> I'd prefer a more generic solution too: get rid of AMP
User here. I like AMP. At the end of the day, I want to read an article. Most of the time, Reader view works. But not always. AMP reliably and quickly renders legible web pages. This wouldn't be an issue if 90% of newspaper websites didn't look like they were designed by turnips.
Yes, I get why Google positioned it the exact way they did. It's very clever. But clever doesn't make it right.
If Google really wanted to improve the quality of the web they had excellent tools to achieve that: the weighing of the various elements that go into the ranking algo.
But instead they chose to do an end-run around all standards processes and to attempt to capture mobile content (which is an extremely valuable slice of all web traffic) at the expense of competition and the openness of the web.
And so you are now a very willing pawn in the endgame for the domination of the world wide web, which will eventually result in Google being the sole provider of your content by virtue of the web being consumed more and more through mobile devices.
If you're not concerned I totally understand, but maybe you should be.
> If Google really wanted to improve the quality of the web they had excellent tools to achieve that: the weighing of the various elements that go into the ranking algo
Doesn't Google already do this [1]? There are unintended consequences to increasing speed's weight in search rankings. Principally, it disadvantages smaller players. (Also, the New York Times would consistently rank under Buzzfeed.)
> you are now a very willing pawn in the endgame for the domination of the world wide web
Most people get news from the walled gardens of Facebook and Twitter [2]. The minority of us sharing links to newspaper articles probably also have direct relationships with publishers. For example, I read the New York Times, Washington Post, Economist, Bloomberg and other papers directly on their sites because I subscribe to their newsletters.
> maybe you should be [concerned]
Maybe, but I don't think so. The things I read about in the newspapers AMP gives me faster access to yield better (i.e. more serious and more actionable upon) avenues for my attention. In every context where AMP is a worry journalism's decline seems more important.
> Principally, it disadvantages smaller players with smaller IT budgets. The New York Times would consistently consistently under Buzzfeed. A Pyrrhic victory.
Well, assuming equal relevance yes. But the NYT is not exactly a small player and could easily up their game in the page speed department. Besides that you could slowly ramp up the weighing to give parties the time to adjust.
> Most people get news from the walled gardens of Facebook and Twitter [2].
And this is what worries Google. Their long term adversary is Facebook (not Twitter, at least, not nearly so much).
> The minority of us sharing links to newspaper articles probably have direct relationships with publishers.
Not necessarily. I use a variety of aggregators.
> For example, I read the New York Times, Washington Post, Economist, Bloomberg and other papers directly on their sites because I subscribe to their daily newsletters.
Ok.
> The things I read about in the newspapers AMP gives me faster access to hand me better (i.e. more serious and more actionable upon) uses for my attention.
Yes, it's a very seductive proposition, and one that given Google's power in the marketplace they just might get away with. See also: Microsoft bundling their browser and tying it in at every level possible in to the OS and other abuses of monopoly power.
> In every case where AMP is a worry, journalism's general decline is more important.
But that's the same kind of argument that people use when India has news about their space program: Why don't they fix hunger first. It's possible to both worry about journalisms decline and monopoly power abuse on the web, especially when it concerns the distribution of news.
> But the NYT is not exactly a small player and could easily up their game in the page speed department. Besides that you could slowly ramp up the weighing to give parties the time to adjust
When I'm looking for news, I want the highest-quality source first. AMP gives everyone the option of going fast now while kinks are worked out back home.
(I should mention that my default search engine is Duck Duck Go. I usually !news (Google News), though, because I like Google's news results better.)
> it's a very seductive proposition, and one that given Google's power in the marketplace they just might get away with
They might. But a lot of things might happen. AMP makes good journalism more accessible. If Google abuses that privilege down the road, it's not like they're legally unassailable.
> It's possible to both worry about journalisms decline and monopoly power abuse on the web, especially when it concerns the distribution of news
Lecturing newspapers about why they should have had speedier websites went nowhere. Seeing that the same content produced more views through AMP got the message across.
I don't think the analogy to India's space program is accurate. Technological development lifts standards of living. There's a solid argument for doing both because each helps the other. Killing AMP and forcing to choose users between crappy websites and efficient walled gardens is counterproductive.
> When I'm looking for news, I want the highest-quality source first.
Well, no, you want the highest quality source first that loads fast. Otherwise you wouldn't care about AMP in the first place!
> AMP gives everyone the option of going fast now while kinks are worked out back home.
