
Fight back against Google AMP (2018) - mancerayder
https://www.polemicdigital.com/google-amp-go-to-hell/
======
scblock
I strongly agree. Web developers and app designers should work to build fast,
performant web sites that use bandwidth carefully because that's good for end
users. But the entire AMP approach to doing this is questionable, and as we
have seen over the years it appears to act more like a way to give Google more
undeserved and unnecessary control over what should be an open web.

More broadly, I consider this yet another reason to avoid using Google
properties where possible. They have shown themselves to be bullies and bad
actors who want to control the internet and oppose an open web. I recommend
simply not building AMP pages at all, but instead working to build high
quality, performant websites which gracefully handle device size changes and
lack of javascript.

~~~
izacus
> I strongly agree. Web developers and app designers should work to build
> fast, performant web sites that use bandwidth carefully because that's good
> for end users.

They should, but they didn't. Before AMP most of the web was unusable on
slower Android phones and frontenders just laughed at you and told you to drop
800$ on an iPhone if you want to see their pages. Is it a surprise that Google
shoved a technology to fix web on their platform down developers throats?

Nothing else before AMP helped. Why do you think those developers will
suddenly wake up and start building lightweight web pages now? Instead of ad
bloated, video playing monstrosities?

Web developers were slothful. This is how purgatory looks like. ;)

~~~
FussyZeus
> They should, but they didn't. Before AMP most of the web was unusable on
> slower Android phones and frontenders just laughed at you and told you to
> drop 800$ on an iPhone if you want to see their pages. Is it a surprise that
> Google shoved a technology to fix web on their platform down developers
> throats?

So let me understand this: Google allows OEM's to ship Android on shit
hardware with terrible performance, is rightfully complained at for rubber-
stamping hardware with no oversight, no standards of quality, and no
requirements of suitably good UX, and then Google passes the burden of
supporting the shit hardware they by-virtue-of-silence gave permission to onto
a ton of unsuspecting content publishers, who now either face delisting from
the dominant search engine not because their content is bad, but because their
website requires resources not met by Google's, proxy, shit hardware? And
you're okay with that?

~~~
izacus
Yes, I'm OK with world having the ability to buy a smartphone for 50$ outside
US. Mobile devices shouldn't be reserved just for rich westerners. Same for
the whole web - I don't see the reason why it shouldn't be usable on a dual
core laptop with 2GB of RAM.

I'm fine if supporting people with older and slower devices costs more
development time for developers in Silicon Valley.

~~~
jschwartzi
Years ago the web was fast on a 1 GHz single-core with 512MB of RAM. What
changed, other than ads and ad networks like Google becoming far more invasive
by wasting more and more memory and CPU?

~~~
greenyoda
In the days since 1 GHz CPUs, web pages have also grown from simple HTML/CSS
to huge JavaScript frameworks, in which displaying the simplest static content
requires a ton of JavaScript.

But if you install a browser add-on such as uMatrix, you can see that
surprisingly many web sites will still work just fine if you disable
JavaScript (even first-party JavaScript). One example is nytimes.com.

~~~
user5994461
Should mention that megabytes of javascripts are slow to download, compile and
execute. While a few seconds may go unnoticed on the developer desktops, it
will be a lot more on a mobile or laptop.

------
dessant
EU citizens can submit formal complaints to the European Commission for
suspected infringements of competition rules.

Here is more information on how to file a complaint:
[https://ec.europa.eu/competition/contacts/electronic_documen...](https://ec.europa.eu/competition/contacts/electronic_documents_en.html)

If you believe Google engages in anti-competitive practices with AMP, you have
the power to signal these issues, which may result in an investigation.

You can also share your concerns with a simple email to comp-market-
information@ec.europa.eu.

> You can report your concerns by e-mail to comp-market-
> information@ec.europa.eu. Please indicate your name and address, identify
> the firms and products concerned and describe the practice you have
> observed. This will help the Commission to detect problems in the market and
> be the starting point for an investigation.

~~~
DrJaws
I sent it a complain relating AMP to margrethe vestager over 2 years ago, when
this was relevant

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13414570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13414570)

and they did nothing, I doubt they even study the case, nothing was on the
table of the parliament related to this. Google have continued to abuse and
will do more if no one stops them. It's important to complain again and again
until they step in.

------
bluetidepro
AMP Is ruining mobile web. I cannot stand it. If it was actually made to be
fluid, I'd see the value. But it's such a terrible UX, and so janky with the
way it "pops in", and messes up "browser back" abilities. Out of all the
shitty things Google has ever done, AMP is #1 to me on that list.

Orrrrrr just give me a damn option to turn it off, if I want. I will never
understand why companies force people into these types of major UX decisions
on their behalf. Stop assuming every user is stupid. Sure, make it the
default, I don't care about that for the everyday user, but for something as
fundamental as the browser, I should have an option to turn off every single
Google opinion they bake in.

~~~
mcjiggerlog
If you use DuckDuckGo you don't have to deal with AMP at all. Giving it a go
on mobile is a good way to see how well it works for you too as searches tend
to be less mission-critical compared to desktop-based searches.

~~~
dillonmckay
Any good alternative to Google News?

~~~
jeanofthedead
RSS.

~~~
JohnFen
This is what I did. When the Google News redesign happened, it made Google
News substantially less useful to me. Enough so that came up with a
replacement.

It's not for everyone, as it requires running your own webserver, but I use
Tiny Tiny RSS to aggregate the feeds of the various sources I'm interested in,
then can read the aggregated feeds (I have multiple, a different feed for each
general subject) through the web interface and/or by using an RSS reader. I
use an RSS reader (gReader) on my mobile devices to do this.

~~~
BlueTemplar
I'm pretty sure that not all RSS clients require to run your own webserver?
Opera used to have one, Thunderbird maybe ?

------
adrianmonk
This article focuses on what it's like for web developers and for the web
ecosystem, which are both important issues. But AMP is also really annoying
for end users.

As an end user, AMP gets in my way and complicates my experience. There's
extra work to figure out what's going on. This page is from whatever site but
"delivered by Google". As an end user, my reaction is basically: what the hell
does that mean, why is it here wasting my time and cluttering up my screen,
and when can Google cut it out?

