
How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer - markosaric
https://markosaric.com/google-amp
======
soyyo
I worked on amp for a leading newspaper, and everyone who says that amp is
about "making the web faster on mobile" is either very naive or doing
marketing for google.

For publishers, amp is about trying to top the results on google search and
capture traffic, it's their only motivation to publish their content using
amp, and the only metric they look in order to evaluate the results.

Once they have their amp content, they will look how to load it with ads and
tracking, which very conveniently is supported on amp, just as they do in
their regular sites.

So the "fast" part, besides using their CDN, actually comes from limiting what
you can do on almost every other part of the site, you can only do the stuff
that is packed in the amp components controlled by google, which in practice
means that google controls the web behavior.

~~~
noelsusman
Of course AMP has other motives than simply making the web faster for mobile,
but it also does make the web faster for mobile. I guarantee the AMP version
of that paper's mobile website provided a significantly better user experience
than the normal version. That is why AMP has been successful, and it's why I
will continue to click on AMP links whenever available.

Is giving Google that much control ideal? Of course not, but from a user
perspective it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

~~~
buboard
> it also does make the web faster

this is true

> That is why AMP has been successful

This is not. If google removes ranking incentive, people will forget about AMP
the next day

~~~
thereisnospork
>> That is why AMP has been successful

>This is not. If google removes ranking incentive, people will forget about
AMP the next day

Google giving ranking incentive to sites that are faster seems like the exact
sort of thing they should be doing.

~~~
Udik
> Google giving ranking incentive to sites that are faster seems like the
> exact sort of thing they should be doing.

Really? I thought Google's purpose was to find information in the web, not to
give me fast links. If I am looking for an article, I want that article, not a
different but faster one. If I am looking for a piece of information, I want
the best fit, not the second or third best but faster fit.

~~~
thereisnospork
Information delivered slowly is less useful than information delivered
quickly[1]. If there are 5 takes on an AP-wire article I _want_ google to give
me a fast site over a bloated slow site. The finer points of how they get to a
fast site don't particularly matter to me.

[1] One of the nicer features of HN is that it is snappy and responsive - ime
the polar opposite of many non-AMP news sites.

~~~
AlexandrB
> If there are 5 takes on an AP-wire article I want google to give me a fast
> site over a bloated slow site.

I'd want Google to give me the accurate, well-researched site. When the
difference between "fast" and "slow" is a matter of seconds (or often
milliseconds), I'm not sure why _better_ information delivered a few seconds
later should be ranked lower.

~~~
thereisnospork
Slower sites should be ranked lower for the same reason a dictionary that
isn't alphabetized is less useful than one that is and both are less useful
than dictionary.com. I'd rather have Webster than Oxford if Oxford will take
twice as long and I'd rather not have urbandictionary.com over either -- hence
a weighting.

Moreover that even if google could give me the canonical result[0] to my query
its likely I will need to visit and view several sites to get the information
I am searching for - information I will obtain faster when the sites are
faster.

[0]Any ranking will be probabilistic and in all likelihood for common topics
there will be multiple candidates within the expected error - why is it so
great a sin to order them by accessibility?

------
deminature
Probably highly unpopular opinion, but as a user I've never had anything but
positive experiences with AMP-enabled sites. They load massively faster than
normal sites, especially on poor mobile connections where main sites sometimes
hang indefinitely trying to load javascript, ads, etc.

While content publishers are continuing to overload their sites with further
trackers, ads, javascript, remotely loading assets which slow down
performance, AMP seems like one of the few counterbalances and is pro-user,
even if Google's endgame is self-enrichment rather than benevolence.

Content publishers could easily fight back by independently improving their
own performance and not forcing mobile users to suck down megabytes of
trackers on shaky connections, but they seem to be choosing not to.

~~~
kccqzy
> They load massively faster than normal sites, especially on poor mobile
> connections where main sites sometimes hang indefinitely trying to load
> javascript, ads, etc.

Have you tried the normal mobile websites with an adblocker?

~~~
system2
Good luck doing it on mobile phone. I'd say 99.99% users out there on mobile
never even attempted to use another browser than safari or chrome for ios.

~~~
simcox90
Firefox on android lets you install most of the available desktop extensions,
so you can use your favourite ad blockers

~~~
ferongr
But then you have to suffer using Firefox on Android.

~~~
dunstad
There's nothing wrong with it, I've been using it for ages.

~~~
squiggleblaz
Well, once a webpage has played audio there's a notification that hangs around
till you restart the phone. That's probably better than the cost of running
Chrome, though.

~~~
ryencoke
You don't have to restart your phone. On Android you can close the app from
the recent app list.

------
ogre_codes
I'm not a fan of Google's proprietary web, but it's worth pointing out that
this is largely a response to the increasingly shitty way publishers treat
their users. Just reading basic articles on the web has become a painful
exercise in dodging "Subscribe" faux-pop-ups; trying to scan text while your
vision is bombarded with unrelated video; and user-hostile scroll capture
effects.

For much the same reasons Google AMP is a thing, I use Apple News for most of
my news reading. The web has overcome commercial broadcast television as being
the shittiest way of consuming content.

~~~
tomComb
It's worth noting that Apple News take a 50% cut of the revenue. On the web, a
publisher is free to do whatever they want so when Google can insert
themselves into that, it is a fraction of the cut that Apple takes.

It's the sort of thing that reminds me why I want the web platform to remain
competitive with iOS, Facebook, and Android. If not AMP, something like it was
sorely needed.

------
rodw
It's tough to work-around the unilateral-disarmament problem here: if
supporting AMP gives you a boost in Google SERPs it's difficult to boycott AMP
if your competitors don't.

This is what is so insidious about what Google is doing here and seems to me
to maybe make a good case that Google abuses its monopoly power.

(INB4: "It's a bad idea to make your business depend on Google traffic because
that's fickle and outside of your control." Sure, that's true, but still,
organic Google traffic is a pretty rich vein to completely ignore or cede to
competitors.)

------
justinph
I agree with all of this, but until google provides a way to appear in the
discover box without having AMP-published pages, this is a non-starter for
publishers. Ironically, by creating AMP, google has disincentivized publishers
from making their canonical pages faster.

Publishers hate that google holds them hostage with AMP in this manner, but
the situation is what it is, until someone from the Justice Department starts
making the lords of Mountain View antsy.

~~~
noelsusman
>Ironically, by creating AMP, google has disincentivized publishers from
making their canonical pages faster.

In theory, maybe, but I think history has clearly demonstrated that publishers
will not make their pages faster if AMP didn't exist. That's why AMP has been
so successful in the first place.

~~~
detaro
It would have been interesting if Google had openly added the same incentive
(access to carousel at top of search results, search prioritization, special
marker (lightning symbol)) to pages that follow the same guidelines AMP
enforces (generally, avoid techniques that block page rendering or cause large
layout changes), and published AMP as a reference implementation.

~~~
RonanTheGrey
100% agree with that and part of the issue is that they didn't. They had the
option to begin aggressively de-prioritizing pages that have performance
issues and are otherwise detrimental to user experience.. that would have
resulted in some pretty swift changes to bad UX. Instead they created AMP and
told publishers "you want to be on mobile search results, use this".

------
donohoe
I would like to point out that it is possible to have web pages that load
faster than AMP. It has not been made easy but many publishers have figured
out (in some cases publishers have web pages that load faster than their AMP
ones...)

Take a look: [https://webperf.xyz](https://webperf.xyz)

I have a number of issues with AMP but I will just mention two:

1\. If Google addressed how their ad system was being mis-used (and in many
respects as-intended) that would have gone a long way to addressing webpage
performance. Instead they pushed more work on the publisher to adopt yet
another new format (add it to Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News JSON
formats, Google News MediaRSS etc.)

2\. AMP helped killed some early momentum to make pages faster. They sold a
bandaid solution that was 'good enough' for management and undercut
engineering efforts to address the root cause.

~~~
52-6F-62
And in the process introduced a whole new layer of cruft and the number of
bugs I hear from the web teams trying to implement content with AMP is... it's
constant.

------
gonational
I used to use Google hundreds of times per day, literally everything I wanted
to know I would type into Google.

Between their A) political activities (opinion influencing, censorship, etc.),
B) business activities (user tracking, ruinous ads, etc.), and C) search
quality issues (they have a major conflict of interest between providing good
search results and maximizing A and B), I didn’t even have to try to stop
using them out of principle; I literally just don’t get _any_ value out of
using Google search anymore.

I use DuckDuckGo (starting circa 2013), which provides a fairly
similar/mediocre quality search experience, but without all the other
aforementioned problems. The truth of the matter is that these search giants
ruined search so bad that I don’t even really use search as much anymore. I’ve
gotten to the point where I realize that I can no longer rely on finding
things easily. This is not a problem of “the Internet has just gotten too
big”. This is a problem created by Google, which has now set a low benchmark.

------
ldavison
I have been using the "Redirect AMP to HTML" extension:

[https://www.daniel.priv.no/web-
extensions/amp2html.html](https://www.daniel.priv.no/web-
extensions/amp2html.html)

------
jimrandomh
My experience with AMP, immediately before seeing this article:

1\. On desktop, I clicked through a link on Facebook, leading to an AMP page

2\. The page was clearly meant for mobile, and looked bad on desktop; the
images were full-screen size, the font was too big, and the text line length
went all the way to the edges of my very wide browser window.

3\. I used Ctrl+Minus to adjust the zoom, which fixed the font size but not
the images or the line length.

4\. I looked at the top and bottom of the page for a "desktop site" link, and
couldn't find one.

5\. I looked at the address bar, and saw that the URL was an AMP URL. This is
the first time I have noticed that I am using AMP in more than a month.

6\. I closed the tab and went to HN, where this was the top article.

When AMP works well, it's inconspicuous, so it's not so surprising that most
of my remembered experiences with it are negative. Still, I think google needs
to invest a bit more in preventing this sort of bad experience, because
currently it comes across as "google breaking the web".

