
I decided to disable AMP on my site - akras14
https://www.alexkras.com/i-decided-to-disable-amp-on-my-site/
======
sturmen
There's a lot of backlash against AMP on principle, which I agree with and
support. However, as a non-principled web consumer, I think AMP pages are 10x
better than the ad-filled, slow as molasses, jump-around-as-JavaSript-loads,
video autoplaying, 'stories you might like' suggested bullshit, auto-loading
20MB heaps of steaming garbage that current news sites are. I think that AMP
is a stepping stone that shows the user experience that people want but lights
a fire under web developers to give them that experience without relying on
Google's walled garden. How many stories of "Company X made a great product Y,
but Company X is anti-consumer/evil/eats puppies, so the OSS made their own
and it has grown into something great" have you heard? I think AMP is another
one.

The web has become bloated, where people use heavy JS frameworks like React to
make their blog and then load 5MB of ad JS to load 10MB autoplaying videos. I
dream of a day when static site generators like Hugo and Jekyll are the norm.
Let's flex our muscles and make that happen and show the world that AMP is
good but openness is better.

~~~
boramalper
> However, as a non-principled web consumer, I think AMP pages are 10x better
> than the ad-filled, slow as molasses, jump-around-as-JavaSript-loads, video
> autoplaying, 'stories you might like' suggested bullshit, auto-loading 20MB
> heaps of steaming garbage that current news sites are.

You don't need AMP to get rid of them though. We can appreciate that Google
_encouraged_ developers to get rid of bloat __AND __to opt-in for AMP, but
that doesn 't make AMP _technically_ superior. I think we should give a
critique of ourselves and ask why did we wait for a corporation G to push us
to get rid of the bloat we created?

~~~
sillysaurus3
_We can appreciate that Google encouraged developers to get rid of bloat AND
to opt-in for AMP, but that doesn 't make AMP technically superior._

Depends what you mean by technically superior. In terms of benchmarks, AMP
pages are lightning fast. Isn't that the only metric that matters?

~~~
boramalper
I meant that you could achieve the same by reducing the bloat, applying the
best practises etc. To be fair, Google has been encouraging people to do so
through the PageSpeed suite for quite a long time...

What I found unfair about AMP is Google preloading your AMP-enabled webpage.
So that even if your not-AMP-enabled page is equally efficient, an AMP-enabled
page would feel faster because Google preloads it in the background. And then
there is the fact that Google hosts your own content under their domain, and
all other points raised in the article.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Right, but users don't care about the reasons why it's faster. They just know
it's faster. Hence they use AMP, and AMP gains traction. We can say it's
unfair, but that's life.

If we want to defeat AMP, we have to beat it at its own game. That requires us
to come up with an alternative that's equal or faster than AMP. And clearly
we've failed as developers to push for non-bloated solutions.

It might be possible to create our own version of AMP -- to take the best
ideas from AMP and integrate it into some centralized system that isn't
controlled by Google. It'd be tough, but the alternative is to let AMP
steamroll us. A few rebellious developers aren't going to make much difference
in terms of total AMP adoption.

Even if the AMP alternative was just a standard way of stripping bloat from
websites, that might get us 50% of the way toward beating AMP.

~~~
enos_feedler
Isn't AMP itself just a standard way of stripping bloat from websites? You
could take the AMP library, include it in your web page and do anything you
want with it.

What is the precise element of AMP you are trying to beat?

~~~
sillysaurus3
I think people are uncomfortable with the idea of Google controlling every
aspect of your website down to the presentation. It'd be better for this to be
centralized and standardized independently of Google's tendrils.

Part of what makes AMP fast is the preloading, so any AMP competitor would
need to tackle that problem. You'd also need to demonstrate that websites rank
better if they use your solution. And they should, if Google plays fair. If
not, then at least this would be a public demo of that fact.

------
boramalper
The author has some very valid points against AMP from a technical standpoint,
but for me there is a single reason that is sufficient: _the Web is, and
should stay, free and open_. Indeed, I'm having really hard time trying to
understand how people can be fine with AMP while fighting for the net
neutrality and so on.

~~~
Iv
I fail to see what, in AMP, makes the web less free or open. I am usually
among the first on the stockade on invasive tech, but I have a hard time to
understand the fuss around AMP.

