
Search Results are officially AMP’d - cramforce
https://search.googleblog.com/2016/09/search-results-are-officially-ampd.html
======
BinaryIdiot
So now if you buy more into Google's ecosystem (AMP) you get a special flag
next to your content in search results? Interesting...

You know I don't understand this whole AMP'd thing. It's possible to make
something just as efficient if you don't ruin your mark-up to begin with. The
big advantage with AMP, as far as I can tell, is the Google caching mechanism.
There is no reason someone can't use actual standards to create the exact same
results.

It really bothers me that, to get preferential treatment, I have to now work
with Google AMP and Facebook Instant Articles. If I don't the competition
will. We originally had web standards for a reason, now we're doing this non-
standard stuff.

~~~
idlewords
The reason for AMP is surveillance capitalism. If you absolutely, positively
believe you have to track your users, writing simple web pages is not an
option.

Your choice is either the status quo (pull in lots of third-party cruft), or
having a fast-loading page where Google runs the tracking and advertising
infrastructure.

~~~
hawkice
Wait, THAT'S why people want to use AMP? I set up AMP on my personal site for
a couple weeks because I thought there was an SEO benefit (I didn't see any,
so I removed it -- lowering page weight by something like 7x).

I had no idea that the reason it seemed pointless was because it was for ad
infrastructure.

~~~
kybernetyk
Funnily enough the AMP version of my page is larger and takes longer to load
than the non-amp version. And ironically I don't even get that little "amp"
bolt symbol because it's a software product page and not a recipe, news post
or blog post (there's only a handful of categories that are amp enabled).

I think I'm going to remove the AMP page, too. It offers nothing to me and is
actually worse for my visitors than the normal responsive page.

~~~
hawkice
Same here. My blog is (unsurprisingly) text-based, so the 40-50kb JS file was
almost all of the page weight.

~~~
lucb1e
Hold on, "accelerated" pages mean "add 45KB of data"?

~~~
luctus
You need to add [this js
file]([https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js](https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js))
that is near to 45KB. I have just uploaded an AMP version for my site and it
felt a little bit ridiculous... I made a simpler version (with no js and
limited css), changed `<img>` for `<amp-img>` and added this js. It would load
even faster without this js!!

------
MBCook
I don't know about everyone else but I _HATE_ AMPed pages.

The idea is good, but being Google they've done.... something. I'm on iOS and
the way pages scroll means they feel like they've got a different weight,
they've adjusted something. And it makes interacting with the frustrating
because the Google results page feels like any page in Safari and then you
click into an AMP page (which does load _very_ fast) and it suddenly feels
wrong.

I bet it feels 'normal' on Android.

I have a feeling this is going to drive me nuts.

~~~
ashearer
I appreciate the effort to define a fast subset of HTML, but the AMP loader on
google.com makes the whole page-loading experience different and worse in many
ways. Several times today while trying to visit different sites, the AMP JS
loader has broken down, displaying only the Google address bar, a fake AMP
address bar below it with the intended URL, and a multicolored Android-style
circle spinning endlessly (on an iPhone). All the native browser controls for
page lifecycle (including timeouts and Reload button) were completely
ineffective. It's important for the loader to get its replacement for these
things right if it's going to try to supplant the browser's built-in
functionality, and it currently doesn't succeed at that.

~~~
snuxoll
I've noticed it just straight up doesn't work with Purify enabled, refreshing
the page with content blockers disabled has fixed it every time.

------
atdt
Per the spec[0], AMP pages must load the AMP runtime via a script tag that
references a Google-controlled server, cdn.ampproject.org. This means you are
handing over both your site security and your traffic logs to Google. This is
a non-issue for the many sites that have already made that bargain (by using
Google Analytics, Google Hosted Libraries, Google Fonts, etc.), but it is
definitely an issue to some.

[0]:
[https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/spec.html](https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/spec.html)

~~~
bduerst
How is that different for publishers that use any other third party script or
service?

The Economist landing page alone uses 22 different such services.

~~~
CaptSpify
> How is that different for publishers that use any other third party script
> or service?

I personally don't see it as all that different. They are both terrible.

~~~
bduerst
Well, with AMP users it's going from 22 -> 1, right?

That's at least marginally better.

------
AJ007
There are three stories here. Each is serious and should be evaluated
separately as not to bias the conclusions of any.

#1 There is a big problem with mobile sites. I'm using a recent iPhone and
many popular news sites, without ad blockers, are as close to unusable as the
worst websites I've ever been to, dating back to using Internet Explorer in
1999. Auto playing inline video ads that slide in to view, just insane. These
things clearly kill time on site and reader retention. I have theories about
why publishers are ignoring this, but who knows.

#2 Google is using AMP to co-opt publisher's traffic. This means users are
scrolling to another story from another publisher or easily bouncing back to
the Google results when they land on your content. (See the X in the story
link on the animated gif example.)

There goes your time on site and long term user retention. If #1 was a problem
for you already, you probably don't notice.

#3 AMP & Instant articles are going to put a stranglehold on third party ad
networks and represent a very real anti-trust issue.

There are a bunch of other privacy implications too, which have been discussed
in length. Publishers should be thinking really hard about their future.

~~~
lucb1e
> I'm using a recent iPhone and many popular news sites, without ad blockers

I think I found your problem.

Jokes aside, I see your point. But if those sites are shit, stop using those
sites. They are currently popular but they don't _have_ to be.

------
zeppelin101
I guess I'm the only here who loves the idea of clicking on an AMP'd page and
having it load instantly? I can start reading the article _immediately_ ,
instead of waiting for allll of the assets and javascript to load. Including
ads.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Don't get me wrong I _LOVE_ the user experience of the _loading_ but
everything else about it, in my opinion, is very negative. You can't even
share it like you normally would on the web so it breaks the web in far too
many ways just to hard code Google analytics / ads into the website.

~~~
themacguffinman
I'm not sure how sharing is broken. As far as I know, AMP pages render on any
standards-compliant browser and have a normal URL.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
I can't check right now but last I looked you can't share AMPed search results
and I thought a few pages depending on how they were structured. I could be
wrong but I don't remember being able to generate a good URL from some AMP
pages.

~~~
themacguffinman
It seems to work for me...it just opens in your normal browser:
[http://i.imgur.com/1VS4O0a.png](http://i.imgur.com/1VS4O0a.png) (screenshot
shows Chrome custom tab)

------
geldan
This feels very regressive. I thought we got rid of "m." for a reason.

Is there anyway to effectively "AMP" a page without maintaining a separate set
of HTML/CSS/JS?

~~~
honkhonkpants
Sure. You can make your regular site not a piece of crap. AMP is really just a
straitjacket for web publishers. You can make your own straitjacket.

~~~
geldan
Yes, but even if you follow all of the best practices and deliver a fast page,
your site won't show up as "AMPed." In order to be "AMPed" it appears that you
need to employ a whole slew of custom elements and syntax.

Unless I am missing something in these examples:
[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/tree/master/examples](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/tree/master/examples)

~~~
LeoPanthera
Protectionism at its finest. Nice search result you have there. Be a shame if
something happened to it.

------
malyk
So after 2 decades of dealing with really bad cross browser incompatibilities
that we are just now emerging from we are going to dive into cross search
engine incompatibilities to an even greater extent.

AMP for Google, something else for Bing, another format for duck duck go, one
more for yahoo...ugh!

~~~
zukee
Bing has actually started using AMP in their results. See the last paragraph
of this article: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/20/google-brings-non-news-
amp...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/20/google-brings-non-news-amp-links-to-
its-mobile-search-results/)

------
8ytecoder
AMP makes normal browsing so much harder. My pet peeve is there's no way to
see/copy the URL making sharing something a PITA.

The interface doesn't feel right either.

~~~
zuccs
What interface? Every website can build it how they want?

~~~
pbarnes_1
It just feels different to non-AMP pages on iOS. Like, bad different.

~~~
RickS
Some other comment threads here have linked it to different page scroll
behavior. Is that what you're experiencing?

------
rckclmbr
I work in developing markets, and am really excited for AMP. The web on 2g
networks is a horrible experience -- imagine browsing the web today at
netscape-era speeds.

My only big gripe with AMP is it's only built for publishing. It's missing a
key feature of making the web complete: the ability for users to interact (ie
no forms).

~~~
CaptSpify
> The web on 2g networks is a horrible experience

Completely agree. But instead of adding _another_ layer of complexity and
bullshit on top of the existing stack, why not just take away the existing
layers of bullshit and complexity?

I like the premise behind AMP, but we already have a solution for that. This
is just another attempt to lock sites into google.

~~~
JeremyBanks
We already had a solution in theory, but that's worth little when in practice
we've had a mess that was rapidly getting worse with no sign of turning
around. AMP is not the optimum, but it's actually happening, and it's one heck
of a lot better than most of the status quo.

~~~
CaptSpify
The only reason AMP is happening is because Google ignored the original
problem for so long. If they had payed attention, we wouldn't be in this
crappy situation in the first place. This is just them making another power
grab and pretending it's for everyone else's benefit.

------
IshKebab
I don't see why they need to highlight these pages. Apparently they already
use page load speed as a signal in their search rankings. Why not just
increase its importance?

~~~
Sylos
Because increasing its importance could be seen as tampering with the results
for their own benefit, i.e. pushing a web-technology that they control. Adding
a flag to it is sort of the same, but I'm guessing they are testing the waters
with this and if they don't get legal repercussion, they'll actually change
the search rankings.

~~~
IshKebab
No I'm not saying they increase the rankings of fast AMP pages. I'm saying
increase the rankings of pages that are fast regardless of the technology they
use. You can have a fast page with normal HTML.

------
malchow
The evidence seems to suggest that the push for AMP us all about making sure
Google gets its ad tags hardcoded on your pages. Otherwise, Google could
release a YSlow type package of best practices. I believe it once considered
doing this under the title Page Speed Project.

~~~
themacguffinman
I disagree because the <amp-ad> tag [1] supports many non-Google ad networks.
It doesn't force you to use Google's services at all.

It seems to me that they used this particular approach because best practices
are a lot easier to ignore or misinterpret than AMP's "your page will
literally break if you try funny stuff". It's why something like TeX was
invented rather than releasing a "best practices" package for making Word
documents.

[1] [https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/extended/amp-
ad.ht...](https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/extended/amp-ad.html)

------
rocky1138
Just switch to DuckDuckGo and be done with it. The results are mostly good.

~~~
ultramancool
Really? I tried it but I always found the Google results much better,
especially when you're on the hunt for a weird error you're getting or a
bootlegged copy of something obscure.

~~~
5ilv3r
Since google stopped substring matching and started picking and choosing on
it's own which keywords are important and dropping the ones it doesn't like,
these things are no longer really working in google search either.

~~~
CaptSpify
The more google tries to figure out what I want, rather than searching for
what I tell it to, the worse the results get. I find quoting helps a lot

~~~
ino
I too feel google results gave been getting worse in the past 6 years. It's
hard to describe, but it feels like the internet is somehow getting smaller.

But duck duck go results are still noticeably worse, sadly.

~~~
icelancer
I have the same combined experience of you two posters - DDG is worse than
Google and Google is worse unless you start liberally using quotes, which I
have switched to doing (and I actually would argue use of these delimiters has
improved Google experience).

~~~
ultramancool
Yeah, definitely, trying to find actual torrent sites now amounts to adding
"magnet" "btih" to your query or you get a bunch of junk spam sites filled
with malware.

------
massysett
Is Google or anyone else making any effort whatsoever to explain this AMP
thing to anyone other than Web developers? For weeks, I thought AMP was some
sort of news service. I would get news articles that were apparently from
someone else, but they said "AMP" so I figured it was some kind of syndicator
or something. I tapped on the "AMP" and the lightning bolt thing and nothing
happened. So I gave up on figuring out what it was and then I stumbled on some
story like this one.

Does Google just not care that people do not know what this thing is?

------
helthanatos
I'm not sure if I don't like AMP... Sometimes the page looks better and
sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you try to find a comments section that isn't
there because it was amped out. AMP pages are pretty finicky for me (and still
only top stories).

~~~
gregable
That's under the control of the publisher, so it's up to them to make decent
amp versions of their pages, it's not a fundamental limitation of the format.
Agreed though that in some cases, these sites are throwing up an amp version
that is simply inferior.

------
dfar1
AMP makes pages fast by forcing you to drop all the website fluff. Most will
argue that fluff is not needed on mobile sites (I agree)... but try telling
your client that.

~~~
kbenson
Well, if you include in your discussion that most internet traffic is now
mobile, and mobile users want quick access, and Google is giving them a way to
distinguish whether you site will likely be quick (AMPed) or possibly not, and
it may be in their best interest to signal to users that they provide a good
mobile experience, it might go smoother.

------
nxzero
Super annoying feature, since Google hijacks the URL in the process.

There should be a way to opt-out that is simple and does not require the user
to be signed-in to do.

Ironically, almost positive that Google hates when links are wrapped like
this.

~~~
gruez
But google already does that

~~~
nxzero
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, believe you're talking about the search
result redirects that Google does; which is different, because the user get
redirected the the real URL.

AMD'd links never redirect, if you click the X you're sent back to Google's
results, there's no way to get to the real URL that an average user would
easily be able to do, if the link is bookmarked the link it's not the real
link, etc.

~~~
__derek__
They don't redirect for mobile devices, that is. If you visit an AMP URL on a
non-mobile device, you'll end up at the original piece of content.

~~~
nxzero
As you likely know, AMP'd stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages Project; meaning
AMP'd is for mobile traffic.

------
oneloop
And so Google edges a bit closer towards complete and through world
domination.

~~~
dfar1
They "hijack" the search result url on any result. If you copy the address
from the search result link, you always get a google link. But you could be
talking about another url.

~~~
mastax
Google's done that for years (not that it makes it any better, it's just not
related to AMP). e.g. if I search 'Hacker News' and copy the link I get:

[https://www.google.com/url?url=https://news.ycombinator.com/...](https://www.google.com/url?url=https://news.ycombinator.com/&rct=j&frm=1&q=&esrc=s&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwiMmOfD3J7PAhVIViYKHUwNA68QFggVMAA&sig2=EarAE_Bk4tSkZ0fm0ew2_Q&usg=AFQjCNEYN7cAgtoYSsq0i5ihAB7QX-
fxlQ)

------
benologist
Because the takeaway from ad blocking is everyone wants their privacy and
security relentlessly undermined _faster_.

------
Zhenya
Does this mean that you must enable JS for simple pages with text to load if
they have been AMP'ed?

~~~
kuschku
Yes.

~~~
Zhenya
and the JS is served from a google domain?

~~~
kuschku
Yes.

------
pmarreck
I'm fine with AMP as long as i can get a link to a result that is opted out of
it. Which i did not see a way to easily do, recently. So basically, I'm not
fine with AMP.

Because SPOF's are bad. Not just from an architectural perspective, but from a
privacy, independence and total systematic perspective. You want to be an
agent in between me and the Internet that basically caches a fast version of
everything after being pushed through your systems? Let me opt out.

~~~
__derek__
You can easily opt out: don't use Google.

------
wodenokoto
As far as I can tell, there is not single link to an AMP article anywhere in
the blog post.

Does AMP only work from Google search results page?

~~~
bduerst
Seems like it. What it appears to do it swap in the AMP links for supported
sites when you search via mobile.

------
michaelmior
Has anyone who implemented AMP on their personal site actually seen the AMP
result show up in search? I implemented AMP some time ago just for fun and I
see no sign of it in search results for my blog. The AMP validation tool as
well as the Search Console say there are no problems.

~~~
hyperhopper
Same experience for me. Amp validates, If I go to the google cache url I can
see it there as well. No AMP icon.

------
biot
"Though most tags in an AMP HTML page are regular HTML tags, some HTML tags
are replaced with AMP-specific tags"

If Microsoft were introducing this, I suspect we'd see a lot of "embrace,
extend, extinguish" comments.

------
SubiculumCode
I hate the Google News AMP section from my phone. I don't know if related but
it seems to have also disabled opening google news results in new yabs on
Firefox on Android ever since they changed the page.

------
strictnein

        <html "Imagine a Lightning Symbol Here" >
    

Really? I know you can just use <html amp> but why are we going down this
road?

edit: Well, that should have had a weird lightning symbol next to the <html
but I guess HN ate it up. See the example:

[https://www.ampproject.org/docs/get_started/create/basic_mar...](https://www.ampproject.org/docs/get_started/create/basic_markup.html)

~~~
bsimpson
My hypothesis, as someone who doesn't work on AMP, is it forces people to
copy/paste the boilerplate rather than writing their own version (and maybe
getting it wrong).

~~~
tedmiston
I think he's implying the use of an emoji in the html tag is kind of
ridiculous. Personally, I'm split being it being ridiculous and being pretty
cool.

------
cauterized
Ugh.

Guess I'm switching my default Safari search engine to DDG...

------
ldng
Can you now invalidate Google cache ?

Because by the look of that issue, you don't have any control.
[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/1901](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/1901)

So basically you are completely at the mercy of Google's crawler.

~~~
cramforce
Update happens independent of crawler and you can ping for it
[https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/update-
ping](https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/update-ping)

------
frik
The end user will stay longer on Google and Facebook. That's what they want.

Anyway, it feels pretty broken on iOS.

Would be great if Adblockers would mangle the Google search results to replace
the AMP links with proper links to the full website of e.g. WashingtonPost.

------
shaunrussell
The best part about AMP is it provides an incentive for major content
publishers to create non-bloated pages. Without the AMP standards marketing
teams start adding "all of the things" causing page loads to become much
heavier.

