
A new AMP update shows how it can infiltrate every corner of the internet - cpeterso
https://onezero.medium.com/google-is-tightening-its-iron-grip-on-your-website-27e06b3150e0
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cryptica
I think that the mobile trend was blown way out of proportion. I very often
find myself clicking on the 'Browse desktop version' button when browsing a
so-called 'mobile-friendly' version of a site. Is the look of the website
really more important than the content and functionality? For me, it's not.
This is just another example of a big tech monopoly imposing their highly
opinionated ideas on billions of people.

Also, I hate it when a mobile site keeps reminding me to install the app. This
is extremely mobile-unfriendly. Google ought to punish those sites.

~~~
cocochanel
Yet another HN user talking about their use case. 99% of people are not your
typical HN user.

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dkersten
So, 99% of people care more about aesthetics than about than content? Got
anything to back that up?

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esrauch
I'm surely still not in the 99% but honestly there's hardly any content that
individually actually matters to me, it's almost all info-tainment. If it's
hard to read then I won't bother at all.

There's exceptions like restaurant menus at specific places that I'm
considering, but certainly there's no mainstream news article that's worth me
staining my eyes over: if it loads a desktop site on my mobile phone I'll
definitely just hit back and move on regardless of the content.

~~~
gnu8
It's sort of like saying 99% of cattle prefer the chute that brings them most
efficiently to the killing grate. It isn't really about what they want, just
about how they behave.

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maaaats
Google intentionally gimps Firefox on Android, by serving an old-school page.
Using an addon (which you can on mobile Fx, and not on Chrome), fixes this by
editing the UA string when visiting Google.

Getting the "nice experience", however, gives me amp links. And when I click
on them, I'm unable to scroll?! It doesn't matter if it loads fast, when I
cannot read beyond the fold.

It also breaks the "open in app" I normally have. If the link is a reddit
link, for instance, I can press an icon in Firefox to have it open in "Reddit
is fun".

~~~
superasn
Believe it or not but the web is literally unusable if I use any other browser
not based on chrome because:

\- The search is degraded (it hides the advanced search menu in Google and
most dropdowns in ff)

\- Most of the sites use Recaptcha or cloudflare (also an extension of
recaptcha) which gives you a low bot score if you're using anything other than
chrome and then begins the never ending exercise of identifying cars and
traffic lights

\- I think web devs are also only testing for chrome nowadays and a lot of big
and small sites just won't render properly with FF (the PH menu won't open on
ff android for me unless I change the ua). It's not always chrome's fault
though as many sites (like dictation.io) insist I use chrome because ff still
won't support some web apis.

~~~
acdha
None of those are true in my experience using Firefox or Safari. I don’t know
if you are using extensions or something like Tor but it might be worth trying
again in a clean install.

~~~
superasn
Idk, but this has been a pet peeve of mine for a very long time now and I've
posted about it before also with screenshots [1] and lot of people have agreed
they have faced the same problems and we had a long discussion about it.

So there is definitely truth in it.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20295333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20295333)

~~~
acdha
I’m definitely not saying that you aren’t experiencing it, only that it’s
uncommon and usually seems to be triggered by using a VPN or other shared
connections.

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superasn
Using neither. No addons or vpn or anything. Can't really say about shared
connections if that is something my ISP is doing but the point is shouldn't
vpn or shared connections affect chrome browser equally? Yet this only happens
when using ff.

If you read the thread above a lot many people face this too, so at least this
Recaptcha bs is quite true and prevalent.

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aww_dang
I've published AMP only sites and regular optimized sites. My niche is usually
large informational sites. Minifying and removing unused CSS and inlining
everything has resulted in better indexing than similarly positioned AMP
sites.

The resulting pages are smaller than their AMP equivalents and load with less
requests.

On my non-news sites I can say that I get more traffic without AMP.

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AlexDragusin
I have to give it to Google for such brilliant scheme to make use the current
web clutter to its advantage, but we all know the dangers of this if left
unchecked.

The web doesn't need AMP to be fast, it needs common sense which has left the
building once ads and tracking became the goal.

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spiderfarmer
I have no trouble getting websites with good web performance to rank above AMP
results. I like to think I have beaten them even when I'm slightly below them,
because they trap their visitors in the AMP silo, while I am offering them a
full site with probably better performance overall.

