
How Google’s AMP project speeds up the Web - asymmetric
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/11/googles-amp-an-internet-giant-tackles-the-old-myth-of-the-web-is-too-slow/
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Analemma_
So, I figure this is as good a place to any to ask: I'm not totally clear on
how AMP is supposed to work. From what I can tell, it "speeds up the web" by
being a subset of HTML that forbids JavaScript, but there's nothing stopping
publishers from just not putting any JS on their page right now. The reason
they don't is that they need the ad revenue, and I don't see what AMP is doing
to fix that. Is Google paying publishers to host AMP versions of their pages?

~~~
Zikes
It sounds like you're on the right track: AMP is a subset of HTML with
restrictions on what can be on the page. The key is, if a page meets those
restrictions then the page can be pre-fetched _and pre-rendered_ to allow for
an instantaneous display for the user. It is up to the browser to determine if
a page is AMP-compliant (following the execution of JS of the AMP project
itself, loaded with the page), and if it is not (because a publisher inserts
non-compliant JS, for instance) then it will fail the pre-render and load as a
typical page, negating the speed benefits that AMP purports.

AMP does support ads, with a built in amp-ad element[0] that works with most
major ad networks. It also includes several other elements for handling
dynamic JS-driven media, but it's put together so that the media is sandboxed
via web components and the browser can easily determine the dimensions on the
page that the components will take up.

[0]
[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/builtins/a...](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/builtins/amp-
ad.md)

~~~
insanebits
I agree with idea of the general idea of AMP. BUt this is simply wrong.

What happens if I am an owner of "minor" ad network. It's essentially trying
to prevent anyone entering ad bussiness in my oppinion.

And what does it mean to the developer who has to create some custom
interactive component because that's what management wants?

I fully understand that it's counter measure against facebook and apple. But
there should be better ways to improve websites performance not just removing
years of web standards development. Google as a major search engine could
influence faster web by giving it more influence on SERPS which would make
publishers take a notice on how to make their sites faster.

This is not reasonable to create yet another version of the website just to
please google.

Sorry for the rant, you can guess what I do for a living:)

~~~
magicalist
> _What happens if I am an owner of "minor" ad network. It's essentially
> trying to prevent anyone entering ad bussiness in my oppinion._

I'd suggest reading the whole page :)

You can load any ad as long as it can go in an iframe and is served over HTTPS

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larrymyers
Did Google effectively just take their own stab at WML and WAP? I remember
using a flip phone around 2002 with that awesome technology to view sports
scores.

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ashmud
It seems like it. This was also brought up the arstechnica comments.

Google still has their WAP transformation tool ("Google Wireless Transcoder"):

[http://www.google.com/gwt/n](http://www.google.com/gwt/n)

edit:

It looks like Google more recently rolled out another tool
(googleweblight.com) for shrinking web pages. This does not generate WAP,
however.

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6211428?hl=](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6211428?hl=)

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Zikes
> In other words, AMP is technically half baked at best.

Yeah but it's still in the oven. They said from the start that they were
announcing this project specifically to get feedback and that there's still a
long way to go before they would call it production-ready.

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rayshan
If you'd like to enjoy the benefits on the desktop, there are extensions:
[https://github.com/edlea/DesktopAMP](https://github.com/edlea/DesktopAMP)

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ck2
omg a model 100, and people say I am stubborn to change because I still use XP

(I loved the 100 but wow that is ancient)

