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The Problem With Google AMP (80x24.net)
Kyle Schreiber has raised some issues about Google's AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), an open source project unveiled by the company in 2015 with which it aims to accelerate content on mobile devices. He writes on his blog: The largest complaint by far is that the URLs for AMP links differ from the canonical URLs for the same content, making sharing difficult. The current URLs are a mess. They all begin with some form of https://wwww.google.com/amp/ before showing a URL to the AMP version of the site. There is currently no way to find the canonical link to the page without guessing what the original URL is. This usually involves removing either a .amp or ?amp=1 from the URL to get to the actual page. Make no mistake. AMP is about lock-in for Google. AMP is meant to keep publishers tied to Google. Clicking on an AMP link feels like you never even leave the search page, and links to AMP content are displayed prominently in Google's news carousel. This is their response to similar formats from both Facebook and Apple, both of which are designed to keep users within their respective ecosystems. However, Google's implementation of AMP is more broad and far reaching than the Apple and Facebook equivalents. Google's implementation of AMP is on the open web and isn't limited to just an app like Facebook or Apple.
I actually switched my mobile browser to Bing to avoid Google Amp. If I really need Google I'll go there. But with no option to disable it and a terrible mobile experience I'll stick to Bing *Puke*
...except when it isn't.
They've been using it on Google News for mobile now for a while, I can't stand it. Mainly for the exact reason stated in the blurb, which is that you cannot share news stories. Plus it wastes screen real estate with the Google header at the top. Didn't we go through something like this over a decade ago when iframe came out and everyone was wanting to embed everyone else's content in their web page to show ads and otherwise maintain control over the user? Thanks for taking us back to the dark ages, Google.
Better known as 318230.
"Make no mistake. AMP is about lock-in for Google."
Well, DUH. Is there anyone here who doesn't think this mainly exists to provide Google with more specific information regarding our individual browsing habits?
Fortunately, we can easily choose to never use it. And I'm assuming that, at some point, someone will come up with a de-obfuscation service that lets you get at the target URL without going through AMP (for those times when a person sends you a google.com/amp/ link).
#DeleteChrome
I can't share the page nor can I block ads. Luckily, I've found an iOS app (Opener) that lets me open the page without AMP. It's a hassle, but it works.
I no longer use Google News because of it ,and if it gets any worse, I'll drop Google as my search engine.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
If all we need is better sharing urls, let's fix that. Otherwise, I'm not eager to go back to the days of giant advertisers javascripts killing the page, and mobile popups can go to hell.
But it is a problem because... google.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I applaud Google's action and will appreciate it until more news sites address the abominable behavior that xkcd mocked them for.
https://xkcd.com/869/
https://www.facebook.com/movie -> fb://movie
https://www.google.com/amp?movie -> g://movie
https://www.slashdot.org -> 404
I didn't need this article to tell my why.
The first time I noticed it, I wondered why the site I was visiting wasn't logging me in like it should be, and I wondered if I was visiting a hijacked URL. At the time I couldn't find a quick and easy way to get the AMP page to show my user and etc, then I realized what it was and have hated it ever since.
I'll even go out of my way to find and click non-AMP links.
If you need to link a page, request the desktop version. It's annoying, but that's the easiest way I've found to do it.
if one could launch a remote browser in an X session that runs on the server that is serving the website.
AMP sucks ass, everybody knows that. Thanks Kyle Schreiber.
Google News is dubious as a news source, but when this AMP shit started, I completely stopped using it on mobile. Like most "mobile friendly" websites, it disables pinch to zoom some significant portion of the time, making it shitty. MUCH more importantly, I can't share or use links without copypasta to some note app and manual dicking, as the summary states. It is a total failure, making what was once trivial into a giant pile of shit.
My response was, I stopped using it completely. I'm sure others still use it, or never care about being unable to share it, or actually share the awful amp link. Sometimes I could make it work by asking it to load as desktop, but that's up to the server to respect that, and in any event requires loading everything twice just to claw our way back to minimum internet functionality.
The display is shitty, the URL is shitty, the scrolling is broken, the zooming is shitty. It's total garbage. Fuck AMP in every diseased orifice it has.
But the WORST bit is that it forces pages to be developed in one way, "the Google Way", which may or may not bear any resemblance to the business request, much less maintainability.
Gigantic scam. Only helps Google, not the Web.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
both of which are designed to keep the used within their respective ecosystems
There, I fixed that for you.
After all as long as there will be web designers, there will be horribly bad webpages which will consume huge amounts of data. Just keep your webpages plain and simple, avoid Javascript, particularly from foreign domains, and everything will be fine.
It's not your responsibility to adapt the look of your page to the size of the browser window. If the browser is semi decent and you write proper HTML it'll just work everywhere. That's the whole idea behind HTML.
I don't hate it. I try to keep my bandwidth usage minimal and I seek out AMP links for quick reference because it cuts out so much bandwidth usage. My big problem is that there's no native UI method to go to the real URL when necessary.
It has all the potential to be useful - in the same way that Open Graph gave publishers at least some control over how shared content appears on FB.
Put some javascript in your page and let google host a copy of your page.
AMP done right:
Restrict to a subset of HTML without scripts, canvas, etc. and rely on mobile browsers to optimize for it. If you want to, introduce a new doctype for AMP-HTML.
...brought to you by www.ifyoudontlikeitthendontuseit.com
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Last week, a friend on facebook posted a link to wwww.google.com/amp/ $ARTICLE_URL and it confused me. I didn't understand why they were linking to google instead of $ARTICLE_URL.
I have never seen an AMP site, because on mobile, I only surf with Firefox + Desktop by Default and Phony addons, and with Phony's user agent set to "Desktop Firefox" (For some sites, you gotta' use both). I've hated "mobile" sites so much for years that I've been avoiding them since before Google rolled-out AMP.
Honestly, Firefox for Android is the only thing that makes mobile browsing tolerable for me. All the mobile browsers I've ever seen on every "Mobile" OS are just absolutely fucking horrible. Firefox for Android is the least horrible. I tried Desktop Firefox on Ubuntu Touch, but Xmir has too many nasty bugs to be usable.
Slashdot Mobile pages are slow! Ugh I can't believe publishers are using STANDARDS to deliver content I don't want ( and therefore no one else wants because everyone thinks like me)
Google OK, here's a different standard that is limited on purpose in order to focus on content
Slashdot Ugh I don't like that either! It's too limiting!! If only everyone would make pages how I want, everyone would be happy. I won't even so much as make a single page for fear to be proven wrong though.
The summary says "https://wwww.google.com/amp/", so is it the usual 3 w's and the summary is wrong? Or is it the unique 4 w's that makes the URL so unique? Who knows? Who cares?
I read some articles and watched some videos and still have no idea what this is.
It claims to be magic that makes loading websites faster but it just seems to be a variant of HTML where slow stuff is prohibited.
...but what if the site I want to use uses it.
Another solution that won't age well and will be replaced by something much better.
How is this not copyright infringement? They are copying the content, reformatting it, and sending it to users. I would be rather livid if I was running a big news site that Google was doing this with. Google has no right to be messing with others content without permission.
I like the reasons Google gives for AMP, but the URL issue makes it a huge annoyance, as does the floating title bar that you can only get rid of by scrolling to the top of the page and then back down.