Yes, the cache is problematic, as it may allow Google, in a possible future,
to filter some content, censor some other or not refresh often some pages. The
thing is, if it does that, people will start using Google's caching, that's as
simple as that.

~~~
coldtea
> _I fail to see what, in AMP, makes the web less free or open._

Google serving your pages?

Hijacking your domain for the server pages and obscuring links to the original
content?

Use of a proprietary technology (whether open sourced or not, it's not a
standard)?

Abuse of power with veiled threats of punishing content publishers who are not
using recommending AMP to make their pages "fast and responsive"?

The only way to be any more against the free and open web is if they made
Google search a web proxy where you never get access to the underlying page...

~~~
jacquesm
> The only way to be any more against the free and open web is if they made
> Google search a web proxy where you never get access to the underlying
> page...

Give it some time. They are pulling more and more content into the search
results pages which has roughly that effect, since people no longer click
through.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Interestingly, assuming it works well, that's kind of exactly what I want as a
user. Whenever I'm searching for one of the following (which form a large
fraction of my searches):

    
    
      - definition of a word
      - lyrics of a song
      - summary of a movie
      - phone number and/or address of a business
      - distance between places
      - unit or currency conversions
      - weather
    

I have no desire to "click through" to anything. I want my piece of
information, a raw fact. That I have to select from various providers, each
with their own (non-standardized) UX and possibly various "value-added" crap
like ads and popups, is at best a nuisance, at worst a big time-waster. In
this way, the "content providers" are becoming annoying middlemen between me
and the information I seek.

So while I don't want to see Google monopolizing the Internet, I also don't
like the model in which information is served by individual web pages (which
can, and do, disappear all the time and get replaced by something different).
So I wonder - how can we promote and develop the open web, while also making
it better and more productive for people?

Maybe if people served data streams instead of web pages, things would be
easier? Related, I'm all for every kind of way of taking control over the way
a page looks _away_ from their authors. The Web is increasingly becoming a
place for designers to show off, and this wastes both users' time and
resources. Ad blockers, noscript and reader modes are huge wins in this space,
but I think we need more. Maybe some self-hosted auto scrappers that would
help me answer my information queries _without_ actually visiting full pages?

~~~
coldtea
> _I have no desire to "click through" to anything. I want my piece of
> information, a raw fact._

Do you also want the original content creators to starve and die off and the
only competent content source left to be either Google's archive or Google's
lacklustre service for the same thing?

~~~
TeMPOraL
As I said many times in discussions about ad-blockers - I think that content
that can't exist in a non-ad-supported way can stop existing, we'll all be
better off. Almost anything that's valuable on-line is either a marketing
expense or done pro bono.

Also, I didn't mean I want a Google-dominated reality. Only said that this
particular feature - content in search results - is a step in the _right_
direction; it showcases a better way to use the Web. The reality I want is
made of free and open-source tools doing that, not Google.

~~~
ksk
> I think that content that can't exist in a non-ad-supported way can stop
> existing, we'll all be better off.

I'm not sure what is stopping you from doing that now. You can blacklist
domains that serve ads and stop visiting them. Or even better yet, hire
someone to write a browser plugin that blocks websites with ads, should be
fairly trivial to do. And release the source code so others can benefit.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's even simpler and I alerady do it - all it takes is to install an _ad
blocker_.

~~~
ksk
Right, I thought you were principled. My mistake !!

------
gizmo
AMP is bad and should be resisted. It is an attack on the distributed nature
of the web.

The web is slow because every page of text comes with megabytes of javascript
cruft to spy on users and serve ads. The solution is to make web pages that
don't suck.

AMP puts even more power in the hands of Google. Just say no.

------
TekMol
To me, AMP is the same wallet garden that Facebook is.

Google and Facebook both say: "Give us your content. But without the crap.
Just the content. Since we don't allow crap, users prefer the experience over
here. So your content will have more readers then on your own domain.".

And for some reason publishers are crazy enough to do that. Instead of
removing the crap on their own domains in the first place.

~~~
Chris2048
you are forced to login to FB, is the same true with AMP?

~~~
TekMol
Whatever Google wants you to do to access the content. Once it is on their
domain, they have full control over it.

~~~
Chris2048
so, do you need to log on to access AMPs content?

