and yet content creators are ___opting in_ __to use
it. They must be getting something out of it.

~~~
Kiro
HN is not representative.

------
bastardoperator
[https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle](https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle).

------
clhodapp
This seems like the kind of thing that will be labeled (maybe rightly, maybe
falsely) as a "mistake" and fixed... It really seems like if this AMP proxy
stuff is going to get forced down our throats, then viewing the original
version needs to be integrated at the protocol level and exposed out through
the browser UI, not the website (which would also make it possible for non-
Google browsers to opt out, as an extra bonus). Otherwise, this sort of thing
is just going to keep on happening.

------
olivierduval
Interestingly : could this lead to Google violating copyright laws ?

As long as Google is "only" a search engine, referencing other websites, it
can get away with copyright laws by stating that he's not infringing, only
showing infringing website...

But if Google serve the image by itself, with its own domain, doesn't it make
him responsible for its own copyright infringement ? Maybe that we be a way to
kill the behemoth... or at least this stupid "feature"...

------
strictnein
Another one of those weird "mistakes" that always, always flows towards Google
and against everyone else.

------
StyloBill
I see a lot of hate for AMP, and rightly so. I've been able to get rid of it
completely on my Android device with two tricks:

\- Changed my browser for Kiwi browser : very close to Chrome but with some
neat features, one of them being to automatically redirect AMP links to
original links

\- deAMPify is a way to redirect AMP links from any other app than the browser

I really wish there was a way to opt-out of AMP as on iOS you're definitely
SOL

------
dzonga
if you're on Android use Firefox as your main browser, if you wanna avoid the
shit called AMP. on iOS safari does a little better on showing the url.
Changing search engines to say Bing, is not really helpful. Bing on chromium
android, still shows AMP pages.

------
monadic2
Is there any way to get the url out of an image search anymore without going
through AMP?

------
rkalla
Slow trek back to the AOL-style walled garden 2.0 but paved with good
intentions?

------
tilolebo
Is it an iOS thing? I can't reproduce this on my laptop using Firefox

------
ape4
In mobile Google News you don't see URLs either (which bugs me)

------
eggsnbacon1
and now they own the content. Links will be created to that google URL that
last decades. And google can replace the data at that link with whatever they
want, whenever they want.

------
Havoc
Google is overdue on regulators cracking down on their BS

------
mdrachuk
Twitter thread suggests it’s a bug that will be fixed.

AMP should die.

------
PunksATawnyFill
What is "AMP?"

Critical info that's missing.

------
mehdix
I'd guess they'll go next after DOM manipulation in browsers. It's how we
remove ads afterall.

------
grey-area
Another reason to stop using Google search

------
alfiedotwtf
How long until AMP is stAMPed out with a good ol' Anti-Trust

------
shrimpx
Antitrust suit rumors are swirling and Google is more and more boldly
manifesting its despotic tendencies, as if in defiance.

------
embracextendetc
No surprise here, Google is now full on 90's - style Microsoft, with a twist
of SJW thrown in, and hipsters everywhere.

------
CivBase

      Some website: "I did this"
      *walks away as Google approaches*
      Google: ... "I did this"
    

Seriously, though. I understand why the general public isn't pushing back
against this, but why don't I see more push back from websites? Websites
support AMP for SEO, but at this point they should be trying to redirect users
away from AMP and social media sites should be trying to automatically strip
AMP from links.

And why does the "Redirect AMP to HTML" extension on Firefox have so few
users?

------
Aachen
Wait, AMP still exists? I haven't seen it for a while now, also in google
search results (though I don't do many of those). I thought it was dead after
literally everyone thought it was a terrible idea.

I suppose I'm happy the google crawler is still banned from my domains. People
should use something else if they want good results now.

Does uBlock or privacy badger block it? It seems out of scope for those
projects so I expect I should see amp links just like anyone else. Or did they
kill it in the EU or something? I saw someone from NL wondering the same
elsewhere in the thread.

------
kerkeslager
I understand the objections to Google's actions--this is clearly a dick move
which is terrible for both users and content creators--but I'm not
understanding the AMP hate here.

As a user, AMP is great. AMP is a better implementation of the open web than
HTML is. It's a (usually) self-contained document that isn't tightly coupled
to the server it came from. You can download an AMP document, render it,
attach it to an email to a friend, etc., without having to log in or get
tracked. Unfortunately AMP is adding ad capabilities, but at least AMP allows
you to strip those out fairly trivially.

As a website, if you want your users tightly coupled to your server, just
don't implement AMP? You literally went through non-negligible effort to
implement a feature and now you're surprised and angry that it works the way
you implemented it. AMP was always a bad idea if you wanted users to be
dependent on your website for your content--this has only made it a slightly
worse idea. And by the way, if all you want is credit for your content, it's
trivial to add a linked byline to the top of your AMP.

I'm not defending Google here. They're an amoral corporation with too much
power and shouldn't be used, period. But AMP is fine.

EDIT: I can only assume the silent down-voters are people who implemented AMP
and are whining that what they implemented works. ;P

~~~
dastx
> AMP is a better implementation of the open web than HTML is.

Except the results of AMP can be done without AMP. It just requires site
owners to not put a bunch of crap on the site. Something that AMP requires you
to do.

> You can download an AMP document, render it, etc., without having to log in
> or get tracked

Except for the fact that now only Google tracks you. Also, doable without AMP.

The hate from many isn't about being a website owner. It's about being a
website user. When I click on a link of a website, I expect to go to that
website. Not stay on Google's site.

~~~
kerkeslager
> Except the results of AMP can be done without AMP. It just requires site
> owners to not put a bunch of crap on the site. Something that AMP requires
> you to do.

Sure, you can build self-contained HTML pages, but you don't have any way of
indicating to browsers or search engines that what you've created can be
consumed in that way.

> The hate from many isn't about being a website owner. It's about being a
> website user. When I click on a link of a website, I expect to go to that
> website. Not stay on Google's site.

That's a great objection to Google not linking to the original site.

It's not an objection to AMP. Nothing about AMP prevents Google from linking
to the original site.