------
dvcrn
I like amp but what is with responsive pages? I thought the best practice went
towards not serving a different page for mobile users and have everything full
responsive. Now with amp, the opposite seems to be the case

------
shostack
Any ad network folks here care to weigh in on how you view AMP and its impact
on the industry? Seems like a major moat-building exercise ala FB Instant
Articles since Google has all the leverage with publishers.

------
chinathrow
Forced 3rd party JS you must include... no thanks, no AMP for my sites.

------
raldi
I'm on a vanilla iPhone 6S running iOS 10 and can't get this to work on Chrome
or Safari. Does anyone have an example search term?

~~~
zukee
The change is still rolling out and is not yet available for all users. But if
you search for something like "obama" you can see AMP already in use in the
"Top Stories" section of the results page

------
DivineTraube
So AMP does two major things:

(1) It prescribes a stripped-down version of HTML and uses a JS loader to
render fast and load as much resources as possible asynchronously

(2) It caches the website in the Google CDN and delivers it via HTTP/2

By applying best practices of structuring web applications and optimizing for
the critical rendering path (1) can be achieved, too. The AMP loader is just
an opinionated way to do this for simple pages. Everyone can get similar
results without AMP by following web performance best practices like [1]:

\- Reducing the critical resources needed

\- Reducing the critical bytes which must be transferred

\- Loading JS, CSS and HTML templates asynchronously

\- Rendering the page progressively

\- Minifying & Concatenating CSS, JS and images

And there is lots of good tooling for this (e.g. postcss, processhtml, cssmin,
UglifyJS, imagemin, critical, gulp-rev-all, ...)

(2) is not only harder. It is what limits the broad applicability of AMP.
Cached data in the Google CDN cannot be invalidated, neither in the CDN itself
nor in ISP interception caches, corporate proxies or the browser cache [2].
The effective consequence of this is that you can _only_ use AMP when the
content is mostly static. This is the case for news websites or other
publications that are only changed by human editors. It completely breaks down
when you try to create a dynamic site, for example a social network or a shop.

That is why our startup Baqend [3] takes a different route. We say that
developers are clever enough to use existing tooling to achieve (1): an
efficient rendering and loading experience. And for (2) we add a caching
scheme that also employs CDNs for delivery but keeps data consistent. This is
made possible by a simple process:

1\. When a browser connects to a Baqend-based website, it loads a Bloom filter
containing all potentially stale cached URLs.

2\. Every stale URL is requested using HTTP revalidation to refresh stale
copies and update caches.

3\. When an update operation changes a resource (e.g. an image, JSON object or
even a complex query result) its URL is instantly invalidated in the CDN [4]
and marked as stale in the Bloom filter.

4\. When loading resource, a statistical estimation of the expected TTL (cache
liftime) is made. Whenever that prediction fails, the Bloom filter and the
automatic CDN invalidation compensate the difference between estimation and
real lifetime.

Using this scheme (developed at the University of Hamburg in cooperation with
Baqend), every kind of dynamic data can be treated as cachable data and the
applicability of is not limited to data that seldomly changes and even works
for write-heavy resources with rich consistency guarantees (Δ-Atomicity, Read-
Your-Writes, Monotonic Reads, Monotonic Writes, Causal Consistency) [5].

Of course I'm biased but you'd like to see AMP-like acceleration coupled with
fresh cached data plus tooling, layout and frameworks of your choice, have a
look at our Backend-as-a-Service.

[1]
[https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/c...](https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/critical-
rendering-path/analyzing-crp).

[2]
[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/1901](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/1901)

[3] [http://www.baqend.com/](http://www.baqend.com/)

[4] [https://www.fastly.com/blog/building-fast-and-reliable-
purgi...](https://www.fastly.com/blog/building-fast-and-reliable-purging-
system)

[5] [http://www.slideshare.net/felixgessert/talk-cache-
sketches-u...](http://www.slideshare.net/felixgessert/talk-cache-sketches-
using-bloom-filters-and-web-caching-against-slow-load-times)

~~~
cromwellian
AMP also forces precalculated layout of the page and disables bad CSS
selectors. You can take a page, take out all the JS cruft, and put all the
resources on a CDN, and still end up with mobile layout adding 500
milliseconds to the initial page render, or more, if relayouts are triggered
during render.

The majority of regular web developers aren't even aware of layout costs.

------
Touche
When I do a search on google.com I have to scroll down half the page to find
any search results, AMP or not. Top half is covered by ads. Try:

    
    
      hotels near SomeCity, CA
    

To see

~~~
kuschku
Indeed, google recently has doubled the amount of ads shown.

Without uBlock Origin, Google is basically unusable for most people.

