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>> If user were to click “x” in the screenshot above, they will be taken back to Google search results.

> As a user, this is what I want.

That's what the back button is for though.

For me, I consider AMP pages a kind of in-between page. I searched on Google, and Google is showing me the AMP page, and not the real website's page. This is apparent by the URL in the address bar.

I expect that clicking the close button will close the AMP page and take me to the real page. It fits the model better, and it solves the problem of not being able to see the actual URL (to share, bookmark, etc). Instead it does something unexpected, it acts like a back button, something I already know how to use.

That broken interaction makes Google's AMP experience super frustrating to me as a user. The side effect is that I don't use Google's search on my phone anymore. I think it's a big reason people complain about it, and want the opt-out option.

That's not what I would expect a close button to do, at all. It seems like you're expecting it to actually work like a forward button?

Every single site these days has a modal or overlay that obscures/distorts the content.

People have learned that clicking that little X gets rid of the obstruction so they can view the page as it was intended.

You probably dismiss hundreds of these EU cookie notices per week.

I hadn't realized it, but yes, this is exactly the experience I expect. The AMP page is like a modal I front of the actual site. Or that's how I think of it anyway.

Search engines have never worked like this (up until now that is). It's just not what the average user expects. It's also a dangerous precedent IMHO.

Why? It’s exactly what the average user expects. They see a site, with some message on top. Be it a cookie warning, the AMP header, etc.

They click the X or OK on the message, the message disappears, the site stays.

If you can find a website where the cookie warning’s X button redirects to your last Google search, please do so.

Either you replied to the wrong comment or I wasn't clear in my comment. We are totally in agreement.

Right, and I consider it a modal over the search results, not the page that hasn't been displayed yet.

Yes, but the only reason you think that is because you understand the technical underpinnings (ie. the content is indeed being served by the same domain as the search results).

Regular users have been expecting search results to behave a certain way for over two decades. Opening the results in a modal is simply not the expected behaviour. Changing the back button is not the expected behaviour.

> scrolling can be wonky

Last time this came up someone linked to a Google employee submitting a bug report to Apple about the scrolling. Their response was "that's how it's supposed to work - the rest of the system is wrong and we will fix that". So iPhone users might not have much choice anyway soon!

Kind of reminds me of how terrible mouse acceleration is on OSX, and how Apple gradually removed all the options for fixing it - now the only option is to install a completely different commercial mouse driver (SteerMouse).

If they just made simple html the requirement instead of a bunch of extra crap they wouldn't have that problem.

I'd be shocked if Apple's official stance was that tapping the status bar to scroll to the top of a page is wrong and should be fixed.

The person you are replying to is talking about the scroll speed.

> I do hope that Google adds an option in your account settings to opt-out of AMP results. That way the detractors can turn it off, and everyone else can be happy that pages load in < 1 second instead of 4-5 seconds.

This is not exactly what you want, but you can choose to open all search results (and by extension AMP results) in an external browser instead of the search app. For me, opening AMP links on FireFox redirects me to the non-AMP page, effectively eliminating AMP pages (technically they are still AMP results but in practice you get redirected to the non-AMP page).

To do that, from https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7013866?hl=en - Open the Google search app. Tap the hamburger menu. Tap Settings. Tap "Accounts & Privacy". Turn off "Open web pages in app".

I don't remember seeing AMP myself, but then I'm using Firefox which has DDG set as default.

I'm wondering though if there's a way for the user to opt out (besides of not using google?). It seems like while it mostly benefits users, they should still have option to simply opt out from AMP.