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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?
Dictators do not work for industry or countries.
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
Betteridge be damned.
#DeleteChrome
I look forward to the day Google gets record breaking fine for collecting all these personal information without informing or consent from the end users.
Google is free to withdraw from Europe as they had withdrawn from China. Another Europe based search engine will take over, as has happened in China.
Something should be done about this. Anyone ask Google what their thoughts are?
Seems like every year the distinction between the two narrows. Wouldn't that mean that AMP's original purpose is soon obsolete once mobile devices (both CPU and network) are fast enough for the job.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame.
;)
~Marshall McLuhan
The web's search for mechanisms of underwriting is reflected in the screen's "real estate" beginning with AOL's valuations that were sufficient to merge with Time/Warner and navigation was compromised by strategic ad placement informed by users' studies-- the screen was so crowded out, advertisers sought as many inadvertent clicks as purposeful ones. Notions of micro-payments were floated before web-counters could ever be accurate, and the bubble burst.
Followed by a renaissance of white-space: Google, Craig's List, & Wikipedia. I have this fantasy that everyone working at Wikipedia should lease and control Alphabet for three years and vice-versa
Followed by FlashSplash, a spectrum auction, and Analytics-- which was addressed by lobbyists, resulting in Cambridge that quickly corrupted because...it was an artificial solution to underwriting. One reason Google recently could defer Congress is it already addressed its monopoly with Alphabet.
The terms: externality, extractive economies, and (the most harrowing and dreadful and hopeful) late-stage capitalism will be addressed by generations as creative as our own with DARPA's fail-safe network that is obviously a useful and significant tool for those generations. I am perplexed by how the character of a home-brew innovation is marshaled by profit-seekers to fashion a globe of "clouds" and thin-clients, but am reluctant to assert any technology is not so yoked and potentially transcendent
Would were! Should is! Could be! And live a hundred times three.
In so many ways Google is clearly overstepping their authority. Just like when Microsoft was out of control, I'm seeing a bunch of sheep with their heads in the sand. Still sucking on Google's tit, refusing to acknowledge the bad behavior, refusing to choose responsible alternatives for Chrome and Google's other crappy products.
Well, just like last time, Firefox will be there when ya'all are ready to stand up.
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.
Google wants to own all web traffic in the world. Their AI systems need all this data so that your profiles can be used in Advertising that is aimed right at you personally.
They are Big Brother in all but name.
This move will make me use Mobile pages even less than I do now.
What then Google? What is your next move to enslave all of us.
AMP is a takeover of the web by a monster. You don't feed the monster, you fight it!
I'm used to the layout of the full website, scrolling and zooming is less difficult than finding where the mobile version put something if it had it at all. Similarly, opening a site in a browser whether desktop or mobile version is for the most part easier than using the site's app.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Web pages are relatively easy to make load fast if you sacrifice certain things and avoid faddish temptations.
Table-ized A.I.
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/
Google already has enough of a stranglehold over the web.
And don't go with the Facebook Instant Articles or Apple News either.
While AMP is, ostensibly, an open-source project, the fact that it's leadership is in the hands of these corporate advertising giants should give anyone with a lick of sense pause.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
So a Man In The Middle attack you opt into?
Question everything
Should webmasters "resist Google's push for AMP pages"? Webmasters should really just write mobile websites that don't suck ass, but that's apparently just not something they'll do of their own volition. Most of my mobile browsing is just reading some headlines to kill time, and it's amazing how bad news websites in particular are--laggy scrolling, pop-overs, teleporting ads, teleporting paragraphs, etc. When AMP came out, that shit disappeared from anything I Googled practically overnight--any time I've clicked (tapped, I guess) through to an AMP page, it's loaded quickly, scrolling has worked, and nothing teleports.
Are there privacy implications? Of course, but they're rather marginal for someone already using Google's search engine, e-mail, news reader, chat programs, and browser. Is AMP necessary to write a good mobile website? Of course not, but writing a good mobile website is just not something a paste-eating webmaster will do unless someone grabs him by the ad dollars, forces him into a padded cell, and takes away so much markup he couldn't possibly fuck up what's left.
TL;DR AMP exists because webmasters are universally incompetent. If you chucklefucks weren't utter failures, AMP would never have happened.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Dictators do not work for industry or countries.
