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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?
And then Google has the whole world wide web under its control.
-- Cheers!
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.
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.
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
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...
... 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
... 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.
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.
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
You have a choice for your ad-supported content. Ads from random sources that you don't trust and which may contain malware, or ads from Google that are at least safe.
Oh, but you have an ad blocker? Well it's much easier to consistently block Google ads with zero side effects than it is to block every other random ad server in existence.
I'm not saying it's ideal, but given the choice I'll take the safe and easy to block Google ads.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC