
Cake or death: AMP and the worrying power dynamics of the web - Vinnl
https://trib.tv/2019/05/28/cake-or-death-amp-and-the-worrying-power-dynamics-of-the-web/
======
FreeHugs
We developers and startup founders can vote with our feet. If we want to keep
a free open web or turn it into a Google owned publishing platform.

If we want to keep it open, we can simply keep building great websites. Real
websites. Without "amp" and "portals".

Example: HN itself. No amp, much joy!

Or take a hint from Google themselves. They don't offer an amp version of
their search results. And will never allow anybody to embed their site.

~~~
getpolarized
We didn't vote with our feet regarding Facebook.

Every startup founder defected and surrendered to Facebook in favor of more
pageviews.

It's like the prisoners dilemma only with startups and instead of going to
prison you have to use Facebook.

~~~
JohnFen
> We didn't vote with our feet regarding Facebook.

Some of us did.

~~~
AJ007
The visibility of non paid posts on Facebook is a fraction of what it used to
be. When it was high, it made sense that companies built their businesses
around it. Those companies, at best, are hobbling along, like Zynga or
Buzzfeed, or at worst, dead, like most of them.

What matters a lot right now is something else: the direct timeline accurate
and somewhat algorithm free, communication channels companies have with their
customers (and you have with your friends.) That is email and messaging.

We should be paying a lot closer attention and giving greater caution to
Gmail, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Particularly Gmail.

~~~
JohnFen
> We should be paying a lot closer attention and giving greater caution to
> Gmail, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Particularly Gmail.

I agree. And I voted with my feet on those as well.

------
yoodenvranx
Has anyone noticed that since a few weeks mobile Chrome shows a really curious
behavior?

On a normal webpage:

\- I scroll down -> address bar is hidden.

\- I scroll up a bit and then down again -> address bar is shown

On any AMP page:

\- I scroll down a bit -> address bar is hidden

\- and then I can scroll in any direction I want and the address bar never
appears unless I scroll to the very top

For me that feels like Google wants to keep me inside the AMP page and makes
it harder to navigate to a normal page.

~~~
jefftk
I just tested an AMP page in mobile Chrome, and I'm not seeing the behavior
you described. Once I scroll up again, the address bar reappears.

Example:
[https://photos.app.goo.gl/a8A3WukpMiFPMBaNA](https://photos.app.goo.gl/a8A3WukpMiFPMBaNA)

(Disclosure: I work for Google)

~~~
yoodenvranx
Thx for the reply! I did some more investigation and I can reproduce it the
following way:

\- go to [https://news.google.com](https://news.google.com) and scroll down
until the address bar is hidden

\- click on any of the AMP links

\- the AMP links loads and the address bar is still hidden

\- scroll around the page. The address bar only re-appears if I scroll to the
very top, otherwise it stays hidden

I use Chrome 74.0.3729.157 on Android 7

~~~
jefftk
Thanks! I see what's happening now: news.google.com is loading AMP links in a
width=100% height=100% iframe. This means your scrolling affects the iframe
and not the page. Chrome, however, uses scrolling of the top level page to
determine whether the address bar should hide/show. So this gives two weird
things:

* If you click on an AMP link without scrolling down enough to hide the URL bar, the URL bar remains even as you scroll through the AMP article.

* If you click on an AMP link after scrolling down enough to hide the URL bar (the case you saw), the URL bar stays hidden even if you scroll back up (unless you scroll all the way to the top, at which point you're scrolling the outer page).

I agree this is bad UX, and it happens because the Google News site is loading
AMP pages in an iframe. Web Packaging fixes this:
[https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-amp-real-
url/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-amp-real-url/)

(Disclosure: I work at Google on unrelated things, speaking for myself and not
the company)

------
pjc50
So there's about four things going on here which are somewhat conflated, but I
definitely agree with the approach of analysing this by power dynamics.

1) Link snippets. In the old days, there was syndicated news: org A could pay
org B for the right to print bits of B's coverage. From this point of view,
Google search looks like a syndication that they've not opted into and isn't
paying. Of course, when they tried fighting back (some organisations in Spain
and Germany, I think), they got removed from search results and ended up worse
off. This is the view driving the "link tax" proposals in the EU.

2) "Snippets" that are in fact the whole article: both AMP and the proposed
"web packages". In this case, Google end up publishing the whole article from
their domain. The paper gets .. what exactly?

3) The bad recommendation problem: "This equates a responsible, expensively
produced, extensively researched, professional newsgatherer with some guy who
thinks the earth is flat for no reason other than that it ‘kinda feels
right’." See also Youtube's role in promoting flat earth, anti-vax, neo-nazi,
etc viewpoints.

4) AMP etc. vs paywalls: "In AMP, the support for paywalls is based on a
recommendation that the premium content be included in the source of the page
regardless of the user’s authorisation state."

~~~
ec109685
For #2, the publisher gets paid for all the ads on the amp page:
[https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/6352089?hl=en](https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/6352089?hl=en)

------
BlueTemplar
I wonder why the author considers Facebook to be a lost cause, but not Google?

~~~
WorldMaker
Anecdotally, a lot more Facebook employees I've interacted with understand
they've been at least complicit with evil and want to do better. That's at
least a good Step 1.

On the other side I feel like there are far too many Googlers that have drank
the vile tautology Kool-Aid that because the unofficial motto is still
supposed to be "Do No Evil" that what Google is doing cannot be evil, because
it is Google doing it. They haven't even reached Step 1 yet.

~~~
BlueTemplar
Considering all the recent scandals like Maven and Dragonfly, I don't know
what more they need ?!

------
Digit-Al
Why is there a "Share on Google+" link? Surely Google+ is now dead.

~~~
onion2k
Just for a laugh I clicked the button, and the post is now shared on my
Google+ page. Google+ is not as dead as has been reported.

~~~
tyfon
It is still available for google apps and for brand accounts I think but not
free gmail accounts.

------
tonetheman
The name of the article for the win... Izzard rules.

------
rgoulter
I can agree with the author's point that when technology like Google's AMP
incentivizes the wrong things by promoting what's quick over what's
slow/accurate. I can agree with many of the author's criticisms of AMP.

But I don't quite understand the author's concern about Google's push for AMP
being a "monopolistic land grab" _at the same time_ as the author's disgust
that Google doesn't censor disreputable websites.

AMP is a technical solution to require technically-not-terrible sites; a
reputability service is also a technical solution, but for a non-technical
problem of terrible sites. Why is "cake or death" terrible for the former but
not the latter? Especially since it seems like it'd be really hard to have a
neutral reliability check that everyone could trust.

I feel there's a tension between "decentralised and open", and "centralised
and curated". (You could have a walled garden as part of a larger
decentralised web without needing control over others, though).

~~~
JohnFen
> AMP is a technical solution to require technically-not-terrible sites

AMP is a technical solution to a non-technical problem. And, in my opinion,
that technical solution is worse than the non-technical problem.

~~~
lern_too_spel
> a non-technical problem

In what way is safely prerendering third party pages not a technical problem?

~~~
JohnFen
The nontechnical problem is the prevalence of bad website design. AMP is not
needed in order to have performant websites. The case Google makes for AMP is
"web designers suck".

