Maybe I don't understand AMP, but what value does it bring over having a very lean CSS and keep JS to the strict minimum? Last time I checked, a plain vanilla HTML page with a bit of embedded CSS (and perhaps a few async JS functions for stats) is lightning fast even on mobile.
That's the problem: no one is using plain vanilla HTML pages with lean JS/CSS anymore. Just go to any news website, disable your cache, disable any adblockers you might have and see the total data transferred or number of network requests.
That link is in the frontpage of cnn.com right now. I disabled my cache, disabled uBlock and refreshed the page. 329 network requests and 3.9 megabytes of data transfer later, the page is still loading.
The main value is to Google: it keeps people on google.com and using Google Ads.
The only value to the user is that if you work somewhere dysfunctional you may be able to say “AMP doesn't allow that” and have it stick in a way that saying “This will bloat our page load times” will not.