Then sometimes I go to share a link with a friend over Slack or whatever, I
hit the share button, and the URL comes out all fucked up. I know they're
going to look at the URL to figure out what it's about (because in the real
world, people do look at URLs), so I feel compelled to fix it, so I have to
back up out of there, then dig around in the UI to figure out how to get a
real URL. Maybe "open in chrome" will do it, or maybe I need to flip through
the page itself to find where it gives a link to itself. I can never remember
what works, and I don't want to have to.

I know AMP pages are supposed to load faster, and they probably do a little,
but I would gladly trade that for simplicity.

Also, I would turn it off if they would give me the option, which wouldn't be
hard but they don't, which tells me they don't want people turning it off.

~~~
IshKebab
Yeah but on the plus side, it loads in a second, isn't sluggish to use, and
isn't full of annoying fixed elements. Most non-AMP news websites which take
many seconds to load and are really slow and annoying when loaded.

I get all the arguments against AMP, but "annoying for users" surely isn't one
of them.

~~~
adrianmonk
If I understand AMP correctly, there are 3 alternatives to compare:

(1) Google doesn't intervene at all, web sites are full of bloat

(2) Google requires mobile sites to not suck if they want decent rankings

(3) Google requires mobile sites to not suck and also delivers the bits
instead of the site's servers.

I agree that #1 is not a good state of affairs. I'm fine with Google
pressuring mobile developers to create sites that perform well. I just prefer
#2 over #3.

~~~
BlueTemplar
(4) your remove bloat from websites yourself by disabling JavaScript.

------
williamDafoe
Websites WERE building horrible, non mobile news articles in HTML when AMP
started at Google in 2015. The news articles were so slow and wasted so much
bandwidth that many news orgs wrote bad apps (think CNN app; BBC app) to
replace shit with even worse shit. That's what you get when you skimp on
frontend engineers!!!

AMP gives little guys, the ones starting blogs and trying to grow, a shot at
freedom of speech. The web was developing in a way that the big players like
BBC and CNN would dominate with big budget winner-take-all walled gardens. AMP
is one of Google's most anti establishment services, which means I'm sure Ruth
will be killing it very soon!

This meant Google search on the mobile web was literally dying. Every year
more and more content was being locked inside walled Gardens!! I was a
maintainer of AMPHTML 2015 - 2018 at Google. The project is hibernating and
loses a ton of money I know I worked on the budgets for flash memory for AMP.
At the time Facebook and others were proposing proprietary non HTML news
document formats. Google, to keep HTML alive, decided to cache amp for free,
which subsidized hosting costs for ALL news websites. I hate it that now I
have to switch browsers 2x to write an article comment, too! But news apps
NEVER supported this AT ALL!! News apps NEVER supported a working search
feature AT ALL!! News apps NEVER supported a good user experience or global
search AT ALL!

If you want to rant, blame the bloatware mess that is HTML, it has almost at
killed The mobile web, not AMP! AMP is Google's attempt to keep HTML alive on
phones ...

~~~
buboard
Seriously, is html performance a real issue? Mobile traffic keeps growiong and
growing and growing, according to google, who now crawls most sites mobile-
first! Phones have 4 cores and download 300-MB games daily. There is
absolutely no need for this abomination. If it cared, google could threaten to
derank slow sites for slow phones and the average website size would be
slashed to half in a week!

> AMP gives little guys, the ones starting blogs and trying to grow, a shot at
> freedom of speech.

woosh, i now realize u re joking

~~~
izacus
Yes, it was a huge issue and many websites were unusable on anything but an
expensive iPhone for a long time. Especially a few years back.

While this might not be a problem with most Apple-toting frontend engineers,
most people of the world can't afford to constantly pay for very expensive
phones just to browse the web. And until AMP there just wasn't a way to make
anyone care it seems. Even here on HN.

Just to be clear: I dislike AMP. But I dislike the crap attitude towards users
the web developers have shown time and time again more.

~~~
buboard
> just to browse the web.

I must be crazy because i never had a catastrophic issue with an iphone 8 -
with an adblocker. If ads are the problem, well guess who is serving those
ads.

AMP doesn't even scale anyway - it will bloat like HTML pages bloat over time,
because web ppl have a bad habit of only adding things to sites, not removing.
What happens then? We invent Amp-html2 to fix amp? AMP is a very-ill-thought
bandaid to a culture problem that can be solved with simple nudges (have
people forgotten what seismic changes happen to the web every time google
rolls out a new SEO algorithm?). Amp s probably the silliest tech idea of the
decade.

~~~
izacus
Yes, of course you didn't have an issue with a new Apple device, that's
exactly my point.

Did you try browsing the non-AMP web on something like Nexus 4? Motorola Moto
E? Oppo and Xiaomi lowend units from 2015?

~~~
buboard
there are so many better ways that google could solve this issue other than
amp (derank sites for slow devices / mark them as slow / pass a parameter for
slow-phone visitors / create a chrome version for slow devices). AMP is a
dictatorial attempt to keep websites forever bound and limited to what google
is offering.

~~~
izacus
Yes, Google did whatever maximally benefits Google. They're a corporation and
behave as such. Just like Apple won't de-DRM their cable protocols just
because it's "right".

The question is - what can the web community do to make AMP redundant outside
of complaint posts.

~~~
buboard
> to make AMP redundant outside

First, AMP is already redundant. it doesnt offer anything that stripped-down
html can't do. The primary reason sites choose it is because google ranks the
pages higher! it's purely coercive.

Second , it's not as if AMP has taken over the web. But this coercion has to
stop. Third, it's real easy to make a faster website with 10 minutes of work.
I 'm not sure we need some kind of activism to stop amp i do believe it will
crash on its own as soon as most sites look exactly alike and start losing
revenues. But until then ... maybe ban AMP links?

~~~
themacguffinman
If it's so easy then why have so few websites done it? Google has understood
what Google/AMP haters refuse to see: web performance is not an engineering
problem, it's a product and marketing problem. Coercion is exactly what's
needed to push website owners to prioritize performance, because HN's monthly
whinefest isn't cutting it. Here's two basic things AMP offers that stripped-
down HTML can't do: a world-class CDN that many website owners won't justify
investing in, and a clear, marketable incentive to develop a mobile-efficient
website that VPs, marketers, product managers, and other business stakeholders
can immediately understand.

~~~
buboard
> why have so few websites done it?

Because the vast majority of websites are reasonably fast on mobile? Loading
times of 1,2 or 5 seconds are a non-problem that amp is addressing. The worst
offenders i see are too high res images and autoplay videos, but frankly i
cant remember seeing any of those recently. Most blogs/news sites are fine.
Where is google sourcing their data that users are desperate for web-breaking
solutions that bring them 200msec response times? The purpose of AMP is so
that people flick a website instantly and then go back to google. That's
obviously not in the interest of the publishers. The whinefest is because
google is actively prioritizing amp publishers thus forcing it on the web.