They used to, sometimes. But modern dictators ain't what they used to be. ;-)
In the Roman Republic (emphasize Republic, after the kings, before the emperors) the dictator had a temporary appointment and absolute authority limited to the territory in crisis, for example a region with active warfare. An interesting story:
Rome was invaded. The Senate appointed a man named Cincinnatus dictator for six months. On his first day he appointed a military commander and ordered all able bodied males in Rome to report for military service. The next day they marched to meet the enemy. He outmaneuvered the enemy and put them in a very bad position, they begged for mercy. The deal was to execute the top three enemy leaders and grant amnesty to the bulk of the enemy army. Cincinnatus then disbanded his Roman army and resigned the dictatorship. He was dictator for about two weeks and then returned to his farm outside of Rome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Mobile can be just as bad as desktop if not worse since your typical browser on a phone has little to no adblock abilities
use the Firefox Android app.
it can install all your usual Web Extensions, e.g. uBlock Origin for ad-blocking, Privacy Badger for tracker blocking, etc.
(unlike the Chrome Android app, which doesn't have extensions)
no idea about iOS. but I think I remember all browser apps are forced to rely on the Safari engine, and only provide bookmark sharing, etc.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
There is also the possible angle of anti-competitive behavior.
This article https://newsdashboard.com/en/how-do-amp-articles-perform-in-the-mobile-serp-for-google-news-oneboxes/ suggests that non-AMP pages are strongly de-emphasized in search rankings (despite Google claiming otherwise, addition mine).
Now Google was in trouble with the EU before for forcing Android mobile phone producers to pre-install Google Search and browser apps as conditions for licensing its app store.
I don't see yet for what exact reason Google would get fined this time, as in theory everybody can make AMP sites. Perhaps the owners of competing search engines could complain to the EU.
C - the footgun of programming languages
AMP pages load faster and they only contain approved ads by Google.
If true, this is an invitation for huge fines for anti-competitive behaviour. Remember the forced bundling of Google apps with the app store? Five billion fine in the EU.
C - the footgun of programming languages
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...
While there are problems with AMP, the real problem - which AMP does well to combat - is shitty, bloated, ad-vomiting websites.
This just in, the Youtube accounts of the Syrian Presidency, Ministry of Defense and SANA news agency were deleted.
So someone (In this case Google) who orovides a free service, decided not to use their resources to host snd distribute content from e cerain source or group of sources. I may be naive, but what us wrong with that? he who pays the bills decides
... and, AFAICT, a good and useful one.
Why should I resist that?
So AMP is a reduced HTML standard to make mobile websites load faster and less bloated that the bullshit we see today spewed into the public web by people who can't tell a server from a client and shouldn't be let near a keyboard of a connected computer, let alone in the lead position of some web project. Pagecalls weigh in twice to three times as heavy as an entire Amiga operating system these days. If your would delivered such a thing 18 years ago people would've beat you up and for good reasons too.
So Google wants to cache my website with AMP? Nice. Go right ahead. If they update the content in their cache whenever I do I'm all for it. The more I can tell clients that their crappy bloated piece of shit they call a website is going to be deranked into unseen depths of Google if they don't use sensible unbroken web presentations, AMP is a good thing and it will be a part of my optimisation strategy for professional websites.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I'm not sure this statement is true.
The subject says it all. Google is neither in charge of the internet nor trustworthy. Resist everything they suggest.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
... that google's interests are aligned with my interests. Currently, I see little, if any, benefit, and a whole lot of downside. I'll pass.
... then google should do something about all the slow trackers on the websites, including the painfully slow site known as google fonts.
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.
"Google to perform their own optimisations to further enhance user experience"
;)
I read this as inserting their targeted paid ads. Don't buy from this site, buy from one of our paid ad clients.
Just my 2 cents
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.
On the other hand, everyone who was clued in Internet-wise, hated AOL and everything it stood for. They were frequently and viciously attacked for their monopolistic practices. Is Google in the middle of jumping the shark here?
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
The fastest public and most stable DNS server is 8.8.8.8. Try it. You'll like it.
What a load of shit. You should know when you're typing it out, and you feel the desire to tell me how I feel about it, that you're full of shit. You can just stop there and accept that it sucks and you don't know why you're choosing it.
