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Comment by whyagaindavid | Hacker News Reader

Genuine question: Why do people view AMP as a threat, whereas many Apple's formats/compatibility are non-standard? Is it because many accept privacy over openness? Example: Apple news or iTunes or Messages

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I think there's an element of them forcing an entirely new Google standard (then favouring it in their results) on to something they could just as easily punish (slow sites) directly.

Slow sites can be sped up quite often with small optimisations and improvements and those improvements can be guided by Google tools but instead they're forcing their own new format in the name of speed.

My guess is that they are separate services which have always been that way and people can choose not to use them from the beginning. Amp is different in that it sits in front of a lot of websites which used to work directly, it’s apples and oranges.

iTunes didn’t take over any existing service or stop you from doing something you could before on the web

So then it's akamai or limelight, then. Still not a threat.

Open standard, opt-in free cdn, independent compatible alternatives; this does not sound like a hostile takeover of your freedom.

The thing is... if you don’t use Google’s libraries and opt in to Google’s broken UI on mobile (you no longer actually go to the website, you’re kept on a weird container that contains the website), you get a drop in Google’s search results. There are no independent compatible alternatives which do not get that drop.

Google controls ~80% of online search and ads. Apple controls ~30% of the smartphone market and 10% of the laptop/PC market.

Its the same reason why Apple never gets slapped with monopoly charges. You have the option of using Android for your phone (ignoring the fact that if you value your privacy you don’t) and Windows/Linux.

  You have the option of using Android for your phone

Does the user have the option of changing to DuckDuckGo? Yes. And moreover AMP can also be hosted totally by your own servers. See Guardian.com AMP servers

You can use the Apple News Format, but you can also use it to subscribe to standard RSS feeds.

iTunes has been selling non DRM music for a decade and you can transfer most purchased movies to other services using Movies Anywhere. The podcast directory is just that - a directory to podcast feeds. They don't host any of the podcast and provide an API.

Messages interoperare with standard SMS, MMS. You don't get all of the non standard features.

Personally, because I don't use a single idevice and don't plan to. Any of apple's bullshit can't touch me. But google's amp is fucking up the web everywhere. On my Ubuntu/Win10 laptop, on my android phone, every device I use to access the web.

Fun to watch whataboutism move from politics into computing.

Personally I'm about as hostile to Apple News as I am to AMP for a lot of the same reasons. And I also don't love Apple's embrace & extend approach to SMS.

I guess there was a time when I was concerned about iTunes and DRM and the network effects of an Apple music ecosystem, but I mostly stopped buying stuff through iTMS that I could get elsewhere about a decade ago and then largely ditched iTunes somewhere around 5 years ago after Apple had spent so much time "revolutionizing" the UI that it became a shambling horror of a guessing game rather than an experience, and AFAICT these days there's plenty of ways to use Apple devices for listening to music without using any of their specific apps/services.

So, yeah, I'd guess there's probably a concerned audience that isn't exactly picking on Google while giving Apple a pass.

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