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Should Webmasters Resist Google's Push For AMP Pages? (polemicdigital.com)
"Have you heard of Google AMP? That stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, and it's a way of making webpages so that they load faster and display more efficiently on mobile devices. Oh, and it puts your website under Google's control."
That's Mac Observer co-founder Bryan Chaffin, linking to an "interesting reading" titled "Google AMP Can Go To Hell." AMP allows Google to basically take over hosting the web as well. The Google AMP Cache will serve AMP pages instead of a website's own hosting environment, and also allow Google to perform their own optimisations to further enhance user experience. As a side benefit, it also allows Google full control over content monetisation. No more rogue ad networks, no more malicious ads, all monetisation approved and regulated by Google. If anything happens that falls outside of the AMP standard's restrictions, the page in question simply becomes AMP-invalid and is ejected from the AMP cache -- and subsequently from Google's results. At that point the page might as well not exist any more....
The easy thing to do is to simply obey. Do what Google says. Accept their proclamations and jump when they tell you to. Or you could fight back. You could tell them to stuff it, and find ways to undermine their dominance. Use a different search engine, and convince your friends and family to do the same. Write to your elected officials and ask them to investigate Google's monopoly. Stop using the Chrome browser. Ditch your Android phone. Turn off Google's tracking of your every move. And, for goodness sake, disable AMP on your website.
Don't feed the monster -- fight it.
Here's how web developer Macieg Ceeglowski put it in 2015. "Out of an abundance of love for the mobile web, Google has volunteered to run the infrastructure, especially the user tracking parts of it." But are these assessments too harsh? Leave your own thoughts in the comment.
Should webmasters resist Google's push for AMP pages?
That's Mac Observer co-founder Bryan Chaffin, linking to an "interesting reading" titled "Google AMP Can Go To Hell." AMP allows Google to basically take over hosting the web as well. The Google AMP Cache will serve AMP pages instead of a website's own hosting environment, and also allow Google to perform their own optimisations to further enhance user experience. As a side benefit, it also allows Google full control over content monetisation. No more rogue ad networks, no more malicious ads, all monetisation approved and regulated by Google. If anything happens that falls outside of the AMP standard's restrictions, the page in question simply becomes AMP-invalid and is ejected from the AMP cache -- and subsequently from Google's results. At that point the page might as well not exist any more....
The easy thing to do is to simply obey. Do what Google says. Accept their proclamations and jump when they tell you to. Or you could fight back. You could tell them to stuff it, and find ways to undermine their dominance. Use a different search engine, and convince your friends and family to do the same. Write to your elected officials and ask them to investigate Google's monopoly. Stop using the Chrome browser. Ditch your Android phone. Turn off Google's tracking of your every move. And, for goodness sake, disable AMP on your website.
Don't feed the monster -- fight it.
Here's how web developer Macieg Ceeglowski put it in 2015. "Out of an abundance of love for the mobile web, Google has volunteered to run the infrastructure, especially the user tracking parts of it." But are these assessments too harsh? Leave your own thoughts in the comment.
Should webmasters resist Google's push for AMP pages?
The last straw for me was when I realized how many pages were breaking BECAUSE Google was silently redirecting to AMP versions of pages. Google forces all users that it thinks are on iOS or Android to their AMP variants even though there are TONs of bugs on iOS that Google is not fixing.
The nonAMP version of the AMP website works better than the AMP version... Check out how AMP breaks scroll-to-top taps on iOS by stuffing everything in extra iframes. Try scrolling around while zoomed in on iOS ... Googleâ(TM)s JavaScript that tries to progressively load content will inevitably screw up and stop you from scrolling far. https://www.google.com/amp/s/w...
The ISP I work for used to provide DNS with our broadband. We did no capture or logging of any kind of customer queries, nor did we alter results in any way, just pure caching anycast resolvers. As cached results didn't hit transit or peering at all, it was also faster than using Google. However, more and more customers started using Google DNS after word of mouth claimed it was faster (in some situations it is, sure) Eventually we dropped providing broadband, but the anecdotal "Google is always faster" still causes me to facepalm.
Sites with "interesting design" NEVER have a focus on content.
When you have a focus on content your site will end up exactly like an AMP page. Fast loading and easy to navigate.
Slow loading bloat is only ever present because of intrusive ads and tracking scripts.
6 seconds is not fast. 2-3 seconds for body content or the user bounces. And even that's a long time. If the whole page isn't done loading in six seconds, I'll be suspecting malware or mining JavaScript.