Hacker News Reader

Comment by deminature | Hacker News Reader

Probably highly unpopular opinion, but as a user I've never had anything but positive experiences with AMP-enabled sites. They load massively faster than normal sites, especially on poor mobile connections where main sites sometimes hang indefinitely trying to load javascript, ads, etc.

While content publishers are continuing to overload their sites with further trackers, ads, javascript, remotely loading assets which slow down performance, AMP seems like one of the few counterbalances and is pro-user, even if Google's endgame is self-enrichment rather than benevolence.

Content publishers could easily fight back by independently improving their own performance and not forcing mobile users to suck down megabytes of trackers on shaky connections, but they seem to be choosing not to.

View on HN

> They load massively faster than normal sites, especially on poor mobile connections where main sites sometimes hang indefinitely trying to load javascript, ads, etc.

Have you tried the normal mobile websites with an adblocker?

Normal people don’t know how to do that

Normal people know how to use Firefox which has it built-in.

Most people don't go that route because they have more important things going on in their lives.

AMP isn't about solving one-offs or making users improve their own experience. It's about improving most people's experience by default.

I don't like AMP, it frustrates me, and I think Google's fucking up in their implementation, but it actually _does_ do a good thing.

Changing your browser is a pretty simple operation if you're not an advanced user who has to replicate his intricate workflow. A large number of people have done it at least once in their lives.

I also don't think we should simply say "it does a good thing". That would mean we are consciously choosing to concentrate on the good aspects while deliberately ignoring the bad ones.

AMP does have good sides, but this is what makes it especially dangerous. Hijacking web sites by fronting them from another unrelated domain is completely completely unacceptable. The good side of AMP lies in making websites lean, but this can be done without the fronting part.

Good luck doing it on mobile phone. I'd say 99.99% users out there on mobile never even attempted to use another browser than safari or chrome for ios.

I’m using safari + adguard (an app that injects adblock rules into it) and pretty sure that I see no ads. Except on few sites that usually try to push it even through desktop uBO anyway. Even no youtube ads, idk how they do it.

Safari supports ad blockers, and they’re quite easy to set up.

Whether or not people actually install them is a good question, though.

Firefox on android lets you install most of the available desktop extensions, so you can use your favourite ad blockers

But then you have to suffer using Firefox on Android.

There's nothing wrong with it, I've been using it for ages.

Well, once a webpage has played audio there's a notification that hangs around till you restart the phone. That's probably better than the cost of running Chrome, though.

You don't have to restart your phone. On Android you can close the app from the recent app list.

I have, and I agree - as a user AMP sites seem to be faster, at least the ones that I've noticed are AMP.

But I've also implemented AMP pages and as a developer they are a PITA. And as discussed in the OP and related they are definitely an of example Google crowd-sourcing their challenges onto everyone else.

Part of what makes AMP pages faster is that the AMP constraints force you to abandon not just ads but also many other complex HTML5/CSS/JS features. The resulting UX is less sexy and may be lacking in functionality, but there is simply less of it. Getting simple AMP pages from Google's cache _is__ noticeably faster on mobile, as much as I wish it wasn't.

I'm from Poland, a country which has one of the highest percentages of adblocker users. Most pages adapted to it by either doing nasty tricks to bypass them, or just slapping an unclosable popup telling you to disable your adblocker...

I've seen a few such websites. Hit back button and never visited them again.

Have you used AMP reddit?

Yes, it's substandard, but you can easily get to the main site. Also if you're googling for an answer from Reddit, I've found the answer is often in the first few posts anyway. Reddit is probably the only case I can think of where the AMP user experience is not ideal.

Clicking through to the hamstrung Reddit on AMP and then clicking through to the actually functional site makes for an artificially high load time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com