~~~
jhasse
Not yet.

~~~
type0
What a relief.

------
apeace
> It “traps” users on Google. If user were to click “x” in the screenshot
> above, they will be taken back to Google search results. A normal redirect
> would have landed users on actual BBC site, maximizing their chances of
> staying on that site. Instead, AMP makes it easier for users to return to
> Google.

As a user, this is what I want. I don't care about the BBC's site, I care
about what I searched for. If I want to see their front page, I'll go to
bbc.com.

I think this article (and most AMP-bashing articles) are mostly fluff about
how Google is "taking over" and "forcing" people down a certain path. When in
reality everybody knows this is helping users.

As I've said many times: propose a better solution for users to be able to
load article content very quickly.

The real, valid issues I'm seeing mentioned in this article are:

* Links are to google.com, which really screws up sharing.

* Apparently images and scrolling can be wonky, though I have never noticed this myself (and sounds like it could be easily solved[0] if it's true).

So again, if you can solve this problem for users in a free, publisher-opt-in,
global way without the links pointing to a third party, please share your
solution.

By the way, if you use CloudFlare, you can enable AMP without breaking normal
links[1]. It is only the Google search engine that breaks links for AMP, not
AMP itself.

I do hope that Google adds an option in your account settings to opt-out of
AMP results. That way the detractors can turn it off, and everyone else can be
happy that pages load in < 1 second instead of 4-5 seconds.

[0]
[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml)

[1] [https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-
mobile/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/accelerated-mobile/)

~~~
IshKebab
> scrolling can be wonky

Last time this came up someone linked to a Google employee submitting a bug
report to Apple about the scrolling. Their response was "that's how it's
supposed to work - the rest of the system is wrong and we will fix that". So
iPhone users might not have much choice anyway soon!

Kind of reminds me of how terrible mouse acceleration is on OSX, and how Apple
gradually removed all the options for fixing it - now the only option is to
install a completely different commercial mouse driver (SteerMouse).

~~~
mikeash
I'd be shocked if Apple's official stance was that tapping the status bar to
scroll to the top of a page is wrong and should be fixed.

~~~
ihuman
The person you are replying to is talking about the scroll speed.

------
omnifischer
@alexkras Sorry this comes from me in Nigeria using a second-hand MotoG
(1.Gen). May be your website is not loading 23 trackers + unnecessary js. But
many websites, load such crap. Please especially in third-world, we have so
poor phones. Only google-CDN avoids all these. (yes, google does track me but
we do not all have unlimited bandwidth).

~~~
akras14
Thank you for your response, and I am glad you find helpful and I am sorry
that I speak up so much about it. Use cases like this is the only reason I've
kept AMP on for so long.

Have you tried disabling your JavaScript and if so could you share your
experience with that?

~~~
omnifischer
Well thanks. Many websites do not work without js. Also, I can everytime go to
settings (android/chromium) and disable js. But a standard user? She/he does
not know much. Pays a lot for data + have possibilty of nagging install my app
in lower section of page. google-amp-CDN solves a lot.

------
madeofpalk
> On iPhone, AMP seems to override the default browser scrolling. As a result
> scrolling of AMP pages feels off.

Good news! iOS 11 fixes this. Safari actually has an inconsistent scrolling
speed compared to the rest of the OS. iOS 11 makes all Safari pages scroll at
the same speed as AMP sites (-webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch)

Also important distinction for people to remember - AMP is two products:

\- CDN with preloading pages in Google Search results

\- Framework/guidelines for building performant results

The 'morals' and impacts to the 'free and open web' of these two are
completely different.

~~~
cdubzzz
Re: two products, I realized this but never really thought about it. Can one
self-host an AMP (framework) implementation? Does Google still promote such
content, even if it isn't part of their CDN?

~~~
madeofpalk
Sure. It's just a stricter subset of HTML and a JS library for custom
components. Self host it.

No, Google won't give you the special AMP-bolt - nor should they because they
can't provide the instant load as they can for other AMP sites that they self-
host on their CDN.

~~~
cdubzzz
That's where I have trouble accepting AMP. I love the concept and Google's
support would be huge, but Google doesn't seem to be truly promoting making
the mobile web better with AMP. They are promoting making the mobile web
better with their CDN (i.e. by centralizing/controlling the content).

------
javindo
I have a visual impairment and one of the things I love about Chrome on
Android is the ability to override sites blocking pinch to zoom (i.e. "force
enable pinch to zoom").

AMP, also made by Google, seems to somehow get around this browser setting,
making AMP sites unreadable and therefore completely useless to me.

Why does Google have these obvious discrepancies between their own products?

