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Comment by maccard | Hacker News Reader

Such as? I agree with the OP, for what it's worth. In the vast majority of cases amp content loads quicker, is presented better, and is less obtrusive, even browsing with an adblocker

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Such as using page speed and the presence of annoying elements (ads, etc) as a ranking signal but without forcing websites to use AMP which involves having Google as a proxy.

This one makes it all the more obvious what Google is actually doing. They have a search monopoly and supposedly are heavily biased on speed as a ranking factor. Well golly gee, if you want the Web to be a lot faster, smash sites with brutal speed ranking penalties until they get the message. It wouldn't be difficult nor would it take much time to get the point across (in fact it would be trivially easy). There is no other logical explanation other than Google's intentions are gatekeeper (and plausibly much worse in time: hostage taker), not primarily to make the Web a better place (that's merely the lie they're pitching as a cover story).

I think the positive approach (use amp, the page will load faster, which users like) is a good alternative to the negative (downranking). It's not just "make your page faster, or else!", but provides a good solution, too. As I user, I love amp. As a developer, I understand the concerns (though I don't think they materialized in the way HN sentiment goes).

It doesn't provide a good solution.

It's Google's arbitrary proprietary subset of web technologies.

It's only fast because Google preloads all of JS while you search.

It aggressively hides the origin source, depriving sites of user traffic.

Google prioritizes AMP content over any other content even if that other content may be better and/or load faster.

> It aggressively hides the origin source, depriving sites of user traffic.

What does this mean? If I click a link on an amp page, I may end up on the full site, and if not, analytics and ads are supported. What do I lose other than the cost of rendering a page view?

> What does this mean?

You don't land on the original page. You land on a Google page. Even the URL says google.com. To get to the actual original page, you need to click on the tiny (i) in the corner. And even there the link is styled as non-clickable link.

If you swipe, for example, you end up on the next Google property ^W^W that is a news item that Google displays on its own domain.

And AMP may provably drive traffic away: https://kinsta.com/blog/disable-google-amp/

> You don't land on the original page. You land on a Google page. Even the URL says google.com.

Yes. So what? If I, from the AMP page, click on a link, I'll go to the full site (I just checked this on CNN's amp pages). Ads and analytics are still supported.

> If you swipe, for example, you end up on the next Google property ^W^W that is a news item that Google displays on its own domain.

This didn't happen when I just attempted it.

> And AMP may provably drive traffic away:

If you read the article, they say that they got more clicks and pageviews, but fewer conversions, likely because they hadn't spent time optimizing the AMP site for conversions.

You've portrayed amp as a positive change and basing search ranking on page load times as a negative change, while clearly some websites would be "downranked" with either system.

One could just as well portray "downranking slow pages" as "boosting fast pages". With the latter system developers would be encouraged to reduce filesizes and JS bloat on their existing pages. As a mobile, and desktop user, I would appreciate that.

But sites aren't doing that, they're serving up bloated pages with megabytes of JS and rammed with ads. Nothing is stopping them from doing that, and yet they're not. If they were, it's possible amp wouldn't exist (in it's current form)

Also, the parent said there was many things the GP could do, while the GP was talking about as an end user, not a developer. As an end user if my choice is between a fast smooth sleek amp page or a 10 second blank screen and a page that hides the content, has autoplaying videos, and required me to dismiss a 1/3 cookie banner, I'm going to pick the amp version.

Because they have no incentive to do otherwise. If Google could tune its PageRank algo to favor sites that load the fastest they could convince website operators to do lot of what AMP does heavyhandedly. Perhaps it could be the death of 20,000 JS loads every page

So now they do have an incentive, AMP, and we're here arguing about how amp is not the solution..

Honestly, AMP shouldn't even be required. Bandwidth speeds are way up from before. We have a bloated ecosystem where ads come first and content second. They are putting a draconian bandaid on the problem. What we need is a more civilized internet with content FIRST. The old Google adwords worked in that way, as it was fairly unobtrusive text. But now visiting the vast majority of websites and it's tough to even find the content...

Completely agree. Given the choice between a lightweight non-amp page and an amp page, the choice should be the amp page. But that's not the choice, it's between a shitty bloated slow impossible to navigate (often times one that doesn't scale to mobile well) and a lightweight responsive amp site. The user isn't to blame if the site is making that decision

> Such as?

I realise the irony as this still relies on Google, but: I'm surprised that such user-hostile designs are still around, considering Google presumably takes steps to punish such designs in their search rankings.

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