~~~
gregable
Every valid AMP page includes a <link rel=canonical href="..."> to the
canonical URL for the document. If the aggregator (facebook in this case)
parsed and linked to the canonical as the publisher recommends via this
annotation, you would get the version the publisher preferred. This is how
browser extensions that rewrite to the non-amp version work, they extract this
URL.

The AMP viewer iframe share button (and share intents) all share this
canonical URL, not the AMP url. Google's implementation is trying it's best to
get you to that version as well when sharing links.

Link Rel Canonical is an old (2012) standard:
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6596](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6596)

------
macinjosh
I don't understand how Google's AMP business strategies are dissimilar to what
Microsoft got in trouble for with Internet Explorer. Would be interested in
what someone who is knowledgeable on that topic has to say.

~~~
rossdavidh
One could argue, that it never really got Microsoft in _that_ much trouble.
They retained Internet Explorer, and really all the requirements put on them
by the U.S. and EU combined didn't amount to much.

Not saying it _shouldn't_ have gotten Microsoft into that much trouble, just
that it did not.

~~~
JBiserkov
It has been argued that Microsoft (higher management) missed the Web and/or
the smartphone because they were caught up in litigation.

Imagine the position Google would be in today if both Chrome and Android were
controlled by Microsoft.

------
privateSFacct
For those interested in security - AMP basically forces the iframe javascript
sandbox security model.

[https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/security/sandboxed-i...](https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/security/sandboxed-
iframes/)

Even reputable web pages tend to have a metric TON of non-sandboxed javascript
from third parties. If you care about your security this is a risk.

If you stick with AMP - this is - by spec - prohibited.

Something to think about as you browse the web gobbling down javascript and
all the other third party javascript being pumped at you.

~~~
ogre_codes
Which conveniently ensures that the only way you can effectively monetize AMP
articles is via Google's own advertising networks which don't have constraints
on running javascript.

~~~
gregable
See the list of natively supported Ad networks in AMP:
[https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-
ad/#supported-a...](https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-
ad/#supported-ad-networks)

There are about 200 in that list and any network can submit a config to be
added, it's just a pull request away.

~~~
OrgNet
so AMP is like the play store but for advertisers?

~~~
JBiserkov
Yes. The readers are the product.

------
shadowgovt
"How to make your sites faster than AMP without using AMP" leaves out "locally
cache a copy of your site in a CDN that is geographically close to your
users." Which is the actual mechanical part of AMP that makes it
technologically interesting / valuable to content providers and countries
distant from the creation of most content.

~~~
justinph
It also omits the part where google starts preloading and rendering the AMP
page when the user is still on the search results. Without that, AMP is often
no faster than many non-amp pages.

~~~
knlam
This should be higher. By googling, you are using way more data because of AMP
pages, that is big minus especially if you are on mobile plan

------
RobertRoberts
I think there needs to be a real alternate solution from Google for longer
term change. (if Google wants to stay relevant)

Can they just penalize slow/large file size sites in their index?

This seems like the underlying goal behind AMP and Chrome's Lighthouse (site
audit tool) any way.

This would make a lot of sites fast in the next couple months. But maybe
Google doesn't really want that?

~~~
thejohnconway
> Can they just penalize slow/large file size sites in their index?

Well, that would be bad for the independent web, wouldn't it? I mean, you'd be
penalising sites with large amounts of content, that aren't on a CDN. Large
images or videos, for example, might be the entire point of the page in the
first place. I don't want to be directed to to a webpage about an artist (for
example) that has the crappiest, smallest and fastest loading images, I want
the one with the best images.

~~~
URSpider94
The reason Google has penalties for page weight and loading time is that they
have extensive user research on customer behavior related to loading time. If
a flat page studded with a few dozen giant PNG’s takes a minute to load, most
people are going to click the back button.