> Coercion is exactly what's needed to push

this is not a defensible statement

> a world-class CDN that many website owners

facebook needs a world-class cdn, not blogs.

> a clear, marketable incentive to develop a mobile-efficient websit

the "marketable incentive" is the de-ranking of the site. It's entirely
unnecessary to force amp for that, a simple page speed deranking would do

~~~
themacguffinman
Google knows load performance is a critical user need from the ample data they
collect from Google search users, they've talked about this before. I forget
the exact number, but every 100ms less load time drives significantly more
traffic and engagement. I have no idea what data you're looking at that
implies 5s load times are not a problem. I, for one, am overjoyed the Google
is tackling this problem and succeeding at it.

Google has applied performance penalties to sites before and it still does.
It's not enough, and there are limits to the penalties they can apply because
these websites are ultimately very useful and relevant, it would worsen search
quality to derank useful but bloated websites. The carousel is a good balance
of incentive and penalty.

------
danShumway
This is a really old article, but as long as we're here: just a quick reminder
that the AMP standard still includes platform-specific components that favor
individual companies[0] over smaller creators. It's still not clear what will
happen to the components when those services disappear[1], and it's still not
clear whether Google has the guts to tell someone like Facebook that a new
component feature isn't performant enough to be included.

Quick reminder that the only way to do captchas in AMP is to use Google
ReCaptcha.

There are a lot of reasons to hate AMP, but one big reason I hope doesn't get
drowned out is that it's not just anticompetitive in the sense of handing
control of traffic or hosting to Google. It's anticompetitive in the sense of
reducing _functionality_ on the web to a handful of large corporations that
have every incentive to reduce diversity and place harsher performance
restrictions on competitors than they place on themselves.

[0]:
[https://amp.dev/documentation/components/?format=websites](https://amp.dev/documentation/components/?format=websites)

[1]: [https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-
vine/?format=we...](https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-
vine/?format=websites)

~~~
mcv
> _" Quick reminder that the only way to do captchas in AMP is to use Google
> ReCaptcha."_

That is terrible. ReCaptcha is the worst. Also, ReCaptcha seems to
discriminate against Firefox, and if AMP discriminates against other captchas,
this might actually count as monopolistic abuse by EU rules.

------
Kique
I love AMP sites that do it the right way, like Politico. Keeps the real
domain, loads fast, clean interface. I wish more sites were like this. I think
the first version of AMP where the URL was always
"google.com/amp/politico/sdgffsdf" was awful but you can now keep the correct
domain and I sometimes prefer it to the regular version of a lot of sites.

[https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2019/12/04/trump-
impeachme...](https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2019/12/04/trump-impeachment-
next-phase-removal-075013)

~~~
buboard
is this served from politico's servers and how is it different from a stripped
down version of their site?

~~~
tyingq
It's not. It's using "Signed Exchanges", which Chrome supports, but most other
browsers do not.

It's just AMP with some crypto that lets Google masquerade as your domain.

~~~
buboard
oh wow, Signed Exchanges are worse than AMP!

"make sure you are visiting mybanksite.com" is no longer safe.

~~~
danans
> oh wow, Signed Exchanges are worse than AMP! > "make sure you are visiting
> mybanksite.com" is no longer safe.

Sounds like you don't trust public key based content signing. This is just
broadening public key based signatures beyond the domain to include the domain
and the content itself, and using signing to make the authenticity of the
content independent of the physical infrastructure that served it.

That' what's being used here to verify authenticity of content's source, just
like PGP/GPG does for signed emails.

That's a far stronger guarantee than "the data is authentic because it came IP
address range X purchased by company Y".

In fact, without a such signature, there is no guarantee that just because a
piece of content came from a particular server/datacenter, that it is
authentic.

With signed exchanges, the chain of authenticity is pushed all the way back to
the website's content creators - it doesn't stop at the web server. Also, this
can't be phished unless you break the the content signing algorithms, and if
that happens ... we all have bigger problems.

~~~
buboard
first, it breaks the URL specification, as the "host" is no longer a host. it
breaks user's expectation of one of the VERY FEW things that everyday users
understand about the internet.

one may manage to upload an html file to the bank's server and serve a
-signed- page that google amp will cache, and then use it to phish customers
from within the bank's domain. Or just use a stolen key to make thousands of
such pages before the bank finds out. I think , contrary to what you say, it's
a brand new, major attack surface.

~~~
danans
> first, it breaks the URL specification, as the "host" is no longer a host.

By this definition, "host" hasn't been a host in a long time, since the time
it was possible to route DNS traffic to multiple IP addresses, possibly in
different datacenters.

> it breaks user's expectation of one of the VERY FEW things that everyday
> users understand about the internet.

How is signing content directly less authentic than signing only at the web
server? Signing content directly at the time of publishing ensures that it was
created using the private keys of the entity in question, regardless of the
delivery mechanism for the content.

> one may manage to upload an html file to the bank's server and serve a
> -signed- page that google amp will cache,

Signed content exchanges specifically limit that by putting the content
signing step at the content creator level, not the web server level. Unless
you steal the content creator's private keys, you can't represent your content
as theirs.

~~~
buboard
> "host" hasn't been a host in a long time,

Does SXG make this better or worse?

> ensures that it was created using the private keys

signing at the server ensures that it was created using the key AND served
from a host they control. How is that not better?

> you can't represent your content

wouldn't the server sign all http responses by default? all you would need to
do is upload a file

~~~
danans
> wouldn't the server sign all http responses by default? all you would need
> to do is upload a file

No, the content has to be signed when it is created, in the content management
system or similar content creation tool, not when the server sends it. The
content management system itself must have strong controls on it (ACLs,
controlled user accounts, protected private keys stored only on encrypted and
access controlled media, regular audits, etc).

