
Some publishers are fighting AMP with “View Full Experience” link - akras14
https://twitter.com/WillieJay22/status/904071101269016577
======
HugThem
Usually I hate every additional button. But anything that fights AMP is good.
AMP is one of the biggest threats to the open internet at the moment.

Any numbers on how much traffic a news publisher loses out if they flat out
refuse the AMP blackmail and don't offer an AMP version?

We the tech crowd should help publishers to come up with creative ideas to
subvert AMP.

I wonder if it would work to only show 50% of the article and then have a link
"Read the full article on our website".

If a publisher had a great mobile experience, they could get even more
aggressive about it. Like have a big disclaimer on top of the page "We have a
great mobile website. Unfortunately Google blackmailed us to give them our
content. You are currently reading a Google version of our site that we had to
make because Google is hiding the open web in their search results. If you
want to read the original, click here. If you want to try a search engine that
searches the open web, try one of these: ..."

~~~
tannhaeuser
It's time for the European Commission to step in on AMP.

You can complain about Google's anti-competitive behaviour anonymously on
[http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/whistleblower/index....](http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/whistleblower/index.html)
(though this instrument is rather for mailing insider info, so I guess
submissions should be for individual cases where AMP results are hiding other
content).

~~~
revelation
The link to the whistleblower tool served over HTTP, what a great idea.

~~~
stingraycharles
The actual form / complaint are served over https, as you can see in the link.

~~~
irth
but someone can replace the link to the form

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aphextron
The most frustrating thing for me about AMP is that it sidesteps the single
most useful feature of Safari on iOS, the "Reader" button, by rendering the
entire page in JS. I suspect this is entirely purposeful on Google's part as
it cuts into ad views. It's really gotten out of hand, too. Try doing a google
search for practically any news article on mobile now. The entire first few
result pages are nothing but AMP.

~~~
dingaling
> The entire first few result pages are nothing but AMP.

Except for mobile Firefox, which Google appears to 'punish' by eliding AMP
links. Happy days!

~~~
StavrosK
Is that why I've never seen am AMP link? I've been seeing the articles and
thinking "what are these people talking about, AMP links are extremely rare,
I've never seen one".

Good job, Google.

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diggan
Slightly off-topic, but feel like someone here has the answer so asking
anyways.

People keep mentioning that AMP is a "open effort" and "open source" but I've
only seen the HTML framework's code, not the caching servers. Supposedly, you
are able to run your own AMP Cache server, but there are no examples out in
the wild.

I even took to Twitter and asked Paul Bakaus ("Open" Web Developer Advocate at
Google) who wrote a blogpost about why AMP Cache is good, but no answer.

Is the AMP really a open project or is that just the HTML Framework and the
goal is to lock people into Google's AMP Cache?

~~~
josteink
> Is the AMP really a open project or is that just the HTML Framework and the
> goal is to lock people into Google's AMP Cache?

It's Google. Whenever you ask that question and fail to find proof about
openness, it should be fairly safe to assume that it's a lock-in.

~~~
lucaspiller
The idea/technology is open, so if Twitter or Facebook wanted they could run
their own AMP service, so when you click a link on their site it loads the AMP
version of the BBC served from their servers. That's still not really open,
but this is kind of the purpose of AMP.

~~~
diggan
> The idea/technology is open

I keep seeing that phrase but then

> so if Twitter or Facebook wanted they could run their own AMP service

seems "idea/technology is open" only applies if you're Twitter or Facebook.
How about if I'm just me? I can't run my own AMP cache seemingly...

~~~
dtech
There is nothing preventing you from doing so.

But there is no reason for you to do so. For Twitter and Facebook it is more
interesting since they can serve the cache to their users.

~~~
cramforce
Right, it is documented how to do it, but rarely needed. Cloudflare offers a
whitelabeled cache as well.

[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-c...](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-
cache-guidelines.md)

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rblatz
So to speed up the web Google now makes me load a hobbled AMP page then I have
to search for a link to actually get to the site I actually wanted to go to.
How is this better? It's gotten to the point that I search for something and
just give up since it's a sea of worthless AMP links.

~~~
josteink
To be fair, this is only a problem if you use Google search.

Nobody is forcing that on you but yourself.

~~~
rblatz
That is true, and I've been considering switching.

~~~
CaptSpify
I'd recommend ddg!

It's gotten pretty good lately, and you can fall back to google really easy.

------
SimonPStevens
Want to know how to entirely avoid amp...

Use Firefox on your phone.

;-)

~~~
TeMPOraL
It also lets you add an ad-blocker, so that's another reason to use Firefox on
mobile :).

~~~
StavrosK
Not only that, it lets you use the sake ad blocker as the desktop browser.
uBlock origin, privacy badger, etc.

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akras14
I experimented and it looks like they do show full article, they just show the
button at the end.

Perhaps the article in the post was a developing story. Still interesting, but
not as much "fighting" going on as it seemed on first sight.

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nlawalker
No one is "fighting" AMP here, this is just trying to get the best of both
worlds - high result placement and a cached first impression that drives
traffic to the actual site.

I wonder what the reaction of the AMP team is. "But... but you can't _do_
that!"

------
pbhjpbhj
[https://www.ampproject.org/learn/overview/](https://www.ampproject.org/learn/overview/)
if you're ignorant of this like me.

~~~
nlawalker
This is a decent technical overview, but it completely sidesteps the sole
reason why publishers actually use AMP, and the reason many people dislike it
so much, which is that AMP results get put in the special carousel at the top
of Google results.

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amiga-workbench
If by full experience do they mean locking my browser up with JavaScript?

A lot of these sites really deserve AMP, the normal viewing experience is
awful.

~~~
CaptSpify
The problem that AMP is solving is very real. The issue is that AMP is solving
it in the worst way possible. Instead of using this as a ploy to force traffic
to stay within Google's ecosystem, Google should encourage sites to just slim
down their excessive pages.

~~~
matz1
That is publisher problem, as reader I don't care if traffic has to stay
within Google's ecosystem.

~~~
CaptSpify
You should. Google already has too much control, and they are already abusing
it. Additionally, they are the ones encouraging sites to become what they are
today.

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ttctciyf
I've searched a few times for a firefox plugin that would simply remove the
'amp=1' from twitter links, thinking it should be trivial enough to guarantee
its existence, but no luck.

Anyone know if I missed it somewhere?

~~~
gkya
Maybe a GreaseMonkey userscript would do? Tho because all twitter links are
t.co ones,it may be a bit tricky.

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msh
I understand why people don't like amp but most publishers experience is so
bad that amp is better.

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eksu
This has been how most Apple News stories have worked for a while.

I wonder if it's the same page generation for Apple News as AMP?

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brainfire
Amusingly, the loading time for the "full experience" is long enough that it's
cut off in the video. I think that says everything needed about the "full
experience" on the web in 2017.

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Angostura
Surely, if publishers wanted to fight AMP, they wouldn't implement AMP - or am
I missing something here?

~~~
aeharding
Google promotes AMP sites on search results. They have no choice.

