[bastawhiz]

> we can accomplish fast loading pages with plain, uncomplicated HTML and CSS?

Sure, but news sites don't. That's the problem. They're loaded with bullshit that makes them mostly unreadable on many devices, screws with your scrolling, and takes insane amounts of bandwidth. The problem is that these news sites are fiscally incentivized to make their experiences bad. The more crap you load, the more money you make.

The hook here is that Google gives priority to AMP pages. "Make your page be provably not terrible and we'll rank you higher than your competitors" is a really juicy proposition, and it makes the user (who just wants to read their news) happier. To a news site, you're faced with the decision of having more revenue with a terrible UX or potentially less revenue with more traffic.