So, do you expect that Google will ever give up their stranglehold on the sites that use AMP once they are in?
In my experience such measures tend to become permanent fixtures with their own hooks embedded in the various fabrics making removing them hard to impossible once they have achieve critical mass. We may have already passed that point, in which case you can safely ignore me.
> They might. But a lot of things might happen. If AMP makes good journalism more accessible I'm all for it.
That's your privilege. I have yet to have a day where I could not read more news than I had time for so I'm not familiar with good journalism not being accessible but I concede that this may be your situation.
> If Google abuses that privilege down the road, it's not like they're legally unassailable.
Who will take that up? You? The EU? The publishers?
My guess is that once entrenched it will be impossible to get rid of, a parasitic element in the pipe between content producer and consumer.
> Lecturing newspapers about why they should have speedier websites went nowhere.
True.
> Seeing that the same content produces more views through AMP, however, seems to have gotten the message across.
Well no, I still don't see news websites getting any faster. But they're already ridiculously fast, consider that 30 years ago you had to wait a full day to read the news and now you can read it in 10 seconds. It's great if that can be cut down to 0.01 second and I'm all for doing that and incentivizing those companies to do this but in the end it is their web property and the market should be allowed to sort this out rather than that a search engine monopolist that is already the gateway to almost all pages read on the web becomes the gatekeeper to our news.
> In the meantime, Google's cash flows get to subsidize this IT expenditure for the news industry while consumers get faster news sooner.
No, Google's cash flow will not subsidize this because they now have the eyeballs. Sooner or later there will be a push for monetization.
> Killing AMP and forcing to choose users between crappy websites and efficient walled gardens, however, is counterproductive.
> Well, no, you want the highest quality source first that loads fast
AMP isn't forcing me to read fast newspaper A over slow newspaper B. It's letting me read slow newspaper B fast. I've never clicked on an AMP link for a source I didn't know.
> In my experience such measures tend to become permanent fixtures...Who will take that up? You? The EU?
You made an analogy to Microsoft bundling browsers earlier.
> I still don't see news websites getting any faster
They are [1].
> [websites are] already ridiculously fast
That's your preference. Mine is for them to be faster.
> Google's cash flow will not subsidize this because they now have the eyeballs. Sooner or later there will be a push for monetization
AMP is open source. If we'd gone the penalise-slow-pages route, every newspaper would have had to "roll their own" AMP in house. Even if Google throws a tax on later, readers got fast pages sooner and publishers got free code.
> There are other choices besides [crappy websites and efficient walled gardens]
> There are unintended consequences to increasing speed's weight in search rankings. Principally, it disadvantages smaller players.
It's that the case with SEO already? The rules are pretty opaque. If e.g. page weight or connections made was used as a metric, it could be the other way around. Small players don't usually have hugely bloated sites, and don't load hundreds of javascript tracking shit - that's what the big players do.
There's a problem with a lot of HN discussion where people who are very tech savvy tend to have a lot of ideas for how things "should" be. But it's an echo chamber and the average user probably won't care about the nuances in development philosophy. This debate reminds of all the shouting people used to do over Spotify ruining ownership of music. There was a lot of talk about ownership philosophy, DRM and the future of digital rights and "openness" but in the end, it didn't matter because the average user didn't care: convenience won out over whatever perceived philosophical downsides where voiced. Devs can moan about the philosophy behind AMP all day long but the reality is the end experience for the user is an article that loads instantly, looks clean and doesn't bombard with pop-overs. They don't care what tech makes the magic happen, just that it happened. And Google is in a unique position to actually make the web more enjoyable to use and this is the method they chose. Is it right? Maybe...Personally I don't think so, but it does work as advertised. I've heard a lot of people complain about the problems AMP is designed to handle, but as of yet I haven't heard any good alternative solutions. Sorry, but your free-range, open-source, made-with-love ad blocking extension won't be the end all you're hoping...Google is actually in a position to fix the problem and why not let them benefit while at it?
> They don't care what tech makes the magic happen, just that it happened.
True. But I do care what tech makes the magic happen and the consolidation of the web into a very small number of silos is a dangerous development for many reasons and AMP is one plank in that consolidation game.
> Google is actually in a position to fix the problem and why not let them benefit while at it?
Because their stated reasons for AMP do not align with the implementation details, AMP grabs way too much control for a simple improvement in speed.
And to give credit where it's due, I'm glad you do. While we disagree on this point, I have a great deal of respect for your comments and found our discussion enjoyable.
> This debate reminds of all the shouting people used to do over Spotify ruining ownership of music. There was a lot of talk about ownership philosophy, DRM and the future of digital rights and "openness" but in the end, it didn't matter because the average user didn't care: convenience won out over whatever perceived philosophical downsides where voiced.
Your analogy may be reasonably apt, but if so, it shouldn't make anyone who makes their living thinking about systems sanguine.
It does turn out many consumers will trade ownership for convenience. Particularly if convenience comes at a fraction of a cost. Meanwhile, there are side effects: the people actually creating the product (recorded music) get paid a vanishing fraction of what they used to. That changes the economics of actually producing recorded music, shifting the ability to do it to people who can get their money elsewhere. Some people like to try and obfuscate that reality with talk of "new business models" and "innovation," but it all boils down to the assertion that people who make recorded music should have to do another job in order to provide cloud record collections like Spotify to a consumer for the cheapest price possible.
The consumer, as you've pointed out, doesn't want to think about this. Whether they think about it or not, it will shape what kind of music gets produced and by who, so perhaps they should think about it, even if the incentives are more long term and non-obvious.
Buuut even assuming they don't care to do that... it doesn't mean that people who do care to think about how that affects the industry don't have every right to "moan about the philosophy."
Same goes for AMP. Solutions like AMP will absolutely have second order effects. Many users don't care to think about them. Doesn't mean they won't be subject to those effects, that those effects are just about philosophy, and it surely doesn't mean that people who are interested in them have any obligation to stay quiet.
And of all the things to actually have this really be something people waste time on. Working out the economics of production and distribution of music in a time when making copies is just short of free is at least actually a tricky problem. The idea that making mobile pages that load fast is a tricky problem that requires a Google engineering solution is utterly ludicrous.
Once again, though, I think your counter to my analogy of Spotify just reiterates the echo chamber effect of the discussions here that like to debate the philosophies without seeing the bigger picture. Yeah, artists may get paid less now, but Spotify and its ilk pretty much removed piracy from the vocabulary of regular consumers. Back in 2004, music piracy was just something you did...Limewire was an essential app almost. Now, piracy is pretty much relegated to the vocal few that just flat out refuse to pay for things on some skewed principle and that's all thanks to streaming services. What's the alternative? $0.99 songs didn't cut it....should they have been priced down to $0.01? Even then, the amount of consumption would have made the cost unwieldy for many. What people "should" think about is irrelevant. Consumers should also think about using a password manager with 2FA support that stores its database locally. They should think about hosting their own email on a domain they control with SSL support and PGP built in. They should think about switching to using apps like Signal with end to end encryption built in by default. They should think about only driving cars built in the 90s before black boxes were mandatory and OBDII ports with digital interfaces were standard. They should think about a lot of things....but once again, not everybody is going to become a "geek" and jump through hoops just so they can get online, listen to must, check their bank, message friends and drive a car to the store. I completely agree that AMP and the like will have consequences if widespread adoption is seen and I don't like the idea of Apple, Google and Facebook basically controlling what articles get the most eyeballs simply because their platforms are being utilized, but in the end, what the consumer adopts is what developers will be forced to develop for. My problem is that a lot of developer-type solutions exist in the Silicon Valley echo chamber and will never see adoption because they don't take into account the big picture....technology is littered with the corpses of great ideas that consumers just didn't "get." It's true that Google doesn't have to be the one to decide how the architecture of the web works, but I think you're fighting a losing battle....it's much easier for Google to simply say "this is how it's going to be" than for a startup to say "we made this great new product and you should adopt it." Fundamentally, I don't think we disagree, but I'm playing my own devil's advocate here because I'd rather see some discussion on moving forward positively than just people yelling at a wall about how much they think Google's approach sucks which will change nothing...Google will do what they want to do and they're big enough to where if they lose a few million hardcore advocates in the process it's no skin off their nose.
> I think your counter to my analogy of Spotify just reiterates the echo chamber effect of the discussions here that like to debate the philosophies without seeing the bigger picture.
This isn't about "philosophy." This is about systems and consequences. The consequences are real to the user whether they're aware of the chain that produced them or not.
