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The Meaning of AMP (adactio.com)
Last week, Ethan Marcotte, an independent web designer, shared how Google describes AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). People at Google says AMP "isn't a 'proprietary format'; it's an open standard that anyone can contribute to." But that definition, Marcotte argues, isn't necessarily an honest one. He writes: On the face of it, this statement's true. AMP's markup isn't proprietary as such: rather, all those odd-looking amp- tags are custom elements, part of the HTML standard. And the specification's published, edited, and distributed on GitHub, under one of the more permissive licenses available. So, yes. The HTML standard does allow for the creation of custom elements, it's true, and AMP's license is quite liberal. But spend a bit of time with the rules that outline AMP's governance. Significant features and changes require the approval of AMP's Technical Lead and one Core Committer -- and if you peruse the list of AMP's Core Committers, that list seems exclusively staffed and led by Google employees. Now, there's nothing wrong with this. After all, AMP is a Google-backed project, and they're free to establish any governance model they deem appropriate. But when I hear AMP described as an open, community-led project, it strikes me as incredibly problematic, and more than a little troubling. AMP is, I think, best described as nominally open-source. It's a corporate-led product initiative built with, and distributed on, open web technologies. Jeremy Keith, a web developer, further adds: If AMP were actually the product of working web developers, this justification would make sense. As it is, we've got one team at Google citing the preference of another team at Google but representing it as the will of the people. This is just one example of AMP's sneaky marketing where some finely-shaved semantics allows them to appear far more reasonable than they actually are. At AMP Conf, the Google Search team were at pains to repeat over and over that AMP pages wouldn't get any preferential treatment in search results ... but they appear in a carousel above the search results. Now, if you were to ask any right-thinking person whether they think having their page appear right at the top of a list of search results would be considered preferential treatment, I think they would say hell, yes! This is the only reason why The Guardian, for instance, even have AMP versions of their content -- it's not for the performance benefits (their non-AMP pages are faster); it's for that prime real estate in the carousel. The same semantic nit-picking can be found in their defence of caching. See, they've even got me calling it caching! It's hosting. If I click on a search result, and I am taken to page that has a URL beginning with https://www.google.com/amp/s/... then that page is being hosted on the domain google.com. That is literally what hosting means. Now, you might argue that the original version was hosted on a different domain, but the version that the user gets sent to is the Google copy. You can call it caching if you like, but you can't tell me that Google aren't hosting AMP pages. That's a particularly low blow, because it's such a bait'n'switch.
Can somebody please explain the TLA (Three Letter Abbreviation) when they post an article about it?
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
AMP is Accelerated Mobile Pages, an HTML dialect that's processed by JavaScript hosted by Google. Google claims that AMP is quicker for at least three reasons:
1. The AMP script is less heavy than some of the ad, responsive image, and video display scripts on popular sites.
2. Elements far above and far below the viewport are removed from the DOM. This makes it less likely that the browser will have to purge other tabs from RAM, nor the operating system other applications.
3. Documents are mirrored by the www.google.com host, to which the user already holds a TCP connection.
This is much easier to explain through a much more common practice by the same company: the Android "Open Source" Project.
Let's get this out of the way: Android isn't open source (outside of China at least, where Google is blocked). Period. No discussion. When you have a market so flooded by Android devices shipping with a closed source module, with super user powers, that responds to remote requests, it's not open source. That's Google Play Services for you.
AMP is just another tool for Google to keep a trendy brand on the dev community, while achieving secondary goals in the process, goals usually related to keeping or stretching their core business, which as we all know, is Big Data and Ads. They want to standardize indeed - standardize your usage patterns into their technologies.
But the true question is: is that so bad? We eventually have to place our trust in a paltform. Some already live with the apples, others with the windows, yet the gogles always get the bad rep. Maybe we shouldn't worry so much about this specific company. I mean, it is heavily scrutinized already by the competition.
AMP is google's way of doing pay to play for publishers. If you can't pay for AMP, people's access to your article is slower.
I find that AMP breaks pages and I'd rather turn it off if I could find a way. I can't bookmark the pages, the links are wrong, and sometimes they don't render properly. If I can hack the URL and find the *real* page it usually works better. Google is using AMP as an excuse to take over pages from other sites so they can track people better. At this point, just turn on private browsing mode before using any Google page.
