I am keenly interested in the effectiveness of AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) as a content discovery, delivery and filtering system because I "feel the pain" of slow content each/every time I use a 3G (non-wifi) connection.
Yes, AMP was developed/sponsored by Google, but that does not make it "bad"... If anything it means Google knows that slow mobile pages "hurt" the web and they are trying to help "fix" the often painful waiting times for loading content on mobile.
AMP is an "open-source initiative" however to be "compliant" a page MUST include the AMP JavaScript file: https://ampbyexample.com/introduction/hello_world For people who are "privacy conscious" this is an obvious "red flag" because you are basically forced to include/load a "tracker" which means Google knows what content is being read.
For the vast majority of Publishers who already use Google Analytics including the AMP JS on the page is not a concern. (you are already sending all your usage data to Google...)
The OP concludes with: > "I would highly recommend small time bloggers and publishers like myself to avoid wasting their time on AMP."
I question the OP's suggestion to avoid AMP as for most "small time bloggers and publishers", having extra content discovery & distribution for not that much extra effort, is well worth the time.
Google Does NOT "slow down" AMP pages, much to the contrary, in our experience of Deploying AMP for several content-heavy websites Google both give better ranking and promote AMP pages in the SERPS. (Yes, this is "favouritism" for AMP content, but it's also better for the Users who searched for that content!)
Alex's relatively* "flat" traffic (see graphs in article) and the fact that he has been writing more content:
"A lot of it can be attributed to me writing additional articles in the last year"
Means that the conclusions of the article are "unscientific" at best. I would counter-argue that if he actively supported AMP his traffic would be higher. (and since his blog is ad-supported, he should re-consider...)