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2B Pages On Web Now Use Google's AMP, Pages Now Load Twice As Fast (venturebeat.com)

Posted by msmash on from the making-web-faster dept.

At its developer conference I/O 2017 this week, Google also shared an update on its fast-loading Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). The company says that over 900,000 domains on the web have enabled AMP, and over two billion pages now load faster because of it. Taking things forward, Google says AMP access from Google Search is now twice as fast. From a report: Google first unveiled the open source AMP Project in October 2015. Since then, the company has been working hard to add new features and push AMP across not just its own products, but the larger web. Google Search only launched AMP support out of developer preview in September 2016. Eight months later, Google has already cut the time it takes to render content in half. The company explains that this is possible due to several key optimizations made to the Google AMP Cache. These include server-side rendering of AMP components and reducing bandwidth usage from images by 50 percent without affecting the perceived quality. Also helpful was the Brotli compression algorithm, which made it possible to reduce document size by an additional 10 percent in supported browsers (even Edge uses it). Google open-sourced Brotli in September 2015 and considers it a successor to the Zopfli algorithm.

9 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Twice as fast? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think you mean "half as slow".

  2. Google Sponsored by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Register posts this today, and now Slashdot has the rebuttal.
    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/19/open_source_insider_google_amp_bad_bad_bad/

  3. Pretty much same improvement as a good ad blocker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Seems like an ad blocker should be able to bring similar improvements these days ...

    In fact, if we could get ad blockers to also eliminate links that include strings like this, we'd be even FASTER.

    You'll never believe what happens next

    number 7 will melt your heart

    you'll plotz when you see #3

  4. An alternative view from The Register by cs96and · · Score: 5, Informative
    Kill Google AMP before it KILLS the web

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/...

    1. Re:An alternative view from The Register by mujadaddy · · Score: 2

      Yeah, this article fleshes out my feelings pretty well; I've commented previously almost this exact sentiment:

      Google AMP is only good for one party: Google.

      And if you require a little more context,

      What it is, is a way for Google to obfuscate your website, usurp your content and remove any lingering notions of personal credibility from the web. Google AMP is a Google project designed such that you must restrict your layout options, forgo sending visitors to your website and accept whatever analytics data Google is willing to share. (Emphasis added)

      I'd like to say there's a reckoning coming, but that's wishful thinking with the direction the 'net has gone.

      --
      Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
      "Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
    2. Re:An alternative view from The Register by sexconker · · Score: 4, Informative

      I don't understand what it so bad about AMP?
      It looks like just another framework. In the end it is just a HTML document with a big .js blob that does stuff. Still standards-compliant. You are free to use it or not, or pick the parts that are interesting to you.
      You may be required to follow some rules in order to use Google's proxy service but you are not forced to use it.

      Seeing how things go on the web, AMP will soon be deprecated. Perhaps with something that support gigabyte-sized minimalist pages better.

      It's a subset of HTML, plus new shit Google threw in (so not standards compliant) and a big ol' feed back to Google.
      Ultimately, a user sees "AMP" content as a fucking compressed image hosted by Google and devoid of any reference to the original source. When a user wants to interact with it, there's a delay as the page is actually loaded and rendered (as opposed to the shitty jpg), and Google gets all the info of what users do on that page, not the actual author. I believe Google did recently update Chrome on Android to allow people to go to the actual source when viewing an AMP page, but no user is going to bother.

      If you have a webpage, and you AMPify it, Google will prefer to show the AMP version in search listings.
      When a user stumbles upon it, they'll see a jpg served by Google. If they try to interact with it, Google serves up your AMP page directly. Users don't see the source URL unless they jump through hoops, and you don't see visitors unless you plug in to Google's shitty reporting. Of course, Google gets more data. Lots more.

    3. Re:An alternative view from The Register by omnichad · · Score: 2

      You're putting your content inside their walled garden and losing autonomy. The bandwidth savings is only a side effect at best.

  5. If you're a developer and you implemented AMP... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    You are a cancer on the www.

  6. Re:How ironic. by green1 · · Score: 2

    This is exactly the situation.

    The real issue on the web is unnecessary code. Far too often if you look at the code for a simple paragraph of text, it's thousands of lines long, and most of those lines are there to make the rendering worse. For example, the millions of sites that only let you read text on the middle third of your monitor with huge empty fields on both sides, the ones that won't let you resize things on your mobile phone to make them easier to read, the ones that assume that every person on the planet is using the same identical monitor that the developer used and everyone else can scroll in every direction, and the absolute worst breed on the web, those that think people on mobile phones want a different website than if they were in front of a computer.

    I had an argument with my boss the other day because he wanted me to make a page "responsive" by hardcoding percentages and pixel widths in to every part of the content, I challenged him to find me a device that wasn't displaying the page well as it was with the existing site that had none of that garbage. He couldn't. Not only is it easier to write without all the arbitrary limitations, it works better on more devices, and the page sizes are less than half so bandwidth and load times are both down.

    You don't need thousands of lines of script to display raw text. Pick a font and a colour, then write the text, it's that simple.

    For all the "advances" in the web, the vast majority of the content would benefit by being taken back to before all the fancy additions were added to the standards, and leave all the scripting for content that actually needs it (which is really few and far between)