
AMP for email is bad - zach43
https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/amp-email-bad-idea/
======
jchw
Every thread about AMP on Hacker News goes exactly the same way. It’s
annoying, repetitive.

But here’s the thing: while I get criticisms about AMP for web, pretty much
none of them apply to AMP for email. The author of this article keeps bringing
up points about AMP for web as if they have anything to do with AMP for email.

AMP for email basically does one thing: it enables interactive emails without
allowing arbitrary code. It is standard and other email providers can
implement it. You’d think this premise would be popular on HN, but it’s not,
all because people are still caught up over the effectively unrelated usage of
AMP in Google Search.

If you don’t like AMP in Google Search, fine. I find it fairly annoying too,
though admittedly once the URL issue is fixed it will probably stop bothering
me. Or not at all, since I actually tend to use Duck Duck Go anyways. But can
we stop ruining every discussion with this non-sense? It’s tiring, and I don’t
even like AMP. It’s gotten to the point where saying something bad about AMP
is probably the easiest way to hit HN frontpage with no effort.

(Disclosure, I work for Google, not on anything related to AMP. Seriously, I
still dislike AMP.)

~~~
landryraccoon
Web pages don't have any expectation of durable persistence between views. If
I go to Hackernews or Facebook or Google, I expect that the front page will
_not_ look the same as it did yesterday.

Email does have an expectation of durable persistence; in fact I would argue
that that is a critical feature of email - If you send me an email I can
always return to my email inbox and if I open the email I will always see the
_exact same message_. I do not want that to change, in fact, as soon as I know
that can change, it undermines the trust of the entire channel.

Will Amazon send me an order reciept, then subtly change the delivery date
because it loads via Javascript? Wow, I could have sworn they promised it
would arrive on Friday, now it's next week? What else could they change in my
order as well? If I want an immutable copy do I now have to go back to paper
printouts?

Even worse, what if I got an email using interactive features from a website
that no longer supports those resources? Am I going to open my inbox and get a
404 because it's dynamically loading content that now isn't there? I have a
reasonable expectation that when I open an email today, I can return to my
inbox and see _exactly the same_ content next week, next month and five years
from now without having to question my own sanity. If I need to look at an
order confirmation from a website that now doesn't exist because they didn't
get their funding am I SOL because the CDN serving the dynamic email content
is gone?

This is why I oppose AMP. This is a serious, legit criticism and I'd like
Google to address it head on. User's don't want emails to become ephemeral,
ever changing media because they want to feel their inbox _belongs to them_.
As soon as it feels like they're visiting a site that belongs to someone else,
it's not _their_ inbox, instead it's just a bunch of bookmarks to changing,
volatile resources that someone else has put into their face. It feels like an
invasion, and it is.

~~~
jvolkman
Or, maybe Amazon will helpfully add an alert to your order receipt when the
shipment is unexpectedly delayed?

At any rate, the other MIME parts aren't gone. In gmail you can just click
"show HTML message".

~~~
gopkarthik
> _maybe Amazon will helpfully add an alert to your order receipt when the
> shipment is unexpectedly delayed?_

Alternatively Amazon could send a followup email. This way the sequence of
events is preserved and not dependent on the sender.

I currently use email as a immutable list of events that have occurred in my
life but with this I can no longer continue to do so.

~~~
jvolkman
So just use a client that doesn't support dynamic email, or disable the
feature in clients that do.

------
theelous3
Maybe this is selection bias or just plain old regular curmudgery, but I can't
stand amp. I have a modern device and fast internet everywhere I go with my
phone. I find amp sites to be consistently slower, uglier and less navigable
than the request-desktop version of a site. My phone, and most other low-mid
to high end phones have the sreeen real estate and processing power to handle
and use desktop versions of a site.

Retaining a familiar interface across devices leads to faster site usage than
any speed gains that might be happening because of amp. Measuring the speed of
a website in kb/s alone isn't a good enough metric, and the standardisation
attempts of amp are ugly imo.

~~~
na85
It's okay. Google will kill AMP in a year or two, just like they kill
everything else.

~~~
AJ007
Another view is AMP is killing Google because they are wasting resources
expanding a project that already failed.

------
superkuh
AMP is bad for everything. To be clear, this starts by it not being good for
anything. Like on the web the form of AMP used by Google and Cloudflare.

Starting with google: AMP does not actually make loading any faster. Google
just uses it's search monopoly to make it seem so. When you use google search
with javascript enabled AMP results are both prioritized in the listing and
pre-loaded in the background. This makes up the entire increase in load time
you perceive. AMP pages not pre-loaded by google are just as slow to load.

At Cloudflare there are other problems. If you're a CF customer and have the
option enabled, your AMP page hosted on CF servers will do some nasty stuff.
Specifically outgoing links to third party domains will be _mirrored_ onto
cloudflare's servers and re-hosted. Presented to anyone clicking off your CF
AMP page as the actual site but not. Instead CF gets the hits and you never
see it. I've seen the CF bots doing this to my domain. But CF never responds
to emails from anyone that isn't a customer.

As for AMP for email I don't know the specific downsides besides the obvious
corporate centralization and control this gives. But it certainly doesn't have
any purpose. And I say this as a guy that only reads email as text and never
renders HTML.

~~~
lern_too_spel
> When you use google search with javascript enabled AMP results are both
> prioritized in the listing and pre-loaded in the background.

Or Bing search or Baidu search or Yahoo! Japan search and so on. The whole
point of AMP is that it can be safely preloaded and prerendered, making it
faster than any other web page you can create for people coming from a link
aggregator. One of the big advantages it has over Facebook Instant Articles or
Apple News is that a publisher has to create an AMP page once and then gets to
integrate with the multiple link aggregators that support AMP for free. If I
want to create my own link aggregator, I don't need a FAANG's clout to get
publishers to integrate with me for instant-loading pages — I can use their
existing AMP pages.

~~~
seieste
AMP is slower for me because I have to press on my screen twice to get to the
actual page I wanted to go to.

Hence AMP requires at least 0.5s between the time I click on a Google link and
get to my real destination?

~~~
kurthr
When it doesn't crash in chrome on an android phone from GoogleNews. When that
happens only the amp is available and because it didn't render you can't get
the actual site...

------
radarsat1
I really wish the email standard was markdown instead of HTML.

I only ever switch from text-only when I need to embed an image, and otherwise
_occasionally_ italics or whatever is useful. This could be taken care of with
a basic markdown-like language, and avoid getting full HTML advertisements,
etc. I really, really don't need your newsletter to be properly formatted in
my mailbox, just send a link, I'll open it in the browser if I want to.

~~~
captn3m0
If Google really wanted to make the web fast, they would add native support
for text/markdown mimetype in Chrome and ask publishers to just create .md
files instead.

~~~
andrewshadura
text/markdown is a bad idea because it's not backwards compatible. It should
be text/plain; markup=markdown, since Markdown is perfectly readable without
any software support.

See [https://blog.freron.com/2011/thoughts-on-writing-emails-
usin...](https://blog.freron.com/2011/thoughts-on-writing-emails-using-
markdown/) for more thoughts on this topic.

~~~
stephenr
backwards compatible with what? In my experience anything served as `text/*`
that isn’t more specifically handled (eg `text/html`) will be rendered as
text/plain because the type is still `text`.

Edit: rendered, not tendered

------
tholman
There are absolutely no standards at all when trying to code emails, it takes
hours trying to make something that remotely resembles the same thing on every
engine (Microsoft outlook rendering emails with their ms word engine, google
doing all sorts of different things on desktops vs phones) - and hours more of
testing and tweaking css and markup hacks to make them readable. Although this
is another puzzle piece to scatter the landscape, I can’t say I’m against
someone actually trying to lock some standards down on the email platform.

The counter is that we don’t need all the css and pizzazz in emails, but we’ve
come too far to realistically go back on that.

~~~
swiley
It’s a pain because no one wants it!

Emails are for text, if you have something to say you can write it out.

~~~
javagram
Except that html email is used because it works a lot better (i.e. people DO
want it)

Try sending your marketing campaign as plain text and then try sending it as
carefully crafted HTML mail. Unless your target is a specific small segment of
users who love text/plain, HTML will do better and make you more money.

~~~
simias
I don't know what's the name of this phenomenon but it reminds me of bass-
boosted stereos and over-saturated TV screens. Objectively, from a signal
processing theory standpoint, it's not superior to a properly calibrated
monitor. But subjectively it seems that we collectively like it when dynamics
get crushed to loony-tunes levels.

I feel like HTML email is the same way. People think they want it, but in my
experience it's an absolutely abysmal experience. Ever been forwarded one of
these corporate-type emails where people reply all over the place, each using
their own convention of color and typesetting and emphasis markers, with bits
of "rich text" signatures and images littered throughout? That's a bloody
terrible experience.

Not that plain text email can't be messy, but it's really a situation where
less is more. People have to be a little more careful with what they're doing
instead of saying "I'll just write this in neon pink and they'll get it".

As for marketing campaigns then yes, I grant you that you can make much more
compelling content with more advanced technology but as far as I'm concerned
that's cancer so I don't really care about that. I don't really get why
anybody would opt into receiving what's effectively spam into their mailbox
although maybe I'm wrong about that.