~~~
ClassyJacket
Google's approach to design has always seemed to be to wall off a bunch of
teams in separate soundproof rooms with no communication with each other,
meetings, or contact with the outside world. Also they're only allowed to use
iPhones.

This is the only way I can imagine we ended up with 437 different messaging
apps and counting, and the problem you described.

~~~
fgandiya
> Also they're only allowed to use iPhones

Why is that? Seems a bit ironic...

------
runn1ng
Funny thing is - I, as a reader, _love_ AMP sites. If a website offers AMP, I
will prefer it from normal thing.

It has less ads, less bloat, better signal/noise ratio, and the AMP websites
look pleasant to eye. So I prefer them even on desktop, ironically.

I still have the issues with Google's AMP caching. But AMP itself is _great_.

~~~
romanovcode
You can use Firefox and have 0 ads with uBlock Origin.

~~~
runn1ng
AMP sites still look better.

I am using this simple extension that shows me when a website has AMP version
and I switch to it (not sure if there is an extension that does this
automatically). Doesn't work 100% though

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/amplifier-
ampcanon...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/amplifier-ampcanonical-
sw/ennckgigejppolagdoadgaaodkhopjnb/related?hl=cs)

edit:

oh, this one seems to do it automatically. Nice

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%E2%9A%A1%EF%B8%8F...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%E2%9A%A1%EF%B8%8F-desktop-
amp/igokgmnkplcfgnegidccbgmlnecaffhh/related)

~~~
yoz-y
The problem that the tech to make any page look like an amp page existed long
before amp. But Google, rather than heavily penalising heavy websites decided
to push AMP. They could have just pushed for normal HTML but no, now everybody
has to write two versions of the pages. (Granted, à cms can handle generating
AMP alongside RSS and so on)

~~~
runn1ng
Yeah, everyone can do non-bloated websites that load fast and look good, but
nobody does. Market doesn't value those? I don't know.

AMP is a good idea, unfortunately it needs strong actors like Google or
Twitter to push it.

------
jacquesm
Why would anybody enable it to begin with?

There is absolutely no reason for sites such as the one linked here to have
AMP enabled. It's a pox on the web and Google has enough power as it is. The
sooner AMP dies the better. If you want your site to load faster _get rid of
the cruft_.

~~~
joeblau
I enabled it on [https://www.gitignore.io](https://www.gitignore.io) a few
months ago because it suggested that it would improve my mobile users
experience. After posts like these, I think it's time to take it back down.

~~~
Bartweiss
Only an anecdote, but AMP trashes my mobile experience. Using Chrome on
Android (so it ought to be good...) it rewrites back-button functionality, so
that even after I've changed through 5 different pages, a single 'back' press
takes me all the way off the site to Google search results. It also eats a
bunch of screen real estate with the AMP bar for longer than the normal
address bar.

------
dayjah
There's a deep irony in AMP also, purely anecdotally it doesn't seem to help
with slow connections. I'm traveling and as such my US carrier restricts me to
2G speeds while roaming somehow, which is resulting in me seeing a lot of
butchered pages. As the author mentions:

> AMP tries to load an image only when it becomes visible to the user,
> rendering a white square instead of the image. In my experience I’ve seen it
> fail fairly regularly, leaving the article with an empty white square
> instead of the image.

Text content is very fast, but images either don't load or partially load
making the reading experience pretty poor.

~~~
jsnell
You're saying that AMP doesn't help with slow connections, based on AMP not
loading all resources on 2G. But you're missing the data point for non-AMP
pages on 2G. Are you sure it's not even worse?

It's hard to believe how bloated many modern websites are, before trying to
load them over 2G. We're talking megabytes of data and tens of connections to
display what should be a 20kB of text.

~~~
acdha
AMP puts 100KB of JavaScript in the initial render path, and a bunch of CSS.
That doesn't mean that other sites cannot be worse but it means that there's
no way to make an AMP page which doesn't require transferring at least that
much data.

I notice this fairly regularly in marginal network coverage (subway
tunnels/platforms) where AMP pages load no faster than any well-optimized site
unless the stars are aligned and you actually get a cache hit.