The only reason to offer AMP is to get into the news caroussel.

~~~
the_gipsy
Just wait until they dial up the preference for AMP.

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kerkeslager
I'm going to make a rare exception to my usual hating on Google, and say that
AMP is great for users.

I'd like to see a move back to a document-based web rather than a web-
application-based web: CSS and JavaScript have not been good for users. A
document-based web allows users to pull down content and render it on their
machines using programs users control. Coupling content with CSS and
JavaScript means that users must use a website's CSS and JavaScript to render
the content, which means that users must give up control of how the content is
rendered. The results are predictable: most websites have crap accessibility,
run a bunch of malware[1] that has nothing to do with rendering, and have user
interfaces are all over the place (every website is different so you have to
learn a new interface every time you visit a new website, even if they're
presenting the same kinds of content).

Why should we let websites determine how content is rendered? I can pull down
an AMP page and view the content the way I want to view it, so this gives me
as a user a lot more power.

Sure, the most common case right now is that Google renders it on their page,
and that gives power to Google. But that's just trading one evil (Google) for
another (content providers who package content with malware)--as a user that's
not really a net gain or loss. But having content shipped in a more document-
based format is a big gain for users.

[1] Code which runs on my computer to show me ads is adware. Code which runs
on my computer to send data about me to companies is spyware. If these were
written in Python and packaged with a desktop program everyone would call them
adware and spyware, but if they're written in JavaScript and packaged with a
web application they're ubiquitous and accepted.

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est
So google chrome hides www and m in the domain, will Google replace AMP
domains as well?

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progval
Yes. [https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-amp-real-
url/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-amp-real-url/)

~~~
0x14c1de72
> That signature is all a modern browser (currently just Chrome on Android)

That's a very interesting definition of modern browser.

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Ajedi32
I'm confused. The title of this article isn't at all supported by its content.
The entire thing can be summarized as:

> Google rolled out a new feature that allows AMP to use server-side rendering
> (SSR), boosting performance for sites that adopt the technology across their
> entire domain.

Followed by a dozen paragraphs arguing why AMP is bad, with no further mention
of server side rendering or why it "shows how [AMP] can infiltrate every
corner of the internet". Is there anything new here, or is this just another
rehash of the same arguments we've been having about AMP since the day it was
released?

~~~
aww_dang
Is there any irony in this? SPAs are often the pages which are excessively
heavy. Not saying it can't be done well. Just that these pages are frequent
offenders.

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RobertRoberts
What would it take to get the internet community to really see the danger of
AMP?

Some kind of social media campaign?

AMP will rot away a free and open internet. The internet will be turned into a
walled garden for Google/Alphabet's sole benefit. (or at least a large enough
chunk of it to make avoiding Google/Alphabet nearly impossible)

Edit: clarity.

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cameronbrown
The sad truth is, the 'modern' web is rotting. AMP is just a symptom of a
growing problem.

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duxup
The thing is AMP can be it's own problem regardless what the "modern web"
does.

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ec109685
What is the AMP update this article was speaking of?

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r3bl
It's literally mentioned and linked to in the first paragraph.

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buboard
ah that's nothing. Wait until google launches accelerated desktop pages

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buboard
And then accelerated shopping results. And then accelerated signups.

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tempodox
I really do wonder how long it will take everybody to realize that Google is
the ultimate computer virus.

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GoblinSlayer
>server-side rendering

Oh, that's shiny new technology. Call me when we have 3d buttons back.

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onevu
Talking about a crappy web technology using Medium

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tiernano
Just thinking that... I find medium worse than amp... at least amp doesn't
show pop ups to join or subscribe...

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Mirioron
But AMP sites pretty much require you to get out of the AMP site to work
properly. Closing a pop up is no harder than that.

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Kiro
I'm all for bashing AMP but I can't remember a single time I've had to get out
of AMP to get it working. Do you have any examples?

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Mindwipe
Literally every page on the Guardian, as the AMP pages don't include comments?

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tiernano
i wouldn't exactly consider comments not loading to be a "broken" site...
Granted, its handy on some sites, but meh on most...

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Sephr
AMP isn't all bad. SXG from AMP will enable advanced P2P CDN tech to flourish.
Unfortunately Mozilla has decided to not support it.

~~~
Avamander
I'd honestly love to see domain-signed pages being distributed over IPFS.