It’s worth spending some time optimizing your landing page so that it loads
fast and renders cleanly on mobile, if you want people to see your content.
That doesn’t mean it has to use JS, or AMP.

~~~
dmitriid
> The reason Google has penalties for page weight and loading time is that
> they have extensive user research on customer behavior related to loading
> time. If a flat page studded with a few dozen giant PNG’s takes a minute to
> load, most people are going to click the back button.

Why is then basically every single page created by Google is a bloated
monstrosity with multi-megabyte Pangs routinely embedded in them and loading
megabytes of shitty JS?

------
rdiddly
Great post, although I'm a little _meh_ on lazy-loading images. I like when
the whole page is finished loading the moment I think it's finished loading.
But more to the point, lazy-loading _can be_ a crutch just like AMP is, for
solving problems that shouldn't exist, such as: your page is big & bloated. If
you keep it small, there's no need for lazy-loading. But you have to limit the
number of images, and optimize the ones that are there. And probably only one
video per page. Horrors! Obviously none of this works when the page is
effectively infinite in size - such as when you're trying to give the user the
addictive excitement of scrolling through a continuous, visually-rich "feed".

~~~
account42
Yeah, please don't add lazy loading.

\- It breaks viewing the site with javascript disabled.

\- It prevents viewing the site offline (e.g. on an airplane) without first
scrolling through the whole content while online.

\- Unless implemented perfectly it adds delays before content you have
scrolled to becomes visible.

Deciding when to load stuff should be the browser's job. Don't reimplement the
browser in javascript.

~~~
EamonnMR
I'd love to see a lazy loading idiom implemented in pure HTML. But I'm not
holding my breath.

~~~
squiggleblaz
What's wrong with <img src="image.png">? Maybe some kind of semantic purpose
<img src="image.png" purpose="decoration"> vs <img src="image.png"
purpose="graphical-content"> but you can imagine every website owner will
think that their logo is graphical content and respectful UA authors will need
to disregard the semantic attributes and try to guess based on the presence or
absence of some kind of caption, for instance.

UAs could easily lazy load by default on metred connections.

~~~
EamonnMR
The page layout changes after the image loads, which is annoying as a user.
Probably because users have been trained to hate page layout changes that
happen a few seconds late because of that dark pattern where you change the
page right as the user is about to click to change the thing they click on.
How they achieve this on mobile is anyone's guess.

------
basch
On the topic of lazy load. If you are using non native lazy load, please have
some kind of fallback if javascript is disabled. It stinks to have a page load
and just get blurry images, and need to enable javascript for a couple
pictures to render.

------
nonbirithm
I find it sad that Google bloats the web with all its analytics and fonts, and
then offers a solution to fix the bloat by providing AMP instead.

And there are so many other third-party elements that are detrimental. It's
sad that we have to use things like Firefox's tracking protection to remove
all this bloat that people insert on webpages just because it's possible to do
so today and it wasn't fifteen years ago.

It feels like a Pandora's Box at times. We can complain a lot but nothing is
stopping you from adding just one more JS package to your app if you want to,
because it's as easy as 'npm install' and you don't see the downsides.

------
throwaway77384
I moved away from all Google services (which I used to be keen to get involved
with initially! How times have changed.) over the last few years. I don't miss
any of them.

There are alternatives for everything. While you're at it, do the same for
Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, if you can. I only have Instagram left.

------
martindale
Having separate URLs for the same target document is antithetical to the Web.
See also TBL's essay, "Cool URIs don't change":
[https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI](https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI)

------
fouc
Another way to fight back against Google in general is to stop using Chrome
and stop using google search.

Also stop using auto-update. Promote a diversity of browsers and browser
versions.

~~~
illnewsthat
I don't think recommending people to stop using automatic updates is a good
thing because it likely means users will not receive security updates.

------
deltron3030
I'd like to see a "vote with your wallet/attention" style search engine, where
you can exclude certain sites from showing up based on the underlying and
associated tech they use, and prefer sites that use tech you personally
support, similar to ingredients lists on supermarket products. There is so
much informational content out there that this kind of filtering wouldn't
impact the user experience.

------
Fr0styMatt88
The most annoying thing for me, as a vision-impaired user, is that AMP pages
disable zoom.

I know that can be overridden in Chrome's accessibility settings, but it's a
shitty practice that something like AMP shouldn't be promoting.

~~~
rpmisms
I think the idea is that you'll either use a screen reader or use the system
zoom tool. Not defending it, but I can see the logic they used.