~~~
niutech
Keep in mind that this AMP JS library is being loaded from the CDN only once
for all AMP pages, then cached in the browser.

~~~
acdha
If that works. In my experience, you're eating the initial DNS lookup,
connection and SSL setup, etc. more frequently than expected.

The general rule about inclining render-blocking resources matters here, too.

------
pokermike
The author is dead-on. I wish more publishers would resist and stop supporting
AMP. As an end-user I dislike its UX and how it obfuscates the actual source
in links I send and receive. Its man-in-the-middle approach is also highly
undesirable.

I've found one way to mostly work around it while still using Google as my
default search engine and that is to use encrypted.google.com. Obviously this
doesn't remove AMP from links sent to me but it's something.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Google closes that loophole.

------
cdnsteve
Since your site is actually going through Google's cache, they could add any
additional tracking, etc they like, I'm sure they're already doing this. If
you don't run Adsense or Google Analytics or anything else Google JS already
on your site this gives them a new opportunity to further track users
behaviour with a seemingly "friendly" mobile method. It's all about tracking
users and selling more ads while keeping eyeballs on Google. You're giving up
control of your own site and brand, at a great expense, for their benefit.

No thanks.

~~~
Jyaif
> I'm sure they're already doing this.

Could you verify that? It should be a matter of popping open the Developer
tools.

~~~
LunaSea
Well since the AMP cache is hosted exclusively by Google they already have the
request logs to all those files. That contains your User-Agent header, your IP
address, language and maybe cookies if they set those in the future.

------
ilmiont
Good! I stand firmly against AMP and the centralisation of the web, it's a
predatory move to increase Google's prevalence online, and one I will not be
supporting with any of my upcoming projects.

~~~
mondoshawan
You remember Akamai, right? AMP is just another CDN. Back in the 90s, when
Akamai was fighting to establish themselves, you'd see tons of fetches from
hosts like a123.d.akamai.com on big name properties like CNN. Nowadays it's
pretty much hidden, and pervasive.

Google is attempting to entrench a reverse proxy cache the same way Akamai has
for years. AMP is nothing new. The only difference here is that they make it
obvious you're using a CDN, whereas Akamai is almost completely transparent
and runs close to 80-90% of the traffic of the "open" web -- you just don't
know about it.

~~~
LunaSea
Yeah but Akamai is optional. Google's CDN / cache in AMP isn't. Big
difference.

~~~
Gigablah
How is Akamai optional for a user? If you're saying that it's optional for
publishers, then your argument doesn't make sense since AMP is optional for
publishers as well (I mean, the author disabled it and all).

~~~
LunaSea
It's not when the technology gives you an advantage in search ranking through
the AMP green square in the search results and the quick answer tiles.

------
athenot
Maybe I don't understand AMP, but what value does it bring over having a very
lean CSS and keep JS to the strict minimum? Last time I checked, a plain
vanilla HTML page with a bit of embedded CSS (and perhaps a few _async_ JS
functions for stats) is lightning fast even on mobile.

~~~
adtac
That's the problem: no one is using plain vanilla HTML pages with lean JS/CSS
anymore. Just go to any news website, disable your cache, disable any
adblockers you might have and see the total data transferred or number of
network requests.

Example: [http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/26/middleeast/western-wall-
is...](http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/26/middleeast/western-wall-israel-
netanyahu/index.html)

That link is in the frontpage of cnn.com right now. I disabled my cache,
disabled uBlock and refreshed the page. 329 network requests and 3.9 megabytes
of data transfer later, the page is still loading.

------
xbmcuser
Amp was the reply to Facebook articles the problem was because Facebook pages
loaded faster more people were posting and sharing Facebook pages which is
worse than Google Amp.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Back when FB release FB Instant, it increased my engagement with shared links
significantly. Usually, on a phone browser, the thought of clicking on a link
which would navigate away from the app and load a heavy full-fledged website
would make me not want to click on shared links at all.

But with the lightning symbol next to Instant-supported links? Click right
away. In the worst case, if the content is bad, you will back where you were
in a second.

------
romanovcode
The fact that website content is stored on Google servers and being served
from Google is just disgusting.

~~~
ehsankia
Giving you free hosting all across the world, much closer to your users, is
disgusting?

Unless you're hosting a webserver on your computer, your server is most likely
being hosted in the cloud somewhere (aka some random computer somewhere in the
world). How is it being on a Google server, instead of company X's server,
suddenly disgusting?

~~~
int_19h
Because such centralization gives Google immense power. The sheer potential
censorship implications alone are very concerning, for example.

~~~
ehsankia
By that logic, does AWS have huge amount of power? Why does it matter what
server the content is hosted on? Aren't almost all websites hosted on a remote
server? The only difference is Google gets to choose what shows up on their
search, and they always had that control anyway.

