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Comment by lawnchair_larry | Hacker News Reader

AMP is a terrible product and an abuse of market position, but the ego behind it means nobody cares what users think, and it will be touted as a success on someone's performance review no matter what.

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It's the most user-hostile thing Google has yet done, and I'm including things like Google Wave, the death of Google Reader, and things like removing "view image" from image search results. I loathe getting AMP results. It's always a struggle to get to the real site.

I thought google were forced to remove 'view-image' from search results? (to appease the site owners)

> including things like Google Wave

awkward for me. i really liked Wave.

AMP is actually the main reason I switched from Google to DDG on my phone; for some reason, when I switched from an Android phone to an iPhone, I started getting AMP results, and switching search engines was the only way to disable AMP.

Is that why I never get AMP results? I've heard about it a lot, but never gotten an AMP page in the results (obviously, in retrospect, because I use DDG). Too bad it's not a "real" standard that everyone can use.

That's correct, DDG is any alternative browser is one of the better answers to this situation.

Why do you think Google Wave was user-hostile?

It was meant to replace email, an open standard sporting many interoperable servers and clients, with something that Google controlled, even though it was theoretically federated.

After Wave failed, they doubled down on making Gmail into more of a nonstandard product with reduced interoperability (now requiring Gmail API instead of standard IMAP) and increasingly, embrace & extend functionality such as email expiration dates.

It wasn't theoretically federated. It was actually federated. Interop outside Google actually happened.

Is something not working with gmail's imap support?

Google Talk was also federated for some time. Good old times when we could dream of continents, but it has all drifted away and become islands.

Issues with Gmail IMAP as voiced by other people:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16951363

https://www.dvratil.cz/2014/06/improved-gmail-integration-in...

https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/gmail/9A5oYELFbu8/7iq...

https://github.com/mscdex/node-imap/issues/71

https://freron.lighthouseapp.com/projects/58672/tickets/1247...

Sure you can still access Gmail through IMAP, but if it works differently enough that using a standard IMAP client feels cumbersome and unfamiliar, is it really anything else than a vehicle to tell people that they should really just use the "better" Google product directly?

That said, my original wording of "requiring" the Gmail API was poor and I should have phrased it more accurately.

IMAP sucks at not destroying your battery though. That’s why everyone was using the (also proprietary) activesync provided by exchange.

Well, now we have Slack, and Google Wave seems comparably tame.

I think marking all http websites as unsafe is tied for first place in the most user-hostile thing ever contest.

Well http is technically unsafe. How is it user-hostile? You can still browser the page. Just the tiny icon changes near the url.

I suppose context matters. If I'm browsing a local newspaper the need for SSL isn't nearly as strong as for banking.

Also they're moving away from the icon and going to a full "Not Secure" status. Image: https://i.imgtc.com/9DwDQ6r.png

Still, you're only as secure as your weakest link. An attacker could figure out how to break into your banking account using the information they gathered from you checking your newspaper account.

Is "Not Secure" a false label? Plaintext HTTP is literally not secure against either a passive or active MITM.

If a site does not require personal information, it does not need SSL to be "secure". Webcomics I read, blogs, etc, do not need to be "secured", as they are not requesting data. They do not need HTTPS.

MITM attacks can also simply be injecting malicious code onto insecure websites. They don't have to be stealing your credit card info to be harmful.

>it does not need SSL to be "secure".

>do not need to be "secured"

Which is it - is the site secure without SSL, or does the site not need to be secure?

In the former case, I disagree wholeheartedly. In the latter case, you're not blocked from browsing the site - only informed that it is insecure, a factual statement.

If it doesn't need to be secure, why does a "not secure" label in the browser bother you?

Ah, but they sort of do. HTTPS also protects you from your ISP injecting trackers and ads (which is something US ISPs like to do), and also protects you from third parties listening in on what "benign" sites you visit and building a profile about you.

Open for anyone to see is not the same thing as unsafe. That's a false equivalence.

HTTP is unsafe in the same way that getting a newspaper delivered to your yard is unsafe.

Oh no. Casual passersby know from looking that I have a newspaper on my lawn. If someone wants to snoop when I'm not looking, they now know that I read a specific newspaper. Someone could even steal it.

It's unsafe in the sense that if you leave your driver license, credit cards, birth certificate, cash, and car keys all in your yard over night, you won't be surprised if at least one of them is gone in the morning.

HTTP is a paper in your yard. A poster on a phone pole. A business card on a broken, smudgedy plexiglass subway sign. HTTP is public, and there is absolutely value in putting things out there for everyone to read in public.

