
Google AMP Can Go To Hell (2018) - franze
https://www.polemicdigital.com//google-amp-go-to-hell/
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21703345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21703345)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17920720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17920720)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

------
lmm
> AMP pages are fast to load (so fast to crawl), easy to understand (thanks to
> mandatory structured data), and devoid of any unwanted clutter or mess (as
> that breaks the standard).

Oh, how horrible it would be if the whole web were fast to load, easy to
understand and devoid of unwanted clutter or mess.

I hate AMP because it makes my web experience slower and worse - lately it
seems like Chrome on android has taken to loading broken "offline" versions of
any suggested pages, making me refresh to read anything, and whenever a search
takes me to reddit I have to edit the url to get a version that respects my
page settings (and, strangely enough, loads a lot faster than the AMP
version). But I don't see the chaos of the current web as inherently virtuous;
encouraging web pages to load faster and be easier to read is absolutely
something Google should be doing, and I'll certainly favour a search engine
that prioritises fast, easy-to-read pages over one that doesn't.

~~~
pandem
My main annoyance with AMP is reddit because their version is especially
shitty if you expect the logged in version. I've found the easiest way to get
normal Reddit is to click the upvote button.

~~~
h8hawk
I've switched to their android app for this. Much faster and better
experience.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Thats the idea. They cripple the web version so you use the app that can spam
you with notifications. I use i.reddit.com which loads up a super fast version
clearly designed to work well with an iphone 3.

~~~
JacobAldridge
I switched to Compact reddit a few years ago - much easier ride than the full
site or needing a separate app.

[https://www.reddit.com/new/.compact](https://www.reddit.com/new/.compact)

------
stevenjohns
AMP is fundamentally broken.

I've said this before, I'll say it again: companies are not people. Once a
company reaches a certain size, the rule is to _assume bad faith_. Always.

~~~
ttctciyf
In the present case, the failure to provide an opt-out speaks volumes.

If AMP was a good faith attempt to improve UX, it would have been provided
early on.

The faceless imposition of AMP is a clear signal of malign intent, IMO.

~~~
enos_feedler
malign? I think the imposition of AMP was the only solution to a problem with
3 constraints:

1) make web pages fast, without shitty popups on mobile 2) make this happen
for large coverage of heavily visited pages 3) make this happen quickly (OKRs
are on quarter/annual cadence)

Imagine you owned Google Search and you were afraid for your life that
everything was moving into native apps because the experience was better. As a
search engine, you only control the front door and not the content. What do
you do?

~~~
stevenjohns
...start punishing slow websites by de-ranking them? The same way they have
punished poor content in the past? The same method that _worked every single
time_ they've done it?

You seem to believe that they don't have any other options which is wrong.
They have a lot of options at their disposal and they intentionally chose a
very hostile one.

~~~
enos_feedler
it isn't about slow web pages. It is about unwinding a shitty user experience
that mobile magnified. How do you punish a shitty UX?

------
nneonneo
On the one hand - yeah, AMP can go to hell. It's a massive overreach and, as
pointed out, is getting awfully close to an actual attempt to rewrite the Web.

On the other hand, we probably wouldn't be in this situation if website owners
didn't try to bog down their own websites with tens of MB of sheer garbage.
Trimming the fat isn't a priority for website owners, so Google is trying to
make it their priority. As long as sites think it's OK to lard up their sites
with trackers, video ads, and all manner of nonsense, AMP will continue to be
attractive to the end user.

~~~
mulmen
Your second point comes up every time and you’re right. The bloat is a
problem. Also Google can fix this. They can simply add load times and page
size to their ranking algorithm. Problem solved.

AMP is not the solution.

~~~
7e7dueh3h
I want a useful search engine not a political one. If the most relevant result
to my query is loaded with garbage web design I still want it at the top of my
search results because I can decide if I want to return to that site for
myself whereas I can't magically correct some unseen ranking parameter that I
don't care about.