~~~
kuschku
Yes, AWS has a huge amount of power, and no, they shouldn’t have it. You need
an economy of small businesses to allow innovation and startups. No startup
can compete in an economy full of big players.

------
edent
> Do you own a WordPress site? Turn AMP off or don’t enable it in the first
> place.

A warning - I turned off the AMP plug in and it effectively removed my site
from Google for a week or so.

[https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/11/removing-your-site-from-
amp...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/11/removing-your-site-from-amp/)

The Google cache takes ages to clear away all the now-dead links and will
serve 404s to your users. A nice incentive to stay trapped in their
monoculture.

~~~
mthoms
I'm curious, besides the short term problem, how was your ranking affected
overall?

~~~
edent
Hard to say. The 404s have dropped off, and I still appear in the results. But
I'm not sure of any way to tell definitively.

------
RKearney
> On iPhone, AMP seems to override the default browser scrolling. As a result
> scrolling of AMP pages feels off.

Oddly enough Apple is changing the scrolling behavior in Safari for iOS 11 to
scroll how the amp pages do.

[https://www.macrumors.com/2017/05/22/scrolling-changes-
comin...](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/05/22/scrolling-changes-coming-to-
mobile-safari/)

------
superasn
I think every site should get an amp logo in Google search results and
preference (same as an amp site) if the load time of the page is under 100ms.
So now you have a choice, either DIY or use Google's tech to get it.

This way will create dozens of tech companies competing with AMP focused on
making the web faster - the end result that Google supposedly wants and
everyone wins!

~~~
akras14
Great idea

------
pavement
AMP has all the charisma of Silverlight. When I see it, I am impelled away
from it, and toward anything closer to normal, no matter how ugly or slow.

------
ENGNR
AMP is coming for ecommerce next. Will there be checkout options other than
Google? What's going to happen when voice interfaces take over. Amazon Echo
already prioritises its own products.

I've switched to Firefox and DuckDuckGo and started moving non-tech people
over (and they seem happy enough too). It's not in our interest to let the
whole tech market consolidate into 5 walled gardens

~~~
jshelly
I've just done the same myself. I am also having everyone I know use FF and
DDG where possible.

------
k__
AMP somehow doesn't work right on my smartphone.

When I go to news.google.com an click of any of the AMP links on the front
page, I always get thrown back to news.google.com when I scroll on the AMP
page.

~~~
dv35z
And frustratingly, you can't background-open AMP links from Google News.
Instead, AMP articles open wuth their own (annoying) navigation, where swiping
goes a completely different article.

------
vorpalhex
"I would use a browser with javascript disabled".

See, this is the point where AMP provides actual benefit. Many sites don't
function _at all_ without JS. AMP gives me a site that actually works without
the extra crap.

~~~
akras14
Valid point, but a surprising amount of sites do work. I.e Reddit, BBC, All
Wordpress sites. The kind of content you would consume on a cheap phone and a
slow connection.

JS in my mind is for fancy apps like Google Maps (non amp) and serving ads.

------
landave
I've read quite a lot about AMP, but I still don't really understand for what
technical reason a new markup language (AMP HTML) and an additional javascript
library is required to achieve the (claimed) effect.

More specifically: Is there any evidence that AMP is able to provide a better
result (at least in terms of performance) than just using a small subset of
standard HTML, a little bit of CSS, getting rid of any javascript, and
ensuring that the total page size is less than 100KB? If yes, I would be
interested in the technical reasons.

~~~
niutech
AMP JS library enables lazy loading of images/videos, so if you have a page
with tens of them, you will notice the difference.

> getting rid of any javascript

Try to find a popular website without JS. Even HN uses it, so this is a moot
point.

~~~
acdha
> Try to find a popular website without JS. Even HN uses it, so this is a moot
> point.

There's a big difference between not using JavaScript at all and doing it
correctly with progressive enhancement. Any site which doesn't depend on a ton
of JavaScript to render and uses lazy-loading where appropriate will see the
same benefits and will be significantly more robust as well.

