Comment by AJ007 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AJ007 | Hacker News Reader

"I hope I am not being too hard on Google." -- no, the author is being very, very nice. Google has a strong business interest in users never going to other sites. Between AMP & voice search, the future is going to be very rough for businesses that rely on free search traffic.

In practical business terms I would strongly suggest website owners build ultra-light versions of their sites. If you have international aspirations your site should work on Opera Mini. If you have a big audience it is very reasonable and worth it to have desktop/tablet, smartphone, and ultra-lite versions of your site.

Reposting part of a comment I made a month back on AMP:

#1 There is a big problem with mobile sites. I'm using a recent iPhone and many popular news sites, without ad blockers, are as close to unusable as the worst websites I've ever been to, dating back to using Internet Explorer in 1999. Auto playing inline video ads that slide in to view, just insane. These things clearly kill time on site and reader retention. I have theories about why publishers are ignoring this, but who knows.

#2 Google is using AMP to co-opt publisher's traffic. This means users are scrolling to another story from another publisher or easily bouncing back to the Google results when they land on your content. (See the X in the story link on the animated gif example.) There goes your time on site and long term user retention. If #1 was a problem for you already, you probably don't notice.

#3 AMP & Instant articles are going to put a stranglehold on third party ad networks and represent a very real anti-trust issue. There are a bunch of other privacy implications too, which have been discussed in length. Publishers should be thinking really hard about their future.

Web publisher here...the real problem is twofold:

- Display advertising makes the web suck; while display ads fund a large share of general market content sites, from a purely technical perspective they kill site performance.

- All major market participants suck equally, rendering no alternatives for end-users or advertisers to defect to; this inherently limits any incentive for real change.

AMP / Mobile index (new development from Google) breaks the gridlock: divert traffic to sites who deliver a good (fast) mobile experience and (assume site owners are economically rational - we are) is supported by something other than old school display advertising. Solving the 2nd part is left as an exercise to the student....

Interesting enough, you can make a banner ad load really fast. Just host images on your site and load it directly from your server without all the tracking scripts and separate calls from your advertising network (plus others). Or go completely native and render text links in html. Granted, this requires you to actually market your content and merchandise an offer (affiliate marketing).

Display advertising actually isn't the highest CPM option for a website; I did a study on small site auction data a while back and it was the lowest CPM model (admittedly, laziest to implement):

http://www.marginhound.com/revenue-model-study-for-small-web...

Google's DFP adserver is the slowest part of the web - they already had a vector to improve everything without AMP.

How do you suggest publishers who are dependent on traffic from Google cope with AMP in the short-term? It seems like there is no way to compete with AMP-enabled content on Google ranking except by adopting AMP.

Therein lies the problem, Google owns 80% of the market. Google is a de-facto monopoly. They can force you to act against your long term interests for a short term gain.

I personally find the gain suspicious, it's already possible to make fast pages.

Soon, we'll all merely be Google content providers.

I don't think if you're running a business there's any way to avoid optimizing for Google in the short-term. You simply have to do it, if you want to be seen. Not optimizing for Google won't hurt Google, it'll just hurt you. Because Google can always just promote someone else.

But you should also support antitrust legislation and judicial action against Google. Don't vote for candidates next month receiving large donations from Google (now referred to as Alphabet[1] on most donor lists). The long game is requiring open oversight of Google's search ranking methodologies and forbidding them from modifying them to benefit their own products and services.

[1] http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?cycle=2016&id=D00...

As an outsider observing the US election the statement of yours "Don't vote for candidates next month receiving large donations from Google" strikes me as ridiculous.

Don't get me wrong, your logic is correct. But, in order for politicians to play the game they need large donors like Google. So, if they don't take money from Google they'll just take it from someone else with an agenda. The real solution is to vote for candidates pushing for campaign finance reform (reading Lawrence Lessig may be insightful)

Realistically, you will never get a majority of US legislators to agree that giving US legislators money is a bad idea. Unsurprisingly, when Congress moves to increase the salary of Congress, the bill tends to pass with flying colors. ;)

Therefore, your best bet is to get regulations against Google by electing people paid by someone else, then later get regulations against that someone else by electing people paid by someone entirely different. It's a juggling act of corruption!

> Realistically, you will never get a majority of US legislators to agree that giving US legislators money is a bad idea.

While the electorate is bickering over distractions like this cycle you are correct. However, limiting special interest influence strikes me as a non-partisan issue, so if the citizens spoke up I think they'd have sufficient influence.. But, then maybe I'm being an idealist. Regardless, your short term solution works.

The problem is, it's a non-partisan issue in that almost all our representatives, regardless of political party, are totally comfortable with it. ;) And the reason we're uncomfortable with special interest influence is... that it absolutely freaking works. The power money has on election results is so strong, that almost anyone who isn't accepting it probably isn't getting elected. So the likelihood of gaining a majority of Congresspeople who would move against it is pretty much impossible.

> But, in order for politicians to play the game they need large donors like Google. So, if they don't take money from Google they'll just take it from someone else with an agenda.

This is funny considering you think "donations" from Google don't have an agenda.

Lets call it what they are without double speak - a fucking bribe.

I just want to point out that it is illegal in the U.S. for federal candidates to take money from organizations, such as corporations like Alphabet, Inc.

When you see campaign contributions listed "from" Alphabet, that money is actually all coming from individuals.

Employees of Alphabet who give more than $200 are required to list their employer on the donation form. The campaigns then submit that data to the FEC, which makes it public, which is where OpenSecrets gets it. So even if the Google janitor gives $250 to Clinton, OpenSecrets will list that as coming "from" Alphabet.

OpenSecrets also shows money that went to candidates from political action committees (PACs). But any money that passes through a PAC to a candidate must originate from an individual as well. The corporation can only pay administrative fees, like providing an office and Internet connection.

The reason that donors are required to list their employer on the donation form is because of how much influence that employer has on the employee/donor.

You may note that I said to avoid voting for candidates with a LARGE amount of contribution from Google. Because this isn't about $250, but, for instance, about the $58,000 Googlers have given to Ro Khanna, which pretty much ensures Ro would never vote against Google's interests if elected.

Stop using amp and find other ways to optimize and minifity their websites for mobile? Foundation has the ability to include only the components you want if you build it using SASS and by including/minifiying the individual Javascript files during your build process.

The more I look at AMP the more I absolutely hate it. This is just another thing to make me not want to use it.

If Google points to a site, they should serve your site. If they're serving from cache, put in a DMCA and tell them hands off your content.

It would be sooo bad if your business suffered a search rank penalty due to the lack of AMP. It would be a real shame.

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