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Comment by rkwasny | Hacker News Reader

Conspiracy theory: This change is dictated by the Google AMP team that wants to take over the world without us knowing

> Conspiracy theory: This change is dictated by the Google AMP team that wants to take over the world without us knowing

I was just about to write this but I don't necessarily think it's that far off.

With signed exchanges, AMP pages have the ability to hide the fact you're accessing content through Google [1]. In 2016 Google wrote about testing 'mobile-first indexing' because more people are using mobile devices than desktop browsers [2].

[1] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/about-amp#a... [2] https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-index...

If Google can control the URL narrative (keeping users from bouncing off AMP pages) it's just one more ability for them to be MITM.

I wonder if they’ll eventually hide the URL path from extensions (for security) and serve ads off google.com. Even serving ads from somewhere under google.com/amp would probably cause problems for ad blockers. Or maybe extensions see the rewritten URL only, so CanSignHttpExchanges is a way of changing third party trackers and ads into first party.

Also nice to see DigiCert helping them out, but I’m not surprised with how DigiCert’s product lineup isn’t much more than a test of how much of a sucker you are.

2018 Chrome roadmap demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?&t=9m03s&v=pr5cIRruBsc

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