------
spiderfarmer
If everyone creates fast websites that don't suck, Google will consider AMP a
success and kill the format.

~~~
ENGNR
So why not just release AMP for use on domains as a reference implementation
(with server side rendering for pre-cache), measure speed instead of
implementation, and not use the google cache.

They want the Google nav buttons on your site to keep the user inside their
experience

------
nobleach
Let me stress this major point. Google is NOT the web. They are but one major
player. Yet when we speak of "SEO" we mean "pleasing Google". I find that
reprehensible. Google is NOT fighting for a better web experience. They are
trying desperately to achieve what Facebook has done... keeping users engaged.
While I appreciate what Google has done to encourage web standards, they are
totally screwing up with their attempt at recreating AOL. AMP is simply the
latest example of keeping users on a Google site.

------
zeveb
> Of course, the reason we have AMP is because Google wants users to see ads,
> something that is mostly missing with JavaScript disabled.

Ding ding ding — this is IMHO the real reason for both AMP and the downvoting
(and down-moderation) of anti-JavaScript comments on online forums (to include
HN). It's all about money. Google aren't evil; neither are publishers,
startups or venture capitalists. But it's _hard_ to make money from a web in
which end users are in control, and _easy_ to make money if they are
relatively powerless. Google, publishers, startups & venture capitalists alike
all want to make money, and thus it's in their interest to encourage technical
measures which decrease end-user power. It's also in their interest to
discourage social discussions which support technical measures which
_increase_ end-user power. They don't consciously think in this terms, of
course (in the words of Upton Sinclair, 'It is difficult to get a man to
understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it'),
but that is why they act as they do.

The thing is, every one of is an end-user at some point. Every Google
employee, every CNN investor, every startup founder, every venture capitalist
_uses_ technology constantly.

It's vitally important to the freedom of the web that we resist the temptation
to require JavaScript, that we resist the lure of AMP, that we resist the
siren song of further net centralisation. We have nothing to lose but our
chains!

------
aeromusek
> I am really surprised that big publishers are not bothered by this fact as
> much as I am.

I suspect they _are_ just as bothered, but don't really have a choice about
this either. Placement on the search results page is so valuable that Google
holds a really big stick when introducing new 'standards' like this.

Just look how little of a typical mobile SERP is real 'organic' content now:
[http://imgur.com/UhNZvL2](http://imgur.com/UhNZvL2)

~~~
kuschku
I did the same: Content that is NOT organic search results is marked on the
right side in Google’s colors:
[https://s3.kuschku.de/public/serp_annotated_web.png](https://s3.kuschku.de/public/serp_annotated_web.png)

Notice how 2/3rds of the page is taken by the app’s own UX, and of the shown
results, another 40% is taken by embedded content.

The page shows only 9 search results, and zero above the fold.

------
valladanger
I agree with most of the article, but I think that my browsing experience with
news (and similar) websites has been improved overall by AMP in a way that I
almost regret visiting websites that offer no support for it. On the other
hand, I also think that publishers need more control over their content and
how they serve it to their users. Having said that, if AMP were to be
integrated with GCP it could improve the service for everyone involved, not
only publishers and consumers (yes, even for Google itself); for example, a
publisher could have an AMP Cloud Storage bucket configured under the domain
of the publisher in order to use the its identity and not google's one. On the
consumer's end it could be as simple as a switch to turn off amp results for a
single session or for every single one. At the end of the day, lets not forget
that it is a fairly new approach to improve the web experience (and not a bad
one at all) and there are options and many paths that AMP could follow in
order to become a better experience for everyone.

------
amatecha
I was about to post that AMP breaks scrolling on my iPhone (thus rendering all
AMP-intercepted websites unusable), but it looks like they finally realized it
and stopped showing AMP results to my version of iOS. :thumbsup:

------
zeep
People should also stop making Android apps whenever a website is perfectly
suited, but of course that won't happen.

A webview is a bit like AMP but it is still better then a true native Android
app (when it is easily avoidable).

------
notadoc
From a user perspective, the speed of AMP is nice but I absolutely hate not
being able to see the original URL of a site.

I want to see the original URL, certainly not a CDN mirror URL that could
obfuscate or muddy the source.

------
callumlocke
AMP is bad for publishers, but even worse for publishers who don't get on
board.

It's similar to Yelp's strategy: create a new problem for businesses, then
sell them a (partial) solution to it.

------
falcolas
I have enjoyed this AMP saga, and really look forward to the finale: how
turning off AMP impacted SEO. Since the author has the "before" picture with
AMP enabled, I'm really curious what the "after" will look like.

