"on mobile" these days is a device with a quad core, 3GB of RAM, and a 1080p + screen.
I don't want your stupid "mobile" website that doesn't work, your cut-down "optimized" walled-garden product.
I just want the normal web, in all its glory.
I don't want your stupid "mobile" website that doesn't work, your cut-down "optimized" walled-garden product.
I just want the normal web, in all its glory.
It's very easy to assume that everyone has the latest device in an affluent society that doesn't have much of a problem buying the latest and greatest, but I can assure you this isn't the case in most of the world.
You're failing to see that Google is used everywhere in the world and not all countries (in fact, very few) have markets where the standard device is what you describe or where everyone has blazing fast LTE available everywhere.
For example, there are places here in Colombia where 2G is the norm, that's the kind of people AMP is helping, not the bay area kid that has the latest iPhone and 100Mb Wi-Fi
Such luxuries. I spent several years reading web pages on a 33MHz 386DX with 8MB of RAM. Yes, Netscape took a while to start (had to wait for the rest of Win 3.1 to swap out), and downloading images was always somewhere between "slow" and "don't bother" even with the glorious 14.4kbps of a fancy V.32bis modem[1]. However, it still only took a few (15-20) seconds to fetch an article and render it.
The slowness started when websites decided it was fashionable to add a few dozen unnecessary HTTP requests to fetch megabytes of Javascript. The bloat is self inflicted, and websites do not need Google's help to make their pages small and fast. Unfortunately, many pages value the bloated ad loaders and trackers, several types of spyware ("analytics"), and their favorite "framework" more than they value the actual content of the page or the reader's experience. Google is happy to pretend the problem isn't self-inflicted when it gives them more tracking data.
Yes, it's important to remember that there will always be a wide variation in the User Agent. That's one of the reasons well-designed websites progressively enhance the heavier features. Websites can do this on their own - just like they did 10/15/20 years ago. An over-engineered caching system isn't necessary. Do you want a future where the internet retains some of it's interactive, decentralized qualities? Or do you want a fancier version of Cable TV, mostly controlled by Google et al?
[1] On weekends I was stuck with the old 2400bps V.22bis hand-me-down.
So here's an idea: Seeing as some folks _do_ have these powerful devices and fast connections, Google could make AMP _optional_.
Let people enable AMP browsing if they need it.
So Googles solution is to pull everyone down to the lowest common denominator, which is shit. Google basically re-invented WAP and is trying to set the web back 15 years.
Sure, not everyone has a fast connection and a high-end device, but they could have easily limited AMP to just those devices instead of forcing it down everyones throat.
What's even worse is that Google is pushing Chrome tabs in process now: https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/customtabs
So in all the biggest apps like Gmail, Slack, etc. I now have to click a link and it shows up in process, then I have to pick the menu option to view it in real Chrome, then I have to pick the menu option to request desktop site. So they've added two clicks and two page loads to almost every site I visit.
You left out the most important reasoning for AMP, which is the network. Even in the US, cellular networks are almost invariably slower/higher latency/less reliable than wired (or even wifi) networks. In other areas of the world where most users are not on 4g it's a huge difference.