> Yeah, artists may get paid less now, but Spotify and its ilk pretty much removed piracy from the vocabulary of regular consumers. Back in 2004, music piracy was just something you did
2004 is a poor point of comparison if what you want is to get the big picture or even just answer the narrow question of whether the choice really is between cut-rate cloud record collection services like Spotify or free-for-all piracy. 2003 is when the iTunes Music Store launches and 2004/2005 is when you really start to see the rise of digital music retail. Between then and the early 2010s you see those services become widely accepted (even embraced by non-technical people) as an alternative to piracy, and you see revenue from those retail services rise just fine without streaming. In fact, I've seen some reports that suggest that by 2012/2013 the profits from digital retail was on its way to the profits from physical formats.
So the choice wasn't necessarily between fiddly inconvenient piracy and butter smooth streaming experience.
And the battle doesn't even necessarily play out on the field of consumer choice, really. I mean, in a perfect world I might well expect enough consumers to recognize how they vote with the wallet will shape the world, that when we value McDonalds the economy produces McJobs, that when your airfare dollars are ultimately decided by the lowest price you'll get a shitty airline experience.... but yeah, people don't. That's actually why it's more important for people who can see the consequences to discuss them, publicly, loudly, maybe even forcefully enough that product owners who can't see past their A/B testing (and may not even have arrived at the points where they understand the limits of that along with the value) might pay attention.
> My problem is that a lot of developer-type solutions exist in the Silicon Valley echo chamber and will never see adoption because they don't take into account the big picture....
We're concerned precisely because we see the big picture. Understanding that Google has the power to shape the landscape regardless of how that effects the value of the landscape as a whole doesn't mitigate the responsibility to talk about it, or imply that there's a missing larger picture.
> Google will do what they want to do and they're big enough to where if they lose a few million hardcore advocates in the process it's no skin off their nose.
If you're right, and we've reached the point where Google essentially no longer has management and engineering talent that cares to be a good steward of the web or no longer has the incentives to understand how AMP isn't, then that's a much heavier indictment of Google than most of AMP's opponents have leveled so far.
If we take two steps forward and one step back, it's not without merit to think about the step taken backwards and see if that loss was necessary or incidental to the steps forward. If it incidental, to see if it could/should be recovered.
And that's even if you can get everyone to agree that weighing the different aspects of a change says it's an overall benefit.
One solution punishes people, the other one rewards people and provides a nice framework where every improvement benefits everyone using it. For example, at I/O, they announced that new changes to AMP was able to speed up rendering of all AMP based by 200%, and that's without any work being done by any of the people using it.
Google is already using the ranking system to promote certain websites over others, this would be just one more factor (and presumably it already is a factor of sorts, but with a different weight).
Even if AMP pages would render 1000 times as fast it wouldn't matter, it would still be an abuse of power. The relationship between a reader and the source of their content should not be mediated by Google. What point is there in HTTPS everywhere campaigns and such if Google MITMs every news article you read? What point is there for a content provider to even have a website if Google will end up serving the content?
This is simply bad, the only upside is the speed gain and that is one that could be sorted out by the market with a gentle nudge from Google rather than by some kind of monopolistic end-game on their part.
To make matters worse, at least for some people, you can't tell which search result leads to to an AMP page, and which doesn't -- they have removed the little AMP logo.
Because it changes the relationship in a very important way. It makes Google the point of contact and the supplier of the page a mere 'information provider' rather than that Google is a source of traffic and the website a property with traffic of its own.
The main reason Google caches the pages (when a user comes from Google search) is so that the page can be preloaded by the browser before the user even clicks. This preloading is part of the reason that the experience is so fast.
If Google preloaded the page from a non-google server, there would be a few problems. The most important one is that it would violate the user's privacy. That server would have in it's logs a request from a user that didn't click on the article, and could intuit information about the user's searching behavior from that request.
Less importantly, without the page being served from Google's cache, there is no way to guarantee it's actually a valid AMP page. The only thing Google knows is that it was valid AMP the last time it was crawled, which could be days ago.
> If Google preloaded the page from a non-google server, there would be a few problems. The most important one is that it would violate the user's privacy.
That's one problem.
> without the page being served from Google's cache, there is no way to guarantee it's actually a valid AMP page
Yes there is. You can validate pages as AMP on any CDN. You just can't have any benefit unless they're hosted on Google CDN.
The biggest unsaid reason is they now own all the data. The AMP website becomes just another page on google.com - giving them direct access to know who you are and what you're reading with 1st party data rights.
User here. I like AMP. At the end of the day, I want to read an article. Most of the time, Reader view works. But not always. AMP reliably and quickly renders legible web pages. This wouldn't be an issue if 90% of newspaper websites didn't look like they were designed by turnips.