If your DNS is slow enough that you can measure a difference in speed between two DNS servers without blasting them with excess spam, then you have worse problems with your access than that! You should probably be running your own caching DNS server in that case, which should fully mitigate the problem.
Separately, Chrome does not offer or allow security updates on a separate track than feature updates, so observing the rate of updates and implying that it is more secure just shows you have no clue about security. Chrome sends you propaganda at a higher rate, so you believe it at a higher rate. That's the closest true thing standing around next to your lie!
You even bungled your attempt at sounding balanced, as the Google Cloud offerings are better for a lot of corporate use cases than what Amazon is offering. Amazon is clearly the market leader, but so what? Amazon's billing isn't "overly complicated," it is based on what services you actually use. It breaks down in ways that make a lot of sense to both sysadmins and accountants.
Everyone seems so eager to destroy all the open platforms and give all the power to a few arbitrary proprietary systems dictated by a literal handful of people... what could possibly go wrong?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
my point however was that by default they do not exist (they aren't installed).
It might be good to refresh the memory:
- the whole Firefox (back when it used to be called Phoenix) was started on the purpose to be a small lightweight browser with only bare bone functionality and all the bells-and-whistles being in extensions (XUL back then, web extensions nowadays), in opposition to the giant Creature Feep that Netscape was becoming.
- Chrome began also with the idea of being light-weight.
Not having too many features out-of-the box is part of the mission in these browser.
(Hence all the backlash against mozilla's Pocket : thes should belong in an extension, not a core feature).
I find it perfectly normal that adblocking is handled by an extension.
(I would have found even better if Pocket, or even the whole Weave/Sync infrastructure was in extensions. But at least the later is user-configurable to use own servers)
From malware blacklists to HSTS and addon update checking, both Firefox and Chrome have their own share of background analytics you still won't see in the application but absolutely can from the network.
The above post was simply about mobile browsers lacking adblocking capability compared to desktop ones.
I was simply pointing out that this is restricted to mobile Chrome which lacks any extension capabilities.
Whereas mobile Firefox has the exact same extension capability on Android as on any desktop OS, and thus all the ad-blocking capability you're used to desktop also work on the mobile, and thus the "Mobile app is worse than desktop application due to lack of ad-blocking" doesn't apply.
It had absolutely nothing do to with any remote tracking possibility inherent to list/extensions/whatever update mechanism.
If you're into *that* level of paranoia (don't get me wrong, my intention isn't to make jokes. There are legitimate reasons for wanting this), you'd better using Tor browser with the Tor network.
And add some host-blocking solution just to be sure.
Don't get me wrong, uBo and uBm are nice but they miss a whole lot due to Google and Mozilla.
uBo misses a lot, for the simple reason that it's targetted specifically for ads to begin. (The subject from above).
before dwelving into the ability to see you appearing into mozilla's logs whenever you update lists/extensions/etc., there's a lot of other stuff.
- things like Privacy Badger which are specifically to block tracker inside web-pages (all this stupid "Like" Facebook buttons)
- things like DecentralEyes, which are specifically to block you from appearing in the logs whenever a page needs to download a common javascript toolkit from a 3rd party CDN.
- things like NoScript, which give you a very fine grained control on any piece of Javascript.
etc. (and by the way to go back to the discussion : they all also work on mobile Firefox on android).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I can't believe what I'm reading here.
Ads are dangerous. They often contain malware. Google is by far the best when it comes to checking ads for malware and limiting them to text and a malware scanned link. Also, you can really easily block them. So AMP pages are great if you like your privacy.
Why does Google need to be involved in my http queries at all? It's not altruism.
And from the webmaster's perspective, AMP is a "standard" which only helps Google, NOT ANYONE ELSE.
If "Ads are dangerous", why should anyone trust Pusher No. 1? The company has come a long way from Not-An-Ad-Company.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Why? It's and open standard... and, AFAICT, a good and useful one.
Useful for who? The utility it provides is to Google, not the user.
There may come a day when I let Google tell me how I want to utilize HTTP.
But today is not that day.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Why is someone on Mac Observer adding complaint to Google's Walled Garden architecture? I thought Mac users were used to and loved their walled gardens, so why complain when a new one pops up?