~~~
squiggleblaz
But what's wrong with using the web browser's zoom tool? Why is it somehow
worse to get reflowing zoom? This idea that I'm using a phone optimised site
so all text should be 8pt is just bizarre. It's not like the UA author has
removed support for zoom: they're just disabling it arbitrarily.

~~~
Fr0styMatt88
It's not even about reflowing text, it's just the usual two-finger zoom
gesture that gets disabled. I'm very accustomed to moving the large text as I
read it, so don't even need reflow.

------
gtirloni
The only way is to make something better. Not using Chrome, not using Google
Search, etc will have close to zero impact. Fix the mess so AMP isn't
necessary. How? Your guess is better than mine.

------
bla3
I like AMP. It's possible to write fast websites without it, and I do do that
for my sites. For for big, non-tech sites AMP has provided sufficient
motivation to offer a fast version. Nothing else has managed to do this
before. I'd rather have fast AMP pages of all those news sites than having to
load the slow default view. Experience suggests that the options aren't "fast
with AMP or fast without AMP", but "fast or slow". It's for incentive reasons,
not for technical reasons, but I'm still glad the fast version exists.

------
sm4rk0
Marko, bravo for making that clean and readable site (and having 0 trackers,
as reported by Firefox Klar)!

There's one issue I noticed when clicking the links to page sections
(#anchors). Those lazy-loaded images make the page scroll away from the
section title I jumped to. Is it possible to fix that by having images
replaced by placeholders of the same size?

~~~
markosaric
Thanks for the kind words and yeah no trackers/third-party calls/cookies etc.
Have tested on regular Firefox for mobile and on Firefox Preview too (you
should try it if you like Klar) and it works fine on both. I'll see if I can
add placeholders when all this traffic slows down. Don't dare to touch much at
this time.

~~~
account42
Please remove lazy loading completely and instead leave the decision when to
load content to the browser. Static content should never use any scripts.

------
ozten
Another way to fight back is to promote alternatives such as DuckDuckGo. I
just ordered a swanky tshirt

[https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
pages/community/...](https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
pages/community/swag/)

------
beerandt
If you have Android, deAMPify is great.

It seems to be abandoned, but still works for most sites.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joaomgcd.d...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joaomgcd.deampify)

------
jimmar
As a user, AMP gives me a better experience than non-AMP search results. It's
a tough sell to tell people like me that I should prefer the worse product
(the slow, tracking infested, bloated full website).

~~~
millstone
As an iPhone user I find AMP to be painfully buggy. Rotation doesn't work
properly, the URL bar doesn't hide properly, reader mode is routinely broken,
pinch to zoom doesn't work, etc. I wish I could disable it.

------
emodendroket
I don't particularly care to because I find it convenient.

------
exabrial
I remember looking at the original HTML5 spec and going, there is no way lower
power / low bandwidth / high latency devices will be able to handle this
efficiently. Nevertheless, we moved fast and broke things, ratified the HTML5
spec and paved the cowpaths without a second thought to language or
efficiency.

Somewhere along the line, things came full circle. HTML was slow again, so we
needed a new new way to efficiently render content, thus AMP was born.

~~~
account42
In what way is HTML5 is inherently slower than previous versions? Pages tend
to be slow because of the tracking and adds addded to them as well as client-
side "rendering" for static content. None of that is required by HTML5.

~~~
exabrial
Essentially html5 is significantly harder to parse because the amount of
branching that has to be done. If you go look at the amp specification and the
reasons behind it, they designed it to be a stripped-down light version of
HTML5.

------
RandallBrown
I'm more likely to click AMP links in search results than non-AMP links. The
reason for this is the pre-loading that Google does for them. The links load
almost instantly, where some non-amp link might take up to 20 seconds to
finally load enough where I can start scrolling past the ads.

The Facebook instant links (or whatever they're called) have much the same
effect on me. I'll usually open those if the headline even makes me a little
curious.

------
drivers99
> Just visiting a site with Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection on makes a
> faster and less intrusive web. It’s a built-in blocker of intrusive ads and
> invisible scripts.

What am I missing here? I installed FireFox, set Enhanced Tracking Protection
changed to "strict", and went to typical sites that track you (news sites). I
still see third-party hits in the Developer Tools (e.g. facebook) and it says
it blocked 0 trackers so far.

------
edoceo
This holiday season I'm putting DDG and FF on all the families machines.
Flipped some over the summer. They hardly notice. The icon for "internet" is
now orange and the search still finds all the stuff they are looking for.

The big G makes money off our non-tech associates, not us, so moving them is,
IMO, more important than me and tech-folk moving.

------
narrator
The best way to fight back is to use DuckDuckGo. After the "controversial
twiddler", Google is going to have to have to do something significant to earn
my trust back. I do occasionally switch back using "g! <query>" on duckduckgo
when I don't get any decent results, but for the most part duckduckgo is fine.