I usually agree with this comment-- I hate TLAs!!!!-- but in this case, the definition is on the first line of the summary.
This sounds like a dominance game to me. Pretend it's an 'open standard' to get it widely adopted, meanwhile you're the one driving the so-called 'open standard'; voila, you're the de-facto alpha.
It seems to me that Google is becoming more and more abusive.
When I go to web pages, often the NoScript and Ghostery add-ons list one or more Google processes. Google is following web site visitors everywhere.
Google allows cell phone providers to prevent updates to its Android operating system. That forces people who need security to buy new cell phones.
In general, it seems to me that hardware and software providers are becoming more and more authoritarian. They take advantage of the fact that most people don't know much about technology.
In my opinion, Microsoft's Windows 10 is NOT USABLE! How can you deliver a computer to a customer when you know what you are delivering is spyware? One article: Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. Quote from that story: "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." A previous comment about Microsoft: Window 10 Spyware.
Technology companies are not only abusive in their design of products, they are abusive in other ways, also:
Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book.
Apple: Cupertino Mayor Says Apple 'Abuses Us'
Apple again: Criticism of Apple Inc.
Adobe Systems: Adobe Flash, The Spy in Your Computer -- Part 1 Adobe seems to me to be one of the original abusers. The company demonstrated to others that average people don't know how to protect themselves from technology abuse.
Adobe Systems rents software: Software as a Monthly Rental
This is one of the problems with Linux these days, license proliferation. I've been using Gentoo for fifteen years and in /usr/portage/licenses there is a description of all 760 of them You can specify in /etc/make.conf which licenses you approve or disprove. It appears that instead of the GPL people are just making up their own and you have to wonder what their motivation is.
For instance the "Happy Bunny" license. Restrictions? "By making use of the Software for military purposes, you choose to make a Bunny unhappy." WTF?
i'm willing to entertain the claims of this article, but seriously, if "working web developers" had any more input on standards, we'd all need 16-core CPUs and 64GB of RAM just to use a web browser.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Everytime I get an AMP page on my phone, 9 times out of 10, the page is broken and doesn't load right. Having to hit refresh to get it to load right on the original sight is just useless.
Google, if you want people to stop using your search engine, keep up with the AMP crap.
It is important to move all urls to google.com, facebook.com, or amazon.com. Because soon, these will be the only 3 websites. GOOG and FB already account for 70% of internet traffic, with AMZN in much of the remainder. This is why all three corporations have mobile apps - so that you don't need that pesky browser that can access other sites. So much angst over DNS and ICANN - but soon DNS will be irrelevant. You'll need a Google or Facebook group. https://staltz.com/the-web-beg...
if google or some other big tech company wants something implemented this badly.....
it definitely isn't good for the rest of us.
Google is the new Microsoft. It's using the whole embrace, extend, extinguish game. Embraces Opensource to appear progressive and like the good guy. Extend it with proprietary stuff without which the open source bits won't work, then eventually extinguish it when there is no hope of using the Opensource alternative which has been left to wither and die.
There is no way anyone should embrace AMP..it's just a way for them to take the open web and close it off to promote Google. I considered implementing it but will definitely resist embracing Google... When Google embraces back it's like a boa constrictor.
You completely missed the main point of the fine article - Google is going to considerable lengths to make web developers think AMP is open but in reality it is completely controlled by Google.
At least you managed to pick up on the fact that article contained the word Google. I guess that's a start.
AMP: 3',5'-cyclic adenosine monophosphate
AMP has always been Asian Massage Parlor.....
bix nood mugfugga
This browser has an adblocker embedded and fixes AMP results for you: https://www.bromite.org/
(not a dev, just found it on XDA)
In an attempt to be a smartass you missed the entire point of why he's saying those things. Everything he said about google and amp is common knowledge that backs up his points of why amp isn't really open.
