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Comment by _dmurph | Hacker News Reader

Original article was mostly garbage from someone who is upset they can't continue making slow & bloated websites. It's amazing how little people seem to actually know about AMP, what it does, and what Google does.

But hating on Google is popular and easy so....

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> Original article was mostly garbage from someone who is upset they can't continue making slow & bloated websites.

This is totally out of thin air and we're trying to have more substantive conversation here, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There are plenty of reasons to dislike what Google is currently doing by trying to hide www and pushing amp. None of which are connected with making slow or bloated sites.

If Google really disliked slow and bloated sites they could apply a search penalty for page load and weight. Promoting amp is promoting Google not solving the problem of heavy sites.

2010: https://searchengineland.com/google-now-counts-site-speed-as...

It’s Official: Google Now Counts Site Speed As A Ranking Factor

2018: https://searchengineland.com/google-speed-update-page-speed-...

Starting in July 2018, Google will finally use mobile page speed as a ranking in their mobile search results.

I'll contribute this from Redfin's Engineering practice, July 13, 2018:

"Google Doesn’t Have the Guts to Make Page Speed Actually Matter" https://redfin.engineering/google-doesnt-have-the-guts-to-ma...

Google did just add a "Mobile Speed Score" to each URL in Adwords with a 1-10 scale of unknown composition/weighting that media folks and marketing managers can see, but developers can't really dig into (other than using...Google's Lighthouse for correlations). https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-introduces-the-mo...

Oh, yeah, it also upsells AMP. Even if you're opposed to or otherwise not going to adopt it as an engineering team, they're clearly going after the non-technical stakeholders to make it happen.

Yes speed is one of dozens or hundreds of factors. Doesn't seem to be one of the most significant ones, and is very different to having a bar below which sites attract a Penguin-like penalty. Weight in MB appears to be irrelevant to Google ranking.

So I stand by my first comment. If they cared there would be a Penguin style update to penalise page excess like they have in the past for poor quality link farms etc.

Doesn’t google claim that if your website loads as quickly/is as light as amp it will recieve an equal rankings boost?

No, they don't claim that. They also never claim that AMP will get a "rankings boost" -- they say AMP is not a ranking signal.

It is impossible to load as quickly as prerendered AMP, even if you're served out of a data uri.

I understand quite a bit about AMP, what it does, and what Google does, and I find these articles right on point.

We should fight this and keep the web independent.

Is it odd that instead of a large company, I think W3C should be setting standards? Lockout is a game I've seen played by nearly all of the big tech companies, why is this different?

Another concern, I write hobby JavaScript web apps, this AMP seems to limit JavaScript. Is the Canvas still able to be seen?

If by "limit" JavaScript you mean "no custom JavaScript can be written, nor other JavaScript used other than what AMP gives you (except for AMP-supported analytics packages)", you'd be right.

AMP is kinda a voluntary man in the middle attack that Google controls.

HTTP sets up for possible ISP-rivals so Google is "forcing" HTTPS onto people.

Google wan't monopoly on the mass-surveilance.

Obvously you always have the choice to not care about your page rank and the main source of traffic.

I like the analogy of "voluntary man in the middle attack", but I do agree with Google's push for HTTPS. In fact, I'm also a proponent for DNS over HTTPS. Whatever we can do to eliminate / reduce "involuntary" man in the middle attacks.

I also agree with that https is a good thing but Google is probably pushing it for the wrong reasons and forcing it with Chrome "unsafe site" thing.

I like to keep protocols simple but I understand the need for https. And it's nice to know my employer/ISP doesn't know exactly what subpage i am browsing of a site that could just aswell be http as it has no logins or w/e.

It wrecks sane easy caching though. Instead we have this "free" as in free beer Cloudflare alternatives or paid CDNs. Trading dolars for surveilence of our page viewers.

I kinda prefer easier surveilence over monopoly surveilence if I have too choose between those two.

If you are doing subversive anti-government stuff you could still use a VPN that's hopefully not a honey pot ...

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