EDIT: I'm curious about the downvotes - care to elaborate what you disagree
with? The author indicated that SEO was a driving force for using AMP, so I
think that being curious about the outcome would be acceptable...

------
balls187
On one hand google's AMP is ruining the open web.

On the other hand, mobile pages suck. Too many ads, annoying popups and
interstitials, and tracking scripts.

~~~
akras14
Between the rock and a hard place

------
davotoula
I find it frustrating bookmarking and/or sharing the AMP url with others.

Ideally it would save / share the original URL, not the AMP url.

------
bushin
The only good thing that came out of AMP is that Apple finally fixing
scrolling in overflows.

------
notfitforwrk
Don't be evil. Just a little is fine. No one will notice. Go on then!

------
gnu8
I don't even know what AMP is for, but I know if I click an AMP result on my
phone, it won't load anything but a white screen. So one of my content
blockers must be working...

------
obilgic
AMP is the perfect way to punish big publishers for their slow websites.
Google can't punish them by simply lowering their rankings, people want to see
those big publishers.

------
Chris2048
AMP news articles lack comments. This is often were most of my interest lies.
I want to see if anything in the article is called out in the comments.

~~~
tytso
I actually think suppressing comments (sometimes called "the sewer of the
internet") is a feature, not a bug. I block Facebook comments using a Chrome
extension mainly because I don't want to send huge amounts of information to
Facebook when browsing random web pages, but not having to see the comments is
also a bonus.

~~~
Chris2048
Just calling them names doesn't change anything. You are assuming the article
is more truthful than the average comment.

FB posts are often not about anything, unlike news articles. FB and YT are
entirely different.

~~~
tytso
The average article posted via a web page (or AMP) is definitely more well
written, and generally more truthful, than the average Facebook comment. I
would think this is pretty self-evidently obvious.

------
RoryH
This is the most Microsoft-esque thing Google has done IIRC!

------
kennydude
> On iPhone, AMP seems to override the default browser scrolling. As a result
> scrolling of AMP pages feels off.

Thought it felt wrong. Makes me want to use Google less and less

------
c8g
please​ change your hn discussion link

>[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww....](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alexkras.com%2Fi-
decided-to-disable-amp-on-my-
site%2F&t=I%20decided%20to%20disable%20AMP%20on%20my%20site)

~~~
akras14
It's auto generated, clicking submit will redirect to the right discussion

~~~
c8g
I thought it was a typo but it seems all your post contains link like this :)

------
torrent-of-ions
In the 90s web pages loaded instantly. Now we have faster computers and faster
networks, but apparently we need something like AMP to make the web fast. We
have regressed.

~~~
Klathmon
Those are some extremely rose colored glasses you are wearing if you think web
pages loaded instantly in the 90's

I remember using the web on a 56k modem (which was pretty damn fast!) and
waiting 30+ seconds for pages to fully load.

~~~
tdy721
The text was still fast. And I NEVER saw had the text disappear for a second
while the page updated the font... The text was still fast, and the developers
assumed you had a crappy modem in at least 80% of cases. The web is getting
slower.

------
Radio_Killer
AMP also sucks for accessibility. Try this on Android's Chrome:

* Do a Google query containing an AMP result

* Zoom in the Google search (since it's not very accessible either)

* Open an AMP page

Result: You can't zoom out anymore and left-to-right scrolling is unavailable
in this state. So you have to go back, zoom out and click the link again.
After which you can sometimes zoom back in again.

This makes browsing a real hassle. I know Google doesn't care that much about
accessibility, but boy this drives me crazy almost every day of the week.

~~~
tdeck
I have trouble reading small text and images, and I've experienced this as
well. It's particularly bad when an article has an infographic that's clearly
designed to be viewed on a desktop. Completely disregarding my "force enable
zoom" browser setting, AMP won't let me make those images any bigger than the
width of my phone. I always have to switch to the actual site, wasting my time
loading two pages.

------
aub3bhat
Having suffered through unbelievably atrocious mobile news sites, I now refuse
to open any news website that's NOT AMP.

Those criticizing AMP have it wrong, Google could have very well just bypassed
AMP for "instant publisher app" (something that if Apple did the same people
(Gruber etc.) would wax poetic about how it was stroke of genius), instead you
at least get to keep HTML/JS/CSS stack, without any "gatekeepers" like the
Apple App Store.

So yeah unless you are a mobile App developer, AMP is great for both
developers and readers!