Basically the server itself is no longer trusted as the arbiter of content
authenticity, the actual content creator is. Concretely, when the editor at a
publication approves an article after reviewing it, it is signed for delivery
at the moment of publication, not at the moment that the request is served.

~~~
buboard
so that means i can sign a page on the editor's computer, take it with me and
serve it to amp from my website? that sounds even more dangerous tbh. it
delegates security from people who may know a little bit about it (web hosts)
to people who likely know nothing about it (writers)

what happens if someone's key is stolen and they need to re-issue it? All the
previously published copies are now invalid?

------
KirinDave
I had been told (and I have 0 special knowledge here, this is just what a
consultant in this space explained to me a few years ago) that AMP boosted
your placement specifically because latency was a scored and important factor.

As such, all you needed to do to get similar rankings was use any sort of CDN
hosting for your page and you would get similar results to using AMP.

Also, it sorta seems to me like the author is complaining, "I can't just do a
minimum effort AMP page for the search juice, I actually have to make a
functional AMP offering or not use AMP at all." Strictly as a consumer, I feel
like maybe Google is doing me a favor while telling off a publisher.

~~~
lern_too_spel
The first part of your post is incorrect, AMP is instant because it is
prerendered, which just using a CDN can't achieve.

The second part is correct. I hate Reddit AMP results, and I'm happy that
Google is telling them to fix it. I'll be even happier when they and other
search engines demote Reddit AMP pages that do not match the canonical pages.

~~~
pkamb
> I hate Reddit AMP results, and I'm happy that Google is telling them to fix
> it.

Is there some kind of real news about Reddit AMP changing, specifically? I
don't see that in the link.

~~~
lern_too_spel
It says Google is validating that AMP pages match the content of the canonical
pages and warning webmasters when they don't. I desuced that Reddit would get
these emails because their AMP pages are the biggest offender that I regularly
see.

------
rjmunro
Have you ever visited a news site without AMP enabled? It's literally
impossible to use. Popups flying all over the place, unwanted advertising
videos loading, megabytes of tracking JS loaded etc. AMP is forcing publishers
to make sites people can actually use.

~~~
dredmorbius
My alternative is generally to load the site in
[https://outline.com](https://outline.com)

As with the former Readability, or Pocket, this offers a simplified page view.

On Firefox or Safari, use Reader Mode.

(Ironically, Chrome has a Reader mode which is 1) automatically enable, 2)
_not_ disablable, and 3) is uniformly styled horribly.

I believe there are now browsers and/or extensions which enable Reader View by
default, or at least on specified domains/sites.

I've got a modicum of sympathy for Google here. _Yes_ , the Web _is_ a
problem, and HTML's fast-and-loose attitude "be generous in what you accept,
conservative in what you emit" has turned out to be a long-term liability.

Allowing Google and Google alone to play both sides of the deal in specifying
and benefitting from the standards, is a flagrantly glaring conflict of
interest (and very likely antitrust violatio). But the underlying stated
concerns are real. And absent some entity with the ability to tell website
publishers "no, your cavalier so-called HTML Does Not Play Here", the descent
into further levels of markup and Javascript hell will continue.

I've found the most useful process for re-rendering sane HTML from most
websites is to dump to plain text first (w3m or lynx, if they'll handle the
site, copy/paste if not), and then re-add whatever minimal markup is actually
required (usually via Markdown), then generate clean HTML.

Actual content payload is often only a few single-digit percent, and often far
less, of the page's markdown. And that's _excluding_ additional asset loads
(CSS, JS), let alone image and media files.

Again: until there's a cost to publishers for pulling this crap, we're going
to see more of it.

~~~
efreak
I believe you can disable Chrome's reader mode in flags. I know you can force
it to show up on all pages, as that's how I have it set up on my tablet (I use
Firefox and Brave primarily, with Chrome or Bromite as a fallback)

~~~
efreak
Also, you might be interested in brow.sh, as it should provide easily
readable, clean HTML that only contains visible elements. It _should_ be
better than dumping pages from links, as it supports scripting.

~~~
dredmorbius
At the cost of running a headless Chromium instance.

I might look at that, though it seems inelegant / not quite what I'm looking
for.

Perfect vs. good, etc., etc.

------
bil7
In the last few years my opinion of Google has gotten worse and worse. I dread
to think of what it will look like in 5 or 10 years time.

~~~
brink
There's hope. Microsoft somewhat turned it around after a change in directors.

~~~
tinus_hn
They were pretty much forced to change though

~~~
indubitably
How so?

~~~
tinus_hn
Because their traditional extend, embrace, extinguish strategy no longer
worked. Windows Phone and Internet Explorer failed and they were losing so
much mindshare switching from one failed api to the next. The monopoly was
becoming pretty fragile.

------
cryptoquick
I don't know why people get so bent out of shape over what Google does.
They'll just cancel it in two years. ;)

In all seriousness, though, I've been on the "screw google" train for a while.
Everything good hey do they throw away (Google Code, Google Reader, Google
Plus, Google Inbox, Google Wave... _pours one out for OT while I work on my
CRDTs_ ) while anything they make which originally held merit they just make
more awful, year after year. I don't know if they're aware just how
unsustainable a business model screwing over their users might be, but I'm
guessing they're willing to find out.

------
tzs
I have a page that I put on the web about 13 years ago, that somehow became
the top hit for "how to <X>" for a particular <X>. I have never done anything
to promote the page, and do not have any ads on it.

A few years ago, it lost the #1 spot, but is still on the first page.

(I'm specifically not saying what <X> is, or what domain the page is on,
because I do not want to do anything that might get people to go there. I want
to see how long a simple page with no promotion and no ads can stay on the
front page of search).

I just noticed that Google says in the search results "Your page is not
mobile-friendly". Would that be because I don't have an AMP version of the
page?

Clicking on that notice goes to a Google tool that analyzes the page for
mobile friendliness...which tells me that the page IS mobile friendly, so I'm
a bit confused.

The page is very simple. Just some paragraphs of text, some h1 and h2
headings, a few tables, and a couple of lists. The only CSS is on the page
itself via a <style> tag, and only has one rule, setting the width of th to a
certain number of px.

~~~
wolfgang42
You can definitely have pages that Google considers "mobile-friendly" without
using AMP. Do you have a viewport meta tag on the page? If you have any CSS at
all some mobile browsers will default to a desktop view that requires zooming
to read, and that's probably what Google is detecting.

Regarding the analyzer tool, I suspect this is a case of Google's left hand
not knowing what the right hand is doing. As I recall, Google is in the
process of switching from a static analyzer to a Chrome Lighthouse-based
analyzer (or something to that effect) and I'd guess that the mobile-friendly
rules are slightly different between the two.

------
privateSFacct
I love these posts - this has been talked to death.

The last thread had some good illustrations comparing media sites non-AMP
pages (the bloat from ads / javascript / etc was INCREDIBLE) to AMP pages.

Google puts a little icon next to amp pages at least some of the time. These
pages usually load VERY quickly in my experience - somehow whatever AMP/Google
is doing results in less bloated pages on these AMP pages.

I wouldn't be surprised if users start naturally gravitating to these pages
for the better experience. I know I have sometimes just because I know the
page is not going to trap me on their site if they are AMP. I can usually get
back to search results with AMP, where other sites do a weird thing where they
pop up a registration page in front, then even if you fight through that you
have to fight through some registration redirects to get back.

I wish google would push down news sites I don't have memberships too though -
banging on paywalls is annoying - I pay for a few sites already -> be great to
have those be the ones surfaced most often.

~~~
RonanTheGrey
> somehow whatever AMP/Google is doing results in less bloated pages on these
> AMP pages.

The article links to another page that dives into this: AMP isn't actually
creating less bloated pages.

The speed increase is because Google Search preloads the content for all AMP
results so you're effectively getting a cached page when you click on it.

That is incredibly monopolistic behavior because it can't be reproduced any
other way.

~~~
privateSFacct
This is terrible misinformation.

The rules in AMP designed to speed performance are extensive.

Lots of things you can do in HTML - linked style sheets, synchronous third
party java-script and ad frameworks etc etc are heavily restricted. There are
size limits even on the inline CSS I think or even on the separate web worker
javascript even animations are restricted so they can be accelerated.

The speed increase is not just because of preload. Turn on dev tools and look
at network round trips / page size / CPU usage on an AMP vs nonAMP page.

~~~
RonanTheGrey
Thanks for the downvote just because you don't want people to know the truth:
all those "parts of the standard" that "make pages faster"? Don't do much at
all. Bother to read TFA please - the average AMP page still loads in roughly
8.5 seconds on normal 3G. What makes them seem "fast" is Google preloading
their content on the search results page and using Google's CDN to serve what
remains.

YOU are spreading misinformation and one might ask why.

------
mrep
Discussed last year with 340 comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17920720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17920720)

~~~
dang
That was Sept 2018.

~~~
mrep
Oops, didn't look at the year. Updated

------
s17n
I stopped caring what designers (and the community that really hates amp is
designers, in addition to the "everything Google food is evil" crowd) think
when scroll hijacking became popular. Sorry but the web would be better off
without you guys.

------
markosaric
How to Fight back against Google AMP:

1\. Don't use Google search. Other search engines such as Qwant and DuckDuckGo
don't rank AMP sites

2\. Don't use Chrome browser. Firefox has built-in adblocker and a Reader Mode
so any site can be fast and clutter-free without AMP

As a site owner/developer:

1\. Don't use AMP on your own site

2\. Make your site lightweight on its own: lazy load images/videos, restrict
unnecessary elements, restricts third-party connections and scripts

------
mopsi
AMP made me switch to DuckDuckGo on my phone.

------
kaycebasques
I know that AMP is an intensely controversial topic, but I have to provide a
counterpoint here because I don't think the web developer community fully
appreciates the real state of the web on mobile:

> How many of you think that the amount of time spent on the mobile web as a
> fraction of total time on device has increased in the last five years? ...
> it's well below 7% and in a lot of markets it's falling. We have pretty good
> telemetry inside of Google and what it tells us is that the web is not
> essential to the future of computing on mobile.

The Mobile Web: MIA, Alex Russell,
[https://vimeo.com/364402896#t=13m00s](https://vimeo.com/364402896#t=13m00s)

The gist of his argument is that history suggests that when computing
platforms drop below 13% of usage (or perhaps it was 10%, I don't remember the
specific number), the platform is in a death spiral.

In my 5 years in Web DevRel at Google, I've never heard "it makes the web
easier to index" as the main motivation for AMP, I've actually never heard it
as a motivation at all. Maybe it is a motivator. The argument definitely makes
sense. But I've not heard indexing as a motivator, not even in passing.

As a Googler involved in the web I know that I'm inherently biased and
everything I say is likely to be written off, but I'm being 100% transparent
with you here. There's a lot of people that care about the open web within
Google and see it as the best platform for a lot of the same ideological
reasons that you all probably love the web. The open web enthusiasts consider
the real competition to be: the web versus whatever other platforms are
dominant on the computing devices of the future (right now, that's iOS and
Android on mobile devices). AMP is a strategy to incentivize websites to
provide user experiences on par with whatever else is out there.

Disclosures: Googler in the "Web DevRel" team. FWIW we don't report to AMP. So
my understanding of AMP may not actually align with the AMP team's. Note that
I'm not even saying here whether I think AMP is the right approach to tackle
the web's big problem, but I do understand why some people felt AMP is
necessary right now. This post is definitely my own personal opinion and
doesn't even represent Web DevRel's opinion. I may in fact get in trouble for
speaking out about this ;)

------
JohnFen
This is an excellent essay.

I strongly dislike AMP pages, and I avoid them. The essay touches on many of
the reasons why. Any sites that were entirely in AMP are sites I would not be
using.

------
GuB-42
Google AMP is bad, but I think publishers got what they deserved, at least
most of them.

When AMP was launched, news sites were horrible. Bloated, buggy, unintuitive,
with intrusive ads all over the place and barely functional on mobile.
Something needed to be done. Unfortunately for the open web, the one to find a
solution was Google, and it turn a real need for a better user experience into
a way to control the web.

And what comforts me in this idea is that many articles criticizing AMP do it
for all the wrong reasons. Publishers want to add whatever bloat feature and
complain that AMP don't let them do it. Guys, that's the part of AMP the world
really needs. Complain about the Google bits, not about the efficiency
improvement it brings.

Now, if you take a look at AMP, there are actually two parts. One is a very
sensible set of rules for making efficient websites, the other is a big blob
of JS with plenty of Google stuff inside, as well as a few functions that help
you follow said rules.

You want AMP to go to hell, simple, follow the relevant rules from AMP, ditch
the Google turd of a JS and keep only the good stuff. That way, your website
will be even more efficient than the AMP version. Show the world that AMP is
not what makes the web faster.

------
usr1106
275 comments and nobody mentions that AMP is no longer a Google technology,
but a Linux Foundation project? Is that good or bad news that nobody seems to
notice?

Well, Google is probably one of the bigger sources of income for the LF, and
the LF does not say no to money.

Technically AMP is a project in the OpenJS foundation, one of the dozens of
foundations the LF is spawning of. Managed by Robin Ginn ex Microsoft. Good at
driving the interests of the strongest if at anything.

------
shadowgovt
That makes sense. Since AMP is intended to be a more optimized site structure
than the average website, pages adhering to the AMP standard should increase
the performance of the web on average, whether or not the site actually gets
indexed into Google's localized caches.

We have HNers complaining about bloated JavaScript pages all the time. Maybe
Google has actually found a way to tip the market away from those page
designs?

~~~
ehnto
If it were just an optional web standard, that might be okay. But it's a
system that removes control from webmasters and hands it over to Google, and
Google are using their incumbent advantage to coerce you into the AMP system.
I can build a site just as fast as AMP without sacrificing the UX of the web
itself in the process, and I intend to do so. But there are many businesses
jumping on the AMP bandwagon because they think there will be an SEO benefit.

As a user, I hate clicking on AMP links by mistake. It's not even clear where
you are, is it a website, is it still Google, how do I get to the website from
here? Who even served me the content? It says it's from this website, but it
wasn't?

~~~
shadowgovt
It is an optional web standard. There are other search engines than Google.

I can't help but wonder why none of them have thought to start indexing AMP
pages (or pages with some other standard or even no standard) in local cache
and serve them faster to their users; seems like a space they could choose to
compete on.

~~~
joshmaker
> There are other search engines than Google.

Consumers can ignore Google and use another search engine, but a publisher
that ignores Google won't be in business very long.

------
thw0rted
Am I the only one who read this piece as a screed against having web standards
at all? "The web is a messy, complicated place.... The end result is an
enormously diverse and anarchic free-for-all where almost no two websites use
the same code." In any other article I would expect the next paragraph to
start with "That's why we're introducing Fribble, a framework for structuring
your data so that blah the blah...." But, somehow, the author makes out that
well-structured data and appropriate use of semantic tags is a ploy by this
one evil company to secretly profit from your work.

I'm sure there are well-reasoned arguments against AMP, ways it could be
improved or competing ideas for how to encourage fast page loads, expose
content in a machine-friendly format, etc etc, but I haven't heard any of them
in this article. It boils down to "We don't want your rules, maaaaannn" and it
frankly isn't worthy of HN's attention.

------
summerlight
Personally, I'm okay without AMP if 99.9 percentile latency on the overall
mobile web ecosystem was within 2~3 secs. Unfortunately, it's more of 20~30
secs on non-AMP sites, which made me to take an ambivalent stance upon AMP. My
ISP is obviously not doing a great job, but it's also a publisher side problem
which is nearly un-fixable anytime soon.

------
bvanderveen
Yes, AMP is horrible for the end user, the UX is a nightmare, etc. But the
same thing can also be said about the web in general.

On a purely technical basis, this is my favorite news site:
[https://text.npr.org/](https://text.npr.org/) Loads lightning fast, never any
ads or comments!

------
weystrom
For firefox there is this extension to protect yourself from AMP:
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/amp2html/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/amp2html/)

Works on mobile too.

The downside is that page redirection takes some time.

------
jan6
I'm sad caching http proxies are all abandoned nowdays... I bet those would
also help noticeably, there's enough stuff browsers don't know to cache...
also in proxy vein, adblockers cannot be blocked, only in-browser convenient
ones can...and ublock origin dev edition got lately hit on the chrome app
store again ("lately" as in this year), I think...for no reason... as other
people said, the AMP is good so devs have a justified practical reason to push
back against the lazy clients who'd happily have 20mb pages over their fiber
connection...but it's bad in every OTHER way... google monopoly really should
be broken...they got like, 90% of BOTH search engine, and browser market...and
a lot of people don't even know alternatives EXIST... why do people got such
stupid nowdays...

------
dilap
Huge motivator for me to switch to DDG.

------
corodra
I switched to duckduckgo entirely in the beginning of November. Just to see if
I'll like it.

I kind of forgot I did. I really dont notice a loss of anything other than not
having to ignore really bullshitty sponsored posts and the Fisher Price feel
of google telling me what I want because of "trends".

That I feel like maybe tech companies need something like the alcohol industry
in the US. A person cant have ownership in a brewery, distributor and alcohol
retailer. They can only have ownership in one. Maybe tech needs to be broken
up that way? I'm not sure exactly when it comes to fine lines. But I know a
search engine controlling ads, news, tracking data, phones, and just data in
general... well it's not good.

------
cj
I wonder how different Google would be if they were able to diversify their
revenue to not rely so much on ads.

AMP = faster page loads = more pageviews = more ads served

AMP shouldn't need to be enforced to achieve a faster internet. It's not just
Google that knows more pageviews = more ads = more revenue. Publishers know
this too, and therefore publishers themselves have the same incentive to
reduce page load time as does Google.

It's disorienting to see Google frame AMP as something that's for the good of
the user. If it is, it's only a side effect of also being good for Google's
business model.

------
mancerayder
I posted this after googling something along the lines of 'firefox mobile turn
off autoplay amp' and coming across this article which was a fun hate read.

For some reason it manages to sneak past autoplay disabling? How?

------
Mandatum
I know my opinion here is completely self-serving..

But I prefer AMP over pretty much any news article or website.

As a developer, I can't trust operations nor my wider organisation to invest
in making things run better.

This is proven by browsing the top 20 news websites in my country. All are
slow, bloated, ad-riddled trash. Turning on an ad blocker helps, I've signed
up and trialed just about any semi-reputable news sites in this country (AU)
and none of them do anything to curb or make the experience any better.. Just
"unlocks" more popular articles or reduces the TTL for me.

------
lern_too_spel
This is stupid. If you build an Apple News article with different content from
the actual article, Apple users will complain, just as if you build an AMP
article that is worse than the normal page, search engine and link aggregator
users (not just Google's) will complain. That's why people hate Reddit AMP
results. If you ignore these warnings, Google will probably demote your AMP
pages, and rightly so because users will hate those results.

The author is basically broadcasting that he is clueless and actively harming
his clients' businesses.

------
ptasci67
Putting aside the merits of AMP or Google entirely, I find this author's
outrage suspicious. It says in Google's message, "this issue will not affect
your appearance on search...". There is a false equivalency proposed that
Google is strong-arming publishers to switch their entire site to AMP by
sending these messages.

I am not saying Google is blameless or that AMP is perfect, but reading the
author's argument literally, I don't understand why this action is the focus
of their outrage. Just ignore it.

------
ars
I totally understand the issue raised by this article.

But I have a problem: I _like_ AMP because it is so fast!

Publishers have done this to themselves by loading up simple web pages with
hundreds of scripts that slow it down to almost unusable levels.

Maybe if publishers stopped doing that, then you could start criticizing AMP.

"Some of my clients will ask me what to do with those messages. I will tell
them to delete them. Ignore Google’s nudging, pay no heed."

And then your clients will be unhappy with the traffic results. Are you going
to also tell your clients the drawbacks?

~~~
RonanTheGrey
It's kind of a "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" type of thing.

Google had the option of simply highly ranking pages that are performant and
lightweight on mobile. They didn't take that option, instead they went with
AMP. There's intent there. I'm not going to speculate on the intent, because
it isn't relevant: the point is that because there was a simpler technical
solution available _that they didn 't take_, there is clearly intent in going
the harder path. It's worth asking what that means.

AMP provides all the benefits that a well-built, well-architected site would,
and that would have been the "non-evil" option. Use web standards and push
people to respect them, imagine that...

------
nej
After AMP was introduced, I converted to DDG (DuckDuckGo) and after taking
some time getting used to it and personalizing it’s settings, I haven’t gone
back to Google.

------
jamesbiv
Though I agree with the sentiment of the article, I believe AMP can easily be
thwarted by efficient website structuring and use of libraries with mobile
efficiency in mind. What is good about the AMP indexing process is that, I
think, Google still favors the non-AMP version of the site if the AMP site is
less efficient than the standard version.

Some time back I built a library called DSOlib
([https://github.com/jamesbiv/device-streaming-object-
library](https://github.com/jamesbiv/device-streaming-object-library)) which
deals with this problem particularly. The aim of DSO was to ping the server
using Resource Timing ([https://www.w3.org/TR/resource-timing/#resource-
timing](https://www.w3.org/TR/resource-timing/#resource-timing)) in-order to
determine if the link speed is under a certain threshold.

Should the threshold not be met, then a reduced, non-interactive version of
the site loads using the same HTML, as non critical HTML can be moved into
templates if needed, and the "Critical Rendering Path" is used to form a
decision on how the site should download the sites' elements using DSO. Since
images, CSS and JavasSript make up the bulk of the download footprint.

DSO aims at optimising the footprint via the following concepts.

\- Offering only the CSS files relevant for breakpoints just for that device;

\- Scaling down images and lazy loading them at the lowest possible
resolution;

\- Blocking out elements of HTML using "display: none" for areas that wont be
loaded; and

\- Most importantly, only download the minimum Javascript libraries for non
interactive viewing.

There are other features DSO has such as background downloading for full
interactive after non-interactive has loaded; prompting the user and asking if
the interactive version is to be downloaded later, and a few other things.
However, I haven't completed the entire project as I was side tracked with
other projects but building a solution such as this that works along side
WebPack would be the best senario.

Further, I'm not too sure if there are other solutions out there similar to
DSO since I stopped development, but surely sidestepping AMP should be a
rather straightforward process.

------
mfer
There are two paths we can take to change this. Some should go down each of
the paths.

1\. Regulation. People organizing to stop monopolies and cartel behavior like
this.

2\. Competition. Both in the form of news aggregator systems and search
engines.

Of these things the only thing I see much action on is the search engines and
that's minimal. There are opportunities for action and businesses.

------
pawurb
I've written a piece about how to remove AMP support from your website without
sacrificing organic traffic and performance [https://pawelurbanek.com/amp-seo-
rating-performance](https://pawelurbanek.com/amp-seo-rating-performance)

------
pkamb
Reddit already has a fast, mobile-first site that looks almost exactly like
the AMP site.

Why do they put up with AMP and all of its annoyances? On a site where half
the appeal is in features such as upvoting that are incompatible with AMP!

It must be only for the supposed SEO benefits?

------
ggggtez
I thought we were done with seeing old articles complaining about AMP. I feel
like I should set up an account that just reposts anti-AMP articles once a
day, and see how many points it gets. Clearly HN demands more opportunities to
rail against it.

------
nabeelms
[https://ferdychristant.com/amp-the-missing-
controversy-3b424...](https://ferdychristant.com/amp-the-missing-
controversy-3b424031047) is relevant to the discussion as well.

------
Havoc
Not sure about the technical merits of AMP, but it's sufficiently embraced by
Google's tentacles that I just don't trust it.

Which perhaps is commentary more about Google than AMP.

------
mattpk
Google is also adding AMP to emails:
[https://amp.dev/about/email/](https://amp.dev/about/email/)

------
smabie
We all know that HTML sucks, but what’s wrong with AMP? I like AMP, I’m forced
to pay for each byte I use and 2mb web pages are killing me. The author
doesn’t give any technical reason why AMP is bad. And I don’t think that it’s
open source but google employees contribute more than anyone else is a good
reason: if we are against open source projects that have open source
contributors from predominantly one company we should think that Java, Scala,
R, Kotlin, Swift, MySQL, ReasonML, Haskell, F#, and much much more are “evil”.
In short, I don’t think we can conclude that “AMP can go to hell”.

------
bad_user
On my phone I switched to DuckDuckGo simply because I have no way to disable
AMP in search results otherwise.

------
techslave
starts off strong but starts to unravel to a crescendo here:

> F#&! you Google, and f#&! the AMP horse you rode in on.

followed by arguments about “our web”. by which of course he means
advertisers’ web. “our web” would in fact look more like the AMO web.

he’s right though. this is an abuse of google’s power.

------
Angostura
I’ve switched to Duck Duck Gonon my iPhone specifically to avoid AMP links.

And you know what? It’s not half bad.

------
misterdoubt
Google AMP is merely the next iteration of Google Sites.

------
vxNsr
I'm really not looking forward to the google web...

~~~
rjmunro
Real people aren't moving to Firefox or Brave, they are moving (or have moved)
to the Facebook mobile app. It has instant articles,
([https://instantarticles.fb.com/](https://instantarticles.fb.com/)) an amp-
like lightweight way to load news stories, all hidden inside Facebook's
system. Don't worry about searching for news, Facebook will just give you
whatever it feels like.

Then there's Apples iOS only "News" app. Who knows how that works.

AMP is clearly a far more open competitor to the above. It is saving news
publishers from themselves.

~~~
johnward
The facebook articles are worse than amp. The pages get broken halfway through
the article and don't load the rest of the content for me.