------
meerita
Everyone should start using Brave or Firefox and DuckDuckGo and stop using all
Google things as much as possible.

------
buboard
It's funny that, if it was a net neutrality issue, e.g. Comcast pushing a new
video format and prioritizing video for their own streaming service, the
internet would be a warzone by now. But we all love google. And google used to
be all fuzzy and unevil. But now they 're evil

~~~
system2
How can anyone categorize AMP as evil? They are improving and leading. No one
needs to use Google, they have alternatives. This is how things evolve.
Someone else will create another amp alternative and things will change later.
Netflix was #1, then Hulu, Disney, amazon video came. No one lasts forever,
everyone needs to evolve and this exactly is what google is doing.

~~~
buboard
amp is a vehicle to a) turn web content owners to gig writers for google and
b) push Signed HTTP Exchanges, a dangerous protocol on the web. I can't
attribute stupidity to google because they re very smart, so it must be malice

~~~
squiggleblaz
Why is signed HTTP exchanges dangerous, and indeed, what are they?

~~~
buboard
[https://github.com/ipfs/in-web-
browsers/issues/121#issuecomm...](https://github.com/ipfs/in-web-
browsers/issues/121#issuecomment-489182127)

> Google Chome makes SXG indistinguishable from regular HTTPS, which breaks
> basic assumptions around how users understand the green padlock in location
> bar (aka "nobody but me and the Origin server can see the payload"). UX of
> regular HTTPS is reused as-is, pretending that end-to-end HTTPS transport
> was used with Origin from location bar, which is not true.

[https://blog.intelx.io/2019/04/15/a-new-type-of-http-
client-...](https://blog.intelx.io/2019/04/15/a-new-type-of-http-client-
attacks-is-around-the-corner-and-its-really-sneaky/)

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ha00dSGKmjoEh2mRiG8FIA5s...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ha00dSGKmjoEh2mRiG8FIA5sJ1KihTuZe-
AXX1r8P-8/edit)

> Big changes need strong justification and support. This particular change is
> bigger than most and presents a number of challenges. The increased exposure
> to security problems and the unknown effects of this on power dynamics is
> significant enough that we have to regard this as harmful until more
> information is available.

------
pawurb
I've written a similar post on how to remove AMP from your blog, without
sacrificing SEO rating and performance [https://pawelurbanek.com/amp-seo-
rating-performance](https://pawelurbanek.com/amp-seo-rating-performance)

------
rland
Imagine if Cox or Comcast came up with AMP. Same technology, same idea.

If websites use the Comcast AMP framework, Comcast will cache their sites and
make them faster for users. See, it's about the users! Because the Comcast AMP
framework is open, and has nothing to do with the business interests of
Comcast. Comcast will give a bit to open source and have a few conferences per
year to make sure developers know that it's not all about the company.

I believe the fight against AMP will not be won by users or individual action
-- it will be won with legislation. What are users going to do? Plain HTML
pages are on the 10,000th page, below a hundred thousand AMP tracker loaded
piles of shit. It is a de-facto content restriction.

Even if I use an alternate search engine -- it's results are polluted by those
of Google, because 90% of search is Google. We do not have a choice.

I'm sure a Google lawyer will successfully argue that I can recieve IP
addresses in the mail via U.S. post for any odd, esoteric plain text HTML
pages I'd like to visit, though.

~~~
dwild
> If websites use the Comcast AMP framework, Comcast will cache their sites
> and make them faster for users.

They probably do it with Netflix, some ISP do it with Steam too... there's
nothing wrong with multilevel cache (except cache invalidation).

~~~
rland
mmmh, I don't think this really holds up.

They do it with Netflix/Steam because they have to, because if they did not
those services would choke bandwidth for everyone. With your Netflix example,
there are maybe a dozen players with this type of arrangement -- it is the
exception to the rule and has more to do with physical limitations of the
network than political control. With AMP/non-amp websites, there are hundreds
of millions of separate players, and no physical need to discriminate (my
neighbor's network performance is identical whether I look at 2mb websites vs.
300kb websites)

