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Comment by shadowgovt | Hacker News Reader

That makes sense. Since AMP is intended to be a more optimized site structure than the average website, pages adhering to the AMP standard should increase the performance of the web on average, whether or not the site actually gets indexed into Google's localized caches.

We have HNers complaining about bloated JavaScript pages all the time. Maybe Google has actually found a way to tip the market away from those page designs?

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If it were just an optional web standard, that might be okay. But it's a system that removes control from webmasters and hands it over to Google, and Google are using their incumbent advantage to coerce you into the AMP system. I can build a site just as fast as AMP without sacrificing the UX of the web itself in the process, and I intend to do so. But there are many businesses jumping on the AMP bandwagon because they think there will be an SEO benefit.

As a user, I hate clicking on AMP links by mistake. It's not even clear where you are, is it a website, is it still Google, how do I get to the website from here? Who even served me the content? It says it's from this website, but it wasn't?

I think this is a confused issue as AMP the format is harmless, while AMP the google publishing platform is worrying.

Yes, the standard is harmless, the way AMP handling is implemented in Google products is the worrying part.

It is an optional web standard. There are other search engines than Google.

I can't help but wonder why none of them have thought to start indexing AMP pages (or pages with some other standard or even no standard) in local cache and serve them faster to their users; seems like a space they could choose to compete on.

I'll admit I'm surprised as well, however if other search engines started doing that I would avoid them also. I want my content to be served by the URL I was shown and clicked on.

> There are other search engines than Google.

Consumers can ignore Google and use another search engine, but a publisher that ignores Google won't be in business very long.

It would be easy to penalize pages for load time, Google's goal is something different.

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