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Comment by sktrdie | Hacker News Reader

It’s pretty cool. If you make a url return data that is visually aligned with “a story protocol” google will put it at top of relevant search results.

Think of it as a mini-html site that follows a specific set of visual JS and CSS protocols so that consumers have guarantee of its behavior (will not have crazy ads, gifs or third party content) and behaves consistently.

Kind of interesting avenue for publishing content on the web that isn’t tied to any specific platform.

I’d even go further and say the web needs more of these kind of things. All websites behave differently. Maybe we need a visual protocol also for general web apps (just like this web stories) so that we have consistent behavior. I dare to call this protocol Web Apps.

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So, another AMP-style thing where Google uses their platform and network effect to further encroach on the open web and turn it into the Google web?

The quote you see at first is: "Stories meet their widest audience ever."

Given that the widest audience is anyone who wants to search for something, this seems like a massive anti-trust bait.

Also, hard-pass on the continual dumbing down of content to contribute to the phenomenal attention deficit modern social media has introduced.

> AMP

it's Google one AMPing (heh) Amazon's alexa actions.

You develop content they can shove in their Voice/Phone "AI" Assistants, and they throw some organic search scraps your way.

The end goal of those companies (goog, amz, appl, fb) is to be the new AOL. And the plan is the same as AOL in the 90s: controlling the new browser (the App du jour used to run searchs and scroll mindless content)

They'll rank you higher as well for supporting their initiative but they'll tell you it's because of 'the users' but it's basically pressure on companies to adopt it.

There really should be some kind of federated crawler + search platform. There's no reason why it should be reasonable that a private company (Google) succeeds in attaining its goal of organizing all the world's public information. Unfortunately it's very hard for me to see a revolution in people's choice of search engine..

I know this comes up every time Google/AMP is involved, but .. what's the argument that AMP is anti-competitive? It's and open protocol, you can make your own AMP crawler, content-maker, parser, etc?

I agree that the continued increase of "shiny"-ness of "content" is basically hacking people's attention and it should be drastically clamped down - but still, I don't see the argument for how Google and AMP and the "open web" and competition interact together. What are the relevant consequences and "market forces", whose responsibility is what, etc. Could someone explain it? Thanks!

It's a protocol pushed by one company that wants to bend the web to fit it's purposes. To do that, Google ranks AMP pages more highly. And that's anti competitive and breaks search.

One reason Google wants the whole web to be "standard" is so they can scrape all information more easily, show users rich content by stealing your website's traffic, and create an internet information silo.

I hate this argument, but here it goes: Google is a private company. Do they have a duty to the open web?

A bit more constructively: Who are the stakeholders here in the "open web"?

> show users rich content by stealing your website's traffic

Agreed. AMP allows ads, so when the users open the site the original site can receive ad revenue. But the snippets Google shows on the search results page likely deprive the original sites from traffic.

However ... it's not like Wikipedia wasn't already "stealing facts".

Why is AMP worse than Facebook's "instant articles", or whatever it is that the Apple news app does?

Prevalence. Not GP and I don't use Facebook, but for what it's worth I hate recieving Apple News links too. No it's no worse than receiving bit.ly links to articles, but that doesn't happen to me.

> If you make a url return data that is visually aligned with “a story protocol” google will put it at top of relevant search results.

Seems like it would be a magnet for low-value SEO content and outright scams.

It already is. The worst part about this is how google sends you a notification to check new stories they found. You need to disable that.

> Kind of interesting avenue for publishing content on the web that isn’t tied to any specific platform.

Except that the protocol will be designed not for the benefit of the web in general but rather for Google to maximize its ad revenue.

I'm all for sites doing new and interesting things, but just like AMP I'm wary when these innovations are being driven by a single company that has monopolistic power over website discoverability and profitability.

Nope! Don't need this, don't want it. Google finding new directions to continue their search and ad dominance.

"isn’t tied to any specific platform"

er, isn't it explicitly tied to google?

> All websites behave differently.

That's the point, isn't it?

It's pretty "cool"?? Is that how Potsie and Ralph Malph feel about it too? Are they on Google's payroll?

God this sucks. Last to the party and with the worst version.

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