This article claims that a non-AMP page can be faster than an AMP page and rank lower (all other things being equal, I assume). Is that correct?
(I know Google says that implementing AMP will make your pages rank higher, but Google also says it'll make your pages load faster, so that's different. What Google says is that AMP pages will be faster and rank higher than non-AMP pages.)
There have been allegations of this and a lot of tests that provide anecdotal evidence, but as far as I know Google always denies the allegations and no one is actually sure. This older article briefly mentions it, at least: https://www.politico.eu/article/google-amp-accelerated-mobil...
I thought there was an active lawsuit about it too, but I can't find it now so maybe that was just speculation that there could be one if this was true.
I tend to disagree; just looking at various allegations that have been proven true there are enough that I feel like it's a pattern of bad behavior and not worth giving them the benefit of the doubt anymore.
This is a pretty good solution. For a small personal blog that you mostly write yourself it doesn't matter much if you lose a lot of traffic from Google (of course, if it's your livelihood this probably isn't a great solution), and if even one of your posts goes viral or becomes popular and people hear about it and start searching for it, Googles results suffer. It's as good a way as any for small individual blogs and websites to take a stand against Google.
(I know Google says that implementing AMP will make your pages rank higher, but Google also says it'll make your pages load faster, so that's different. What Google says is that AMP pages will be faster and rank higher than non-AMP pages.)