Comment by aleem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aleem | Hacker News Reader

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Something like this had been on Google's wishlist for a long time. Google news stirred up the news industry way back and Rupert Murdoch took a big stake in fighting against it, rallying other publishers. Google also bought the wire licenses so it was free to display a lot of the breaking news directly but had to play a balancing act to avoid irking the publishers.

When FB moved to instant articles, Google moved to amp. It was the opening they had been waiting for, for a long time. AMP was an opportunistic play--a damn good one for Google.

It sucks for publishers but they are forced to play along because of you are always at the mercy of your dumbest competitor.

Users may win but this isn't something publishers want or desire. Building faster pages is easier now than ever. Not as fast as AMP or Facebook Instant but still.

Over time this will lead to commodification because of lack of standards. Bing and others will further lose their lead to AMP. Users will like the new UX. Publishers are confused.

> Bing and others will further lose their lead to AMP.

What's stopping Bing (and others) from using AMP and Microsoft (and others) from building their own AMP caches?

There are many downsides when you don't control the standard. Microsoft is not in the meetings when Google PMs decide the roadmap nor will they have any clout in directing its future or adding its own features. It's merely a consumer.

The main thing about AMP is that it gives consent to the search engines which is why Microsoft is happy to use it. The consent allows search engines to display content without directing users to the publisher platform. And therein lies the rub.

> Microsoft is not in the meetings when Google PMs decide the roadmap

AFAICT [0], the AMP project is an open source project directed by its Tech Lead and Core Committers, which are a self-sustaining group (with Google, Inc. appointing a new Tech Lead in the event there are no Core Committers), even if the initial set was set by Google, and there is no barrier to Microsoft participating as fully as anyone else in that project.

[0] largely, from the project's own governance document on github, https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/GOVERNANCE...

Nothing. Bing has already started using AMP in their results.

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