~~~
dtech
Taking page load times into account is not political in any way. Faster load
times provide a better user experience.

~~~
feanaro
Who is this mythical universal user for whom it provides a better experience?
Your parent poster is a user and it seems his experience is better when he
gets the most accurate results, not a subset that is fastest. I tend to agree.

------
superasn
Some browsers like Kiwi browser on android now give you the setting to
redirect AMP websites to their normal URL. This is a very good feature that I
always have enabled[1].

More browsers should add this feature to fight this non-sense. I think for FF,
Chrome extensions like this must already exist.

[1] [https://kiwibrowser.com/features/](https://kiwibrowser.com/features/) [2]
[https://kiwibrowser.com/wp-
content/uploads/elementor/thumbs/...](https://kiwibrowser.com/wp-
content/uploads/elementor/thumbs/Features-AMP-
oe27675i2rt74nfeiknst6242i0tazqpow6qjdg6ww.png)

~~~
xster
Is there some Android/iOS app or a simple web app that de-AMPs URLs? My
process for just sharing an article these days is to find the tweet button if
they embed one for the article, click through them, pray that it's not to
tweet about the publication or the author but for the article itself, then get
the normal non-AMP link from the tweet draft to share a normal URL instead of
the AMP link.

~~~
coronadisaster
There are Firefox addons that do that, I.E.: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/android/addon/amp2html/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/android/addon/amp2html/)

------
peteretep
I agree. What concrete steps can I — and other technical people like me — take
to help hasten its demise?

~~~
rkagerer
Last paragraph in the article has a few suggestions:

 _Or you could 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._

~~~
jimmydorry
So I read this as being a fight that only the web publishers can wage then.

A minuscule fraction of people are going to write to officials and change
their browser / search engine. Even far less of that fraction are going to
throw away an expensive flagship phone (And what are they going to buy? Apple?
That's sure to go down well amongst the hackernews crowd).

~~~
amelius
Well if there were one big website aimed at developers that was out of reach
of Google, that could be a start.

Imagine a service like stackoverflow, except it's (suddenly) not accessible
through Google Search and Google Chrome. That could trigger a lot of
developers to move away from Google.

------
lalos
What's going to happen to all the url's if Google ever decides to announce
they are getting rid of AMP? So annoying that you copy the link and it grabs
some google url, so it's a matter of time the internet gets littered with
those redirecting urls.

~~~
baddox
It shouldn’t be true that copying the link grabs a Google URL, right? At least
in Safari, it copies the real website’s URL.

~~~
tedunangst
On iPhone, if I search for "Webb space telescope" and switch to news tab, look
for the ars technica link, and tap it, I navigate to this url (which I copy
and pasted here).
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/science/2020/07...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/nasa-
now-targeting-halloween-2021-for-launch-of-james-webb-telescope/%3famp=1)

~~~
baddox
I did the same on my iPhone but searched for “AMP website” then clicked the
first result with the lightning bolt and copied this URL:

[https://amp.dev/about/websites/](https://amp.dev/about/websites/)

------
tbgvi
This sounds like at least one rationale for an anti-trust case.

~~~
hkt
At least.

It'd be splendid if antitrust cases happened more often, Google must be due a
dozen at least.

Also: Gmail's spam filters are one especially egregious abuse of power. Email
is another technology Google hates and which deserves to survive without
Google hamstringing it

~~~
atom058
Email spam filters seem non-functional right now. Before I added a "allow all"
filter to Google, the majority of email got sent to spam.

Microsoft isn't better in this regard though: they don't have an "allow all"
filter possibility, and will delete spam emails after two weeks. I've gotten
invoices, personal email, and job offers deleted this way.

------
ulfw
AMP solves problems that existed 10-20 years ago. Not today. Websites load
fast enough (when using an ad blocker). Sure that Google doesn't like that.

------
unityByFreedom
AMP messes up data science analytics too. Now we have a mix of the following
formats,

    
    
       google.com/amp/s/...
       amp.domain.com/...
       domain.com/amp/...
       domain.com/.../amp
    

I guess it could even be a query parameter although I have not yet seen this.
Does anyone know if there is an "AMP url normalizer" library or write-up?

------
tomc1985
It seems a little weird that they are asking website operators to add the very
same bloated functionality that AMP claims to try to eliminate

------
MattGaiser
I would like to know what the average user thinks of AMP. We techies are ok
with a uncontrolled freewheeling web, but a lot of people have a problem with
that and hate that experience.

