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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?
And their font servers. And Google Analytics. And their "free" dns. Fuck Google tracking everything everyone does online.
Don't know about you guys but 99% of the time on my phone I'm using the desktop version of a page. I hate mobile site design with its tons of empty space and enormous fonts.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I bet Google crawlers love it when a web page is small, fast to load, and easy to navigate.
But do you know who else likes that? HUMANS like that too!
I get that there are some legitimate issues with AMP, but this sounds a bit like the guy in one of the linked articles is annoyed that Google wants him to stop making shitty websites and he doesn't like it at all because it creates more work for him.
It just makes it easer for Google to shadowban a site
AFAICT, most web properties which would even consider using AMP in the first place have never seen a JavaScript tracking framework they didn't like. Oh, LardScript Analytics? Yes, sign me up! I realize that you can't just deliver my 2k of actual content, you need to brand and stuff with headers and footers and links to follow, but do you really need 20MB spread across 350 resources to do it? Get that down to something reasonable like 50k of dynamic stuff and a couple 100k of highly-cacheable stuff, and AMP would be pointless.
https://danluu.com/web-bloat/
AMP just seems like WAP reborn to me, only hosted at Google. Makes it easier for them to parse, but nobody actually wanted it. Should be any easy one to refuse.
AMP has two parts. One is a set of very sensible rules for doing good websites. The second is a way for Google to take control of the web.
So what you should do is simple. Make a website that is compatible with AMP. Then remove all Google stuff. You will end up with a website that is independent and fast. And when you are at it, apply the same principles to your destop website.