------
dikaio
People still read the news (propaganda machine)?

------
dyeje
I sure do love clicking on a search result, clicking the tiny info icon in the
top left, and then clicking the real link I wanted.

------
appleflaxen
I don't think the rewritten title is faithful to the link.

I understand why the original title of "Google AMP Can Go To Hell" was
rewritten, as it is unnecessarily inflammatory and clickbaity, but

"Google wants websites to adopt AMP as the default for building webpages"

really isn't the point of the article, _at all_. It is necessary _background_
for the article, but the point of the article as I read it is that there are
specific implications of the AMP effort that are nefarious, insidious, and
dangerous to the open web. A rough outline would be

* Background: Google wants websites to adopt AMP as the default for building webpages

* Contention 1: Adopting AMP is technically difficult

* Contention 2: Adopting AMP will harm non-google web properties in the future

* Call to action: there are several things you can do in order to "...fight back. You could tell them to stuff it, and find ways to undermine their dominance. Use a different search engine, and convince your friends and family to do the same. Write to your elected officials and ask them to investigate Google’s monopoly. Stop using the Chrome browser. Ditch your Android phone. Turn off Google’s tracking of your every move. And, for goodness sake, disable AMP on your website."

I don't think any reader would think the Background statement provides the
best summary of the posts thesis; it's clearly the call to action. By changing
it to the background statement, it changes the "meaning" of the article
completely.

So "Google AMP Can Go To Hell" is much better than the revised title, and if
it's unacceptable, then "Fight back against Google AMP" is both faithful and
uses the author's own terminology.

I think in this instance that the editorial control exerted over the post
title could have been better considered (notwithstanding the same change made
in the prior submission; the same mistakes were made then, as well)

~~~
dang
The main thing we're trying for in title changes is to use representative
language from the article itself. Since it does use the phrase "fight back",
we can go with your suggestion.

------
Joe-Z
Nice one HN, by changing the title (to something that is not the title of the
actual submission!) you just inverted the meaning of the first sentence of the
top comment at the time of writing [0]

If you are going with the second headline why not include the "Tell them
no."-part too?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21703750](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21703750)

~~~
dang
Because HN has an 80 char limit on titles.

Edit: we've since changed the title from "Google wants websites to adopt AMP
as the default for building webpages (2018)". See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21705610](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21705610).

~~~
Joe-Z
There I was, ready to be furious and dang strikes yet again with nothing but
reason. Thank you for your service!

------
tantalor
Mods: [2018]

------
calvinmorrison
s/amp//

------
baxtr
Hell yeah!

------
chrshawkes
The only thing worse than AMP? Paywalled AMP sites.

------
chiefalchemist
re: "Google is also the reason AMP sees any kind of adoption at all.
Basically, Google has forced websites – specifically news publishers – to
create AMP versions of their articles."

Actually, that's not quite right. Publishers have forced Google to forced
publishers to use AMP. That is, publishers can't control themselves and are
adding more and more and more bloat to their pages.

I am by no means a Google and/or AMP fan, but the truth is most sites have no
respect for the receiving device and/or connection speed.

~~~
ravenstine
How many average people are walking around saying "I've quit the web! It's too
slow!"?

Nobody. It's a non-issue because, despite the faults of the web, the average
person is still clicking on chum-boxes, sharing clickbait, and using Google
services.

Google isn't trying to save the web. They're trying to _become_ the web. And
they've already made their money, so what makes you think they care out of the
goodness of their hearts?

~~~
kllrnohj
> How many average people are walking around saying "I've quit the web! It's
> too slow!"? Nobody.

Everyone did. It's why web apps are dead & buried, and native apps rule the
world. Nobody talks about cool web experiences anymore. It's why we're all
talking about the experience of viewing a search result instead of the
experience of browsing the web.

Entire areas that started exclusively on the web are now dominated by native
apps, like social.

The web only exists for long-tail, rarely used content. That's the actual area
it occupies now. Google, with AMP, are optimizing for the usage the web has
left. It's a realistic approach to the web.

~~~
ravenstine
Show me the numbers. Everyone just spouts this rhetoric about the web being
"dead" but where's the evidence? Please show me evidence. If people are still
using The Google, then I doubt the web is "dead".

------
meditativeape
As a user, I do find AMP pages load faster than canonical pages and provide a
more consistent experience across sites.

I wonder if publishers that put resources into building AMPs see increased
traffic to their website? If so, that's a win-win situation.

------
qxnqd
Instead of blaming Google for creating and pushing AMP, how about blaming
publishers for forcing Google to create AMP?

------
taf2
Sorry isn't this just another web developer complaining that they have to use
someone else's technology? I mean the first time I looked into supporting AMP
I had that same visceral reaction "f this it sucks". After spending sometime
with it it's not that bad and I get the value prop - AMP is content being
served up directly on google.com or cloud flare or any cdn provider that is
essentially the evolution of google's cache. Pretty cool if you stop to think
about it. In the past to access google's cache you got a pretty fast page
response but it was kind of also very broken because not all of the essentials
would load correctly. Now with AMP you have some control over that cached page
that is offloaded for free to google's servers. I think there are some UX
issues for sure - IMO it's open source so you can always open a pull
request/issue and try to make it better... or ignore it and continue to build
something great... if you have something great people will find it whether you
use AMP or not.

~~~
phpnode
It doesn't matter how good or bad the technology is, or whether it's
convenient or profitable to use it. AMP is a brazen attempt by Google to use
their monopoly to take control of the web. The current version of AMP is not
their intended final destination.

~~~
taf2
so I remember being upset that I could not run my javascript code in amp
too... is that maybe what has you feeling it’s google trying to take control
of the web... the thing is google make money selling ads not controlling your
web content so I just don’t see how your assertion makes sense?

~~~
halfjoking
Just think how Youtube evolved from a seemingly open platform - to now where
tons of people are being 'deplatformed' for not towing Google's line. That's
what happens when Google gets 90%+ market share.

Remember when the Chrome team decided that certain sites won't be allowed to
Autoplay videos? Yet other partner sites (and Youtube) were allowed to
Autoplay. What if every single f-ing goddamn feature on your website was
restricted based what Google says? If you're not "AMP-compliant" enough,
following the arbitrary rules Google sets then they might restrict certain
features like video viewing on your AMP site. That's the future people are
buying into by implementing AMP. Free speech and the open web will die if AMP
gets dominant market share.