~~~
Alex3917
> Ever been forwarded one of these corporate-type emails where people reply
> all over the place, each using their own convention of color and typesetting
> and emphasis markers, with bits of "rich text" signatures and images
> littered throughout? That's a bloody terrible experience.

[https://www.prettyfwd.com](https://www.prettyfwd.com)

Created to fix that exact issue.

~~~
Fnoord
Which is Gmail-only and therefore Google-only. I wouldn't want very sensitive
corporate data hosted by Google, so this is a red flag for my use-case.

~~~
Alex3917
Fair. I’ll make an Outlook add-in also, I just haven’t gotten to it yet. I’ve
already done the preliminary work to make the API agnostic though so it’s
really just the UI lift.

------
SergeAx
The article looks a bit suspicious and FUD to me: first they say "here is five
reasons why AMP in Gmail is bad" and then just put out five general essays
about how Google is bad.

AMP as tech is certainly good for users. Google pushes it a tad too hard and
sometimes is at the edge of abusing it, but overall effect on UX is very
positive. There's no monopoly here: anyone can take advantage of this tech
(and I believe most search engines do). AMP in email is even more innocent: in
the end, you already are inside Gmail inbox, what could go wrong from there?

Current Gmail actions[1] are very useful, and if AMP could do even better -
count me in.

[1]
[https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/overview#gmail_ac...](https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/overview#gmail_actions)

edit: link to Gmail actions

~~~
x3haloed
Exactly. There isn't a cohesive point about why AMP for the email is bad, just
a list of 5 negative things. I can come up with a list of 5 negative things
about anything.

------
fock
Maybe one should first ask: Is AMP currently good for anyone but GOOG?

~~~
hombre_fatal
Really? Seems obviously good for everyone on an expensive mobile connection.
Just like old-Opera's low bandwidth mode that proxies all requests through
their servers. Never heard much bitching about that, btw. Just praise.

It's kinda like an internet service that doesn't meter your WhatsApp data
(very common here in Mexico): it's obviously useful to people, but it comes at
an expensive price in the aggregate. Nobody really cares about the aggregate
though.

~~~
toast0
If AMP is preloading content on search results pages, it's not good for your
expensive connection, since you may not click through.

------
wffurr
And the author completely disregards the elephant in the room. Why do websites
slow themselves down with trackers, etc.? It pays to do so.

Decrying that without presenting an alternative sustainable monetization model
for the web is just pointless yelling.

~~~
michaelmrose
I could probably make more money robbing a bank today than going to work.

Nobody needs to provide an alternative sustainable business model to fuel my
desire for sports cars and travel I just need to live with what I can make
from legitimate work.

Most of the web is either, cheap to run, paid for by other commercial
activity, or crap and if it went away tomorrow because people could not pay
for it by shoving their crap in your face nobody would care.

~~~
wffurr
That's one hell of a false analogy you've got there.

Essentially the entire web is funded by advertising; you are way off the mark
with your assertion.

~~~
michaelmrose
By volume the web is mostly crap that wont be missed.

------
craftyguy
Email providers that only allow access to your emails using their special
clients (instead of, e.g. imap) are also bad for email.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I think theoretically you can use AMP email through an IMAP client, if that
IMAP client supports AMP. But support for it is probably going to be pretty
scarce, particularly in the open source world.

~~~
joshuamorton
You're correct. There's nothing about amp4email that requires a Gmail account.

I'm actually pretty sure that if you use an imap client it whatever, you could
view amp email from some site without ever communicating with a third party.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It would still need to talk to your email provider's AMP cache, presumably,
though, unlike a normal email which you download once and then do not need to
reach out to the server for again.

~~~
joshuamorton
I don't think there's a need for an amp cache with amp4email. The privacy
concerns that make an amp cache necessary don't apply in the same way, only
the security concerns that require a safe html subset. So an imap client could
cache the amp js locally, and render dynamic content by querying the sender
directly.

I could be wrong though, but I believe that works.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Doesn't it reintroduce the issues with senders detecting if their emails were
read and where from by tracking requests?

I thought Gmail started caching images from emails and hosting them to prevent
that.

------
robin_reala
AMP in email was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me when it was
first announced. I ended up completely closing my paid GApps account and
migrating my email over to RunBox instead; I also as much as possible reduced
my use of Google properties (basically everything that’s not YouTube) and
started blocking all Google cookies outright outside of a container tab for
YouTube.

If anyone’s interested I wrote up how I chose an alternative email supplier at
[https://www.robinwhittleton.com/2018/02/18/dropping-g-
suite/](https://www.robinwhittleton.com/2018/02/18/dropping-g-suite/)

------
Animats
Could this kill GMail?

You can filter Google's ads from email if you're not using GMail. This is a
significant negative for using GMail.

------
XCSme
Hope AMP dies soon.

------
skapti
All sandboxes are bad. Specially from Google or facebook

------
gcb0
lol. anyone have to read past the headline to know it's bad?!?!

everyone forgot the only purpose of amp? to give in to google so that you can
get not-banished from their search results.

why would anyone apply a pernicious SEO technique to email?

what's next? an article on why rat poison on bread is a bad idea?

------
jmiserez
Off topic, but voting on comments should not primarily be used to signal
disagreement. "Good" comments (for some definition of "good") can be upvoted
even if they argue a viewpoint you disagree with.

Otherwise all that remains is an echo chamber.

~~~
dang
On HN, downvoting for disagreement has always been fine:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314).

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20256420](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20256420)
and marked it off-topic.

------
x3haloed
I can't belive the neckbeard level in here. "I do all my web browsing with
curl and vim. Nobody needs AMP!"

Listen -- AMP is merely a set of guidelines and a framework to help developers
make media-rich web content load fast. You can obviously achieve the same
results without AMP, just like you can write a SPA without a framework. Duh.

AMP is not "bad" or "good". Get over yourselves and your moral peacocking and
get back to measuring things objectively. Everyone who upvoted this crap needs
to consider why. Is it because AMP fails to accomplish its goals? Or is it
because you share a sentiment with the author -- that "Google and AMP are
ruining lives and, even worse, the web, the holy web, and that they must be
stopped in the name of the holy Linus, who set us free from the proprietary
code, and... Where was I?" "God, you're the worst DM." "Yes. Yes I am."

~~~
detaro
> _Listen -- AMP is merely a set of guidelines and a framework to help
> developers make media-rich web content load fast. You can obviously achieve
> the same results without AMP, just like you can write a SPA without a
> framework. Duh._

Basically all criticism of AMP is about the fact that this is not true. If
Google said "we prioritize fast pages, here's some guidelines and code on how
to do that", that'd be fine. But they've tied features to using _exactly_
their framework and nothing else.

Like AMP, but don't want to show 8 seconds of empty page to users without JS,
or want to remove any of the other weird issues it had at times? Too bad,
changing that code means it is not valid AMP anymore. Want to self-host the
AMP source code? Too bad, not valid AMP anymore.

~~~
SquareWheel
>don't want to show 8 seconds of empty page to users without JS

That's incorrect. AMP pages support noscript.

~~~
joshuamorton
Specifically, if you disable JavaScript entirely, they load cleanly (via the
no script tag).

If you block just the amp js endpoint, they have a fallback for slow
confections that waits a few seconds before rendering to avoid page redraws.
This is the 8-second thing.

------
tpetry
AMP for email is targeting a completely different topic than the issues listed
here and in the article. And i am shocked everybody is simply not seeing them
with their amp4web hate.

Amp for email is completely different than amp for web and is a very good
solution: 1\. Coding emails is really really hard. Every client is rendering
emails differently, and Outlook is a beast with every version rendering
differently. Amp for email is standardizing a subset of email and css every
client should support so email building will be easier. 2\. Email is
completely different than the web. You cant do more than basic html like
displaying text and pictures. Embedding videos? Slideshows for products?
Interactivity like forms? Display realtime information? EVERYTHING IS NOT
POSSIBLE! But it will be with amp4email. You will get features in emails
compared to the web so they will get usefully again.

And i am afraid nobody is seeing this and only hating amp4web‘s hiding if the
real urls etc.

~~~
ori_b
> _You cant do more than basic html like displaying text and pictures.
> Embedding videos? Slideshows for products? Interactivity like forms? Display
> realtime information? EVERYTHING IS NOT POSSIBLE! But it will be with
> amp4email._

Alright, you've convinced me: AMP for email needs to be killed.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
> Embedding videos?

Let me open this email... oh noes, it's autoplay video.

> Slideshows for products?

Yes, more marketing garbage!

> Interactivity like forms?

Your password is about to expire, change it below or some garbage that will
only make shit more insecure.

> Display realtime information

Blow me.

~~~
hexo
Exactly. Couldn't have been said better. Kill AMP completely and don't even
think about touching email with that.