AMP is google dabbling in the microsoft originated corruption process known as Embrace and Extend. You take a standard and fully implement it, then add a few new features. You create huge incentives to use those features such as an IDE that doesn't distinguish between standard and non-standard HTML, and a browser that gets better performance when you use the new features. Pretty soon everyone inadvertently uses the features and all the other parts of the web break except for those using the google browser and google news feeds and google search. The competition and the general standard withers on the vine. You then keep introducing new features, and especially insidious ones, that gather information from users or are introduced ahead of their adequate documentation to stay one step ahead of other implementers. Finally you tie it to features only available on your system, such as the Microsoft OS, or to logged in google users.
2. profit.
there is no ??? step in embrace and extend.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Does it go to 11?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
For people looking to remove AMP search results when using the chrome browser on Android, got to http://encrypted.google.com
Then in the chrome settings change the default search - encrypted google should be there. Voila! No more AMP results in your google searches!
Alterntaively, use a different sewrch engine altogether, but above is good if you still want googles results.
I had to get rid of AMP, I often use multiple tabs on my phone, and AMP pages break the functionality of getting to the chrome menu bar on my phone...
I consider privacy a very important issue, especially these days when companies like Google constantly scan our Wifi and our locations.
What really impressed me, is how Google requires that AMP scripts (like v0.js and so on) are REQUIRED to be hosted on Google servers and self-hosting is prohibited. Someone else already noticed this issue and opened a Github issue, but the request to allow self-hosting has so far been ignored.
This is unacceptable for a supposedly "open" standard.
Au contraire, mon ami...as Google Asshole Shawn Willden would readily assure you, Google abuse is a Really Good Thing!!!
Amp, also known as Ampere. Electromagnetic force between electrical conductors carrying electric current.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Due to this prior art, I request that any other use of AMP be changed to a different name. Also that AMP not be copyright-able nor patent-able.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
AMP is google dabbling in the microsoft originated corruption process known as Embrace and Extend.
Google is the new AOL & CompuServe. Through their powerful search engine and other services they have basically taken over the free web and own it by default. It *is* a sort of embrace and extend, albeit one that comes with quite some empowerment. And for 'free' as in "Brave New World meets 1984 with the brakes removed and you'll love it" sort of vibe.
While MSes old-school e (embrace extend extinguish) was a PITA, Google actually manages to make their version of it quite enticing. Google is the new online service that has long since replaced the open web with their version of it - ever since 14 years ago regular people started mistaking Google for the web and Googles search for the adress-bar. We see it with branded custom hardware built around their services poping up
It works. I'm typing this on a 130 Euro chromebook. QED. I couldn't have said this for microsoft back in the day. MS e always was considerably annoying. Google makes theirs feel better - at least with me that is.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
When I was trying to access a site I have an account on (and I'm already signed in), it was showing me a limited-experience (aka broken experience) page and it adds an extra/unnecessary click to get to the "real" page...
Google is becoming more and more abusive
You preface your post with "becoming" implying an ever increasing change, but all your examples detail an ~5-10 year status quo. 3
Google has always tracked visitors.
Android has always always been beholden to the vendor (not the carrier, that is something that seems uniquely American at this point, and side note that Google has put effort into separating the security update process from the core features specifically to make it easier for vendors to provide security updates).
How can you deliver a computer to a customer when you know what you are delivering is spyware?
Because users don't care, and certain level of implicit spying is trusted by users until the result of said spying actually has a negative impact on them?
You talk of abuse, but I can't help feel that our lives have been nothing but improved by these companies. If I'm being abused, I certainly don't feel it.
Except that it's hosted on GitHub and has an Apache license. You could quite literally fork it, make changes to it, and sell it if you wanted to. It's hard to understand how much more open it could be?
I think the criticism here is more about how much weight Google has in de-facto web standards. That's valid, but this the open source isn't open source nonsense is a red herring.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I got so annoyed with that too. Then I decided to try clicking the paperclip-looking icon at the top of AMP pages. Clicking that displays the source url (to share it), clicking the URL loads the original origin page.
MightyYar pointed out:
I think the criticism here is more about how much weight Google has in de-facto web standards. That's valid, but this the open source isn't open source nonsense is a red herring.
Yep.
Note, for instance, that critic Ethan Marcotte's complaints include:
Significant features and changes require the approval of AMP's Technical Lead and one Core Committer -- and if you peruse the list of AMP's Core Committers, that list seems exclusively staffed and led by Google employees.
AFAIK, "significant features and changes" to the Linux kernel require the approval of Linus Torvalds. Full stop. Is he trying to imply that none of the Core Committers would be willing to second the approval of the Technical Lead?
I don' theeng so, Quickstraw.
Is there any bar to an outsider becoming a Core Committer? Marcotte seems to imply that there is, without bothering to provide any evidence that that's the case.
As for AMP pages being featured in the "carousel" - use an adblocker and that goes away.
So, basically, his beef is that Googlers paid to work on AMP control the "Core Committers" and Google itself touts AMP'd pages in the featured ads section of its search results. Unless he can point to somebody outside of Google who's:
I fail to see a legitimate basis for complaint here.
(I don't have a dog in this fight, btw. AMP pages hardly matter to me, since I don't do a lot of web browsing on my phone. That might change if Firefox for mobile wasn't a giant, stinking pile of ... code. But whinging about Googlers' dominance of a nominally open-source project that's apparently well within the bounds of HTML 5's published standards seems kind of pathetic to me.)
Check out my novel.
AMP is the reason I switched my phone to DuckDuckGo instead of Google. It loads web pages in ways that I canâ(TM)t interact with and there is no way to opt-out.
No thanks Google!
"... I can't help feel that our lives have been nothing but improved by these companies."
Google search improved our lives ENORMOUSLY, I agree. In other areas, Google is not as well-managed, in my opinion.
I'm not a fan either. Biggest problem I have with it is when people link share, they end up sharing a google link, not the actual website URL. Whos winning there? Sure, I'm aware and will dig up the actual link, but I know I am a minority here.
Meanwhile, the general consensus ITT is everyone hates it, but no one knows what to do about it. Easy fix. Set defaults to and search via encrypted.google.com. Not sure how, but it breaks AMP functionality on every machine I have set it on.
Enjoy!
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Consider Tor, I2P, ZeroNet, Retroshare, etc.
Most of those p2p ano/pseudo-nymous services assume that the majority of nodes are not compromised. However, what happens if most or all of the intervening nodes are running Windows 7,8,8.1,10, a Linux distro with 0 day, or government collaborated remote execution exploits, whether OS based, or permanently baked into your firmware as is the case with Trustzone, Platform Support Processor, or the eponymous Management Engine?
The chain of trust is only as strong as its weakest link, and if any of these links are corroded en-masse, the whole chain of trust for either security OR anonymity collapses across the entire internet, and nowadays 98 percent of the world's population, since basically everyone with an internet capable device runs afoul of one if not multiple of these potentially compromised platforms. And given knowledge that the FIPS X809.1(correct number?) PRNG was designed in such a way as to allow a private key to be seeded into it to make future decoding possible, there is no reason to trust that dozens of American or 5 eye affiliate nation companies would not be strong armed into colluding on such back doors if not willingly doing so for patriotic or pragmatic corporate reasons.
You are trying to see areas in which I am wrong, instead of cooperating and trying to see how what I said could be correct.
Nothing I said was intended to be a complete analysis of Google management of the last few years. I agree that GMail is a wonderful contribution.
I'm studying how successful companies eventually fail. For me, it was painful to watch Hewlett-Packard destroy itself. One article: How Hewlett-Packard lost its way (May 8, 2012).
Another example: Tektronix was once a wonderful leader in electronic measuring devices. Now: Tektronix, five years after sale to Danaher, continues to shed jobs and struggle (Dec. 08, 2012).
Google allowed Android cell phone company customers to prevent installation of Android updates. That has been extraordinarily destructive. There are many complaints about Google selling services that allow it to track web site visitors. There are smaller failures that indicate there has been insufficient oversight by Google management.
The fact that Google has succeeded very nicely in some areas does not take away from a study of the scary self-defeat.
Christ, man. The apostrophes are evolving! We're doomed!!!
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
then all of a sudden all apps dependant on gservices will stop responding or reduce functionality to a "no play services, computer says no" dialog
Then use applications from F-Droid and Amazon Appstore, most of which do not depend on Google Play Services. Or use mobile web applications instead of Google Play Services-dependent native applications.