I believe there is a fundamental difference between the two -- google's play
is about control, not physical limitations.

~~~
dwild
> I believe there is a fundamental difference between the two -- google's play
> is about control, not physical limitations.

Control of what? The search result are from Google, they already have control
over them. The existence of AMP doesn't make you go to Google (except if AMP
is actually superior, but then any search provider can provide it too, just
like Cloudflare does it now).

------
maxaf
> Don't use Google search.

This is easier said than done, as the other search engines are still not as
good as Google, even though Google's results have been getting worse. This may
be a controversial opinion, but it's not what my comment is about. I'm going
to make a more scandalous suggestion.

Don't use search engines at all.

The idea that a centralized one-size-fits-all search engine is necessary is
preposterous. The Web makes available all kinds of information, and unifying
it all under a single data model is difficult, and doesn't even make sense.
(Does anyone remember the semantic web?) Unifying the world's information
behind a single search facade is likewise a Very Difficult Task (TM), one
that's likely to fall into the trap of big business, as search has done,
because the required resources are so huge.

But what if it's solving the wrong problem? Information of a particular type
tends to gravitate to local centers of storage, so to speak, which are
specific to the type of information being stored. For example:

\- Encyclopedic knowledge is in Wikipedia.

\- You can find places by searching Foursquare, Yelp, Apple Maps, OSM, ...

\- Q&A about programming (and lots of other topics) is on StackExchange.

\- News aggregators have been beaten to death, and multiple are available.

\- You can search Twitter using Twitter, and Facebook using Facebook.

I can go on, but the point is clear: every single Web-connected system offers
a search function of its own, one that's likely specialized to the type of
information stored in that system. It'll most certainly do a better job at
searching that local store, and will do so more quickly and cheaply than a
centralized, generic search engine. This also avoids the moral hazard of
search centralization.

This leaves the little guy: the random small website or blog, where the
majority of true gems are found. Google locates these by sheer brute force:
they literally index the entire web. They've taken a relative eternity to do
so, but it's a problem that could have been solved by something better than
mere force.

Does anyone remember webrings?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring)
What if "the little guys" organized in webrings and directories? This doesn't
seem like a technical problem, as a webring or directory is trivial to build.
Could this be a UX problem that hasn't been solved to the satisfaction of a
modern Web user? Is anyone or anything taking another stab at this?

In closing, I'll throw out one last vague notion: that of an openly federated
search. How cool would that be? We don't need Google for that at all.

~~~
mlok
!bangs in DuckDuckGo enables you to do searches right on the destination
website

[https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

~~~
what_ever
Why even ddg? Chrome and Firefox support this out of the box in the browsers.

~~~
smichel17
Most importantly, DDG comes with a host of bangs, whereas firefox And I assume
chrome as well) require some configuration. Secondarily, bangs work regardless
of their position in your query. At least in Firefox, they must be the first
word. Finally, I can use DDG with bangs from anyone's device, that I might not
want to do any setup on.

I do primarily use bangs from Firefox's address/search uni-bar, so if they
added bang support from there, I would start using that feature without
changing my habits at all.

------
rpmisms
The client I'm assigned to has resigned themselves to using AMP. Nobody likes
it, it breaks so much working code, and I personally hate it. Thankfully our
SEO is top-notch, so we're doing well without it, but I'm not looking forward
to implementing it.

------
IceWreck
I figured how to avoid amp as a user years ago. Switched to DDG and its bangs
are very convenient. Google, in its efforts to customize user experience often
gives worse search results than it did ten years ago.

------
tracker1
Despite the tracking, I'd suggest allowing google fonts, it's not _that_ much
different than other CDN content (assuming you're only using the CSS).

------
aberforth123
Yes, and use [https://webtest.app](https://webtest.app) to show the world we
can speed up the web by blocking ads.

------
onreact
Also make sure to sign the AMP letter:
[http://ampletter.org/](http://ampletter.org/)

------
ctingom
Also, Bing is really good! I'm the only guy in the company that uses it, but
seriously I love it!

~~~
lern_too_spel
Bing also uses AMP. That might be why you love it.

~~~
ctingom
Interesting. Maybe it is, but wouldn't I be able to see that in the url?

~~~
bduerst
The AMP standard doesn't need use URL hijacking anymore:
[https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/amp-real-
url...](https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/amp-real-url/)

~~~
dbtx
That is more of the same IMO: yet more code to wipe off a symptom of a problem
that we created with more code, as opposed to solving the problem.

------
lucis
Gatsby.js could be added as a solution to make sites load faster, it's awesome
what it does

------
StacyRoberts
How it's this not copyright infringement? Can't we fight it on those grounds?

~~~
yellowarchangel
Websites choose to use AMP because it has favourable search results.

------
gkolli
Sorry for the dumb question, but:

What does Google gain with AMP? How does it make money with it?

~~~
yellowarchangel
Google is trying to monopolize the internet, and they also sell data / ads. So
inherently "spending more time in google ecosystem" leads to inherent value.

