Google created it to consolidate control of content on their platform to get people to get used to a specific UI provided by Google. There are other companies that hold caches, but the design and implementation is essentially chosen by Google (note that the fact that the AMP privacy policy just leads to the Google privacy policy). I can completely understand why Apple would want to get rid of it -- it adds a Google UI to the article that otherwise wouldn't have it and it isn't necessary to see the content.
Edit: clarified about AMP usage and Google's involvement.
> The only company that I know of that uses AMP is Google
Google and Micorosft (Bing) have caches. I think Twitter does to (they definitely use AMP). Lots of other social media and other platforms use and highlight AMP content, and I think there are a couple other big players with caches, too.
Amp doesn't bring anything new to the table in terms of best practices, what is new is agglomerating even more online content under Google's control via caching. Lightweight page design never became impossible, it's simply that most websites couldn't care less about investing work into improvements.
It is? So how do I get the advantages in Google search (being ranked in the carousel right above the top result) without running the official JS from Google’s CDN?
Edit: clarified about AMP usage and Google's involvement.