It’s more like someone could change an article in the paper before giving it to you, possibly tricking you into purchasing something or going somewhere you wouldn’t have otherwise.

It's not really user-hostile at all. It's great for users. We get easy to identify sites that load quickly on mobile. I waste much less time because of AMP.

You could argue it is bad for publishers. But users? Please.

User-hostile? I'm a user, and to me it seems more like google protecting me from the hostility of publishers. I love it.

I wouldn’t mind it so much if Google’s AMP viewer didn’t steal 3/4” of my browser’s vertical real estate for utterly useless gray chrome.

I wouldn't mind if I had an opt out, I don't even want it to be opt in. just let me turn it off.

> removing "view image" from image search results

This was the result of a lawsuit by Getty Images - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after...

Another example of user-hostility: I search google for "X using Y" and I get a bunch of results about X where Y is explicitly excluded, i.e. Y with a strikethru and a link saying "actually search for the fucking thing you typed in"... That's a very frustrating UX. I really should give DDG another go.

I hate AMP. Here's my AMP experience on reddit:

1) Click on an AMP link by mistake in google results 2) Get annoyed at the less-functional AMP experience to read reddit (limited replies on AMP page, no JS expansion, etc)

It's also super frustrating AMP prevents hold-tap on mobile to open a link in a new window, it just doesn't work.

3) Press the chain link icon to switch to mobile site

I've been frustrated and delayed in getting to the mobile site directly.

"but the ego behind it means nobody cares what users think"

Who are the users you're speaking of? The ones on their mobile devices who click AMP links by and large seem to love them. Who hates them, however, are web developers and web exploiters who see it as a threat, a limitation, etc.

> The ones on their mobile devices who click AMP links by and large seem to love them.

Really? The main comment I've heard about it (when people mention it at all) is that it messes up the URL. I doubt most people notice anything changed.

You are probably overestimating how much people look at the URL outside of tech circles. As long as the page loads fast, I doubt many people particularly care about the URL bar.

How do you share the page with someone then?

You copy and paste the nerd character soup at the top of the Google firechrome

When you share a page it shares the canonical URL. When you open it in an external browser it opens the canonical URL.

> When you share a page it shares the canonical URL.

By what mechanism? Because copying the URL from the bar does not copy the correct URL, it copies the AMP url.

Probably by the "Share" button in your browser, which is yet another perversion that the mobile ecosystem introduced.

Mobile Chrome do that when you copy the URL.

https://www.ampproject.org/latest/blog/improving-urls-for-am...

This was fixed at the beginning of this year. Now what canonical URL the publisher uses is up to them.

Another comment said that relative links are all messed up o n the Reddit AMP version. That's Reddit doing it wrong.

I frequently see Reddit posts with an AMP URL that then goes on to render terribly in a full screen browser.

Relative links on reddit (e.g. to other posts, or subreddits) on their AMP pages are also completely broken.

Such a frustrating experience for users.

I personally love how fast and responsive the experience is. I would be fine if the sites were also that fast and responsive, but since they're not always, I'm glad Google stepped in and ensured they would be for me.

I’m always amazed at how fast to load AMP pages are. I for one see the benefits.

AMP will have a long-term destructive effect on web publishers (and the open, decentralized WWW), so I don't think the term "web exploiters" is accurate. Google is doing the exploitation.

Citation needed.

1) It takes your content off of your own domain.

2) Links no longer point to your own website.

3) Analytics don't work correctly, because the wrong URLs are logged.

4) It centralizes the WWW on Google's domain, keeping users on google.com rather sending them deeper into your site.

5) It restricts the way that you can monetize your site.

6) It causes webpages to load slower when 3rd party scripts are disabled.

7) It restricts how you can build your site.

8) It isn't faster than hand-optimized HTML.

9) Etc.

Even if nothing else, people should oppose it because centralization is exactly what the WWW isn't supposed to be.

"In fact, AMP keeps users within Google’s domain and diverts traffic away from other websites for the benefit of Google. At a scale of billions of users, this has the effect of further reinforcing Google’s dominance of the Web."

- http://ampletter.org/

"Make no mistake. AMP is about lock-in for Google. AMP is meant to keep publishers tied to Google."

- https://80x24.net/post/the-problem-with-amp/

What makes you think they seem to love them?

Whenever I read an article on a random website and it says "google.com" in the url instead of the actual website url, I want to scream at the screen. How on earth can that be a good idea?

I’m glad I’m not the only one that experiences this visceral action. I absolutely hate it. I use the URL bar to see what site I am reading (who would have thought?!). When I look in the URL bar and it says “google.com” there, it drives me absolutely bonkers.

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