~~~
causality0
I'm one of the less-technical and least techno-political, compared to most HN
posters. I personally despise AMP for two reasons: the URLs are fugly when I
send them to someone and take longer to parse when reading, and AMP hijacks my
mobile browser's address bar and prevents me from accessing my tabs until I
scroll all the way up the page. It's a thinly-veiled method of forcing me to
look at the web page twice before closing it and I wish I could get my hands
on the son of a bitch who thought it up.

~~~
rydre
> _I wish I could get my hands on the son of a bitch who thought it up._

Malte Ubl (@Cramforce) would like to have a word with you.

------
floatingatoll
Does the WebExtensions standard permit us to release extensions that bypass
AMP URLs when they are visited by the browser?

Could someone please charge me money for that extension on the iOS and macOS
App Stores?

I'm not expecting this to be maintained for free, I don't want to install a
full-blown ad blocker, I just want a single-task de-AMP-er that just de-AMPs.

(Yes, I use Firefox, but I want to de-AMP _all_ iOS and macOS webviews, not
just the ones that load in Firefox.)

~~~
deergomoo
Safari 14 will add support for the WebExtensions API but alas, on MacOS only
(where presumably you will never see AMP pages anyway).

I have idly wondered if it's possible to use Safari content blockers to trick
the page into redirecting to the real site by blocking certain JS bundles, but
I would assume not.

~~~
floatingatoll
Ugh, good point re macOS.

------
wayneftw
Just request the desktop site or use DuckDuckGo. Problem solved.

Luckily Google still serves the desktop site to my phone. Twitch won’t do it
even if I spoof my user agent because they want you to use their shitty app.
So, I just stopped using Twitch on my phone or tablet. Problem solved again.

------
axegon_
I had never heard about it before reading the article, looked it up, and I
agree with the article. This is yet another wretched idea like jsx. Kill it
before it lays eggs!

~~~
topicseed
JSX seems to work just fine for a whole bunch of people.

~~~
axegon_
So does heroin from the perspective of even more people. That doesn't make it
a good idea.

~~~
topicseed
You're just getting caught up in a battle of ideological preferences and
implementation methodologies. A lot of people disagree, a lot of people agree.
Nobody gets hurt, different tools serve different purposes and audiences.

We can leave absurd drug parallels out of that conversation.

------
amelius
Side question: is it still considered "cool" to work at Google?

I'm asking since the answer in case of Facebook seems to have shifted.

~~~
suddenexample
Depends on what you mean by "cool". The compensation is not the highest, but
it seems to be the company with the widest variety of high-impact and
technologically exciting projects.

And I wouldn't say that it's objectively "uncool" to work at Facebook. They
have definitely taken a beating in terms of perspectives on their company's
morals, but very few people are willing to go without using at least one
Facebook product. And they continue to be known as the company that has a
pretty good WLB with top tier pay, good career progression, and great
benefits, relative to similar-sized companies.

------
senectus1
I had to read read that quote 3 times before i got what was being said and by
who...

------
fouc
I never encounter AMP sites because I don't use google search anymore.

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ec109685
Please add [2018] to the title.

------
catalogia
I agree that Amp can go to hell, but I'm very unsympathetic to these
particular complaints:

> _“The canonical page allows users to view and add comments, but the AMP
> article does not. This is often considered missing content by users.”_

> _“The canonical URL allows users to share content directly to diverse social
> media platforms. This feature is missing on the AMP page.”_

> _“The canonical page contains a media carousel that is missing or broken in
> the AMP version of the page.”_

As far as I'm concerned, all that stuff is trash. I use ublock origin cosmetic
filters to remove all that crap on every news site I read.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Exactly. "Canonical" content should be what the user wants to read, not what
marketing hacks want to stuff the website with