------
christiansakai
Serious question, what is a free alternative to Google font?

~~~
commoner
You can still use Google Fonts, but download the font files and host them
yourself to prevent your users/visitors from being tracked by Google:

[https://google-webfonts-helper.herokuapp.com/fonts](https://google-webfonts-
helper.herokuapp.com/fonts)

[https://github.com/gabiseabra/google-fonts-webpack-
plugin](https://github.com/gabiseabra/google-fonts-webpack-plugin)

~~~
christiansakai
Ahhh, I wasn’t aware that it is possible to download Google fonts. Is it
copyrighted though?

~~~
thenewnewguy
Directly linked on that page:
[https://fonts.google.com/attribution](https://fonts.google.com/attribution)

------
foxhop
If you run a NAS at home, you should also setup syncthing. It's replaces
Google drive for your phone's camera, seemlessly.

~~~
EamonnMR
I've been looking into doing this, have you got any pointers to setting this
up? I'm trying to do it with a raspberry pi and a big external hard drive.
Darned thing keeps shutting down on me though, and the pi won't boot with the
HDD plugged in. Thanks for reminding me to pick up a powered USB hub...

------
chrismatheson
Is the answer, just say no. ?

------
brianzelip
Here's one great takeaway:

> Treat the cause: Third-party requests slow down the web

> ...

> \- Google owns 7 of the top 10 most popular third-party calls

> ...

> So you can see why there must be some kind of internal struggle at Google.
> They understand the value of a faster web but they also cannot go after the
> main cause of the slow web. And this is how technology such as AMP gets
> invented and makes things worse.

It blows my mind how many devs around here are devoted to their browser and
search.

Stop using chrome. Honestly, wtf?! Firefox is awesome. FF dev tools are
awesome. FF, like Wu Tang, is for the kids.

STOP USING google SEARCH! USE DUCKDUCKGO! Use the `!gm` google maps bang when
you need it. Use the `!g` google bang in a pinch, but for all of our sake,
please wean yourself off of google search.

These two steps are immensely easy to do, and yet a MAJOR investment in all of
our future.

~~~
Mirioron
> _Stop using chrome. Honestly, wtf?! Firefox is awesome._

I think plenty of people have found Mozilla to have made some poor decisions
over the years. It feels as though you have to choose between two options that
aren't great, so is there a point in switching? Take the add ons situation. At
least on Chrome I can run my own add ons.

~~~
brianzelip
Yes there is a point to switching. Mozilla is 10000000x more on our side.

~~~
nobleach
From a purely philosophical standpoint, Mozilla has always been the browser of
"choice". Its humble beginnings never included "world domination"... and
Firefox was an extraordinarily bold attempt to unseat IE. Chrome did a lot of
good things in the beginning. It brought web standards to the forefront. The
past few years though, the same old tired story has played out. Company gets
too much market share, and subsequently believes they should own/police/decide
the future of the web. In the case of Google, naturally, their motives for web
"ownership/domination" are fiscally motivated. (I'm not saying this is wrong
in regard to making money for their shareholders. I am saying that this often
is not what's good for their average user) But that's the issue, they never
promised they were doing this for "freedom" or any other reason.

~~~
40four
>Chrome did a lot of good things in the beginning. It brought web standards to
the forefront.

To be fair to Google, I think it is important to acknowledge the good things
Chrome did in the beginning. I remember when it came out, and most (non - Mac
users) were still using IE, it was fantastic! I remember jumping on board
immediately. But for me at this point, it has become too much to bear.

At this point they are making so much money from tracking users and selling to
advertisers.. who could blame them for continuing to do so? I sure can't,
haha.

But after a while, I started realizing all the intrusive & creepy
advertisements I was seeing were simply a result of the browser software I
chose, and the website I chose do do my searches on, so I started looking for
alternatives.

------
ossworkerrights
I really doubt google will become "irrelevant" anytime soon. What most of us
nerds forget is that tech products become popular when they solve real life
issues for non technical people. We can sit here and debate all day what
protocols are better, and which browse is cooler, and why Google is evil,
because it will not become irrelevant anytime soon unless there is a better
end user product. Happy bashing Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc because no one
cares, really. What they care is "how to cook potato soup" showing relevant
results, and having their pictures generate likes and their unneeded products
delivered tomorrow.

~~~
hknd
And that's exactly the reason AMP is so popular with end-users. It's fast, and
opens instantly on slow networks with your phone. End-users don't know what
AMP is, and most don't know that the lightning symbol is AMP. What they know
is clicking it gives them fast results, and that's what 99% of people care
about.

~~~
latexr
> And that's exactly the reason AMP is so popular with end-users. It's fast,
> and opens instantly on slow networks with your phone.

Is that the reason, or is it that the results are at the top?

