The fast, non-blocking content loading is the main feature. I took a radical path when developing my site and made it AMP-first. Instead of having an AMP version of each page, every page is its own AMP version because it's an AMP page.
It's a good framework for building super fast pages. I will admit it's a little riskier to build a site on top of technology a large company owns, but this is a risk that you also have when you use React or other frameworks.
> The fast, non-blocking content loading is the main feature.
You don't need requires-js-to-render markup or a cache operated by a privacy whoring ad company to make a page load quickly.
Edit: also, comparing to react or whatever js framework is like saying "look at my new cast iron shoes, they're so much lighter than those old lead ones".
I think it's also about prefetching amp pages from Google search. You can't do that without the cdn.
Sure google could modify chrome to allow this and not block it. but you'd be asking for even more technical blockers. And you'd have something that only works for a small portion of the web.
Not saying that's true, but if it is, wouldn't that mean AMP is not a desired product?
I fully support a "faster page spec" that search engines incentivize, just like I support a ranking boost for using HTTPS.
But AMP isn't that; AMP is incentivizing the payment of tribute data to Google under the veneer of a faster page spec, to steer the rhetoric more favorably for the company.
It's desired by the (non-paying) users, but not necessarily by web publishers. Here the desires of said users and Google align: they both want to see a search result quickly.
How much of this is actual desire by web publishers, and how much is just collective stupidity. Do they really want their websites to be a hassle to use? To have readers turn away because it doesn't load faster enough, or at all?
I think it is more likely that they just higher web-developers, according to some cultural norm about how to select devs and about what features to specify. And those devs choose frameworks according to other cultural norms about what makes a good web framework. They are partly, but not completely constrained in this by the requested features set.
The result is bloated JS applications where mere pages are required, but the complexity of the system, and the social inertia is so great that nobody can fix, or even perceive the problem.
They want their websites to make more money. If this takes some more time to (eventually) load but results in increase of total income, they have all incentives to add the "bloat". You know, boarding a train or a bus could be so much faster if the checking of tickets were not involved.
> wouldn't that mean AMP is not a desired product?
Well, kind of, in the same way that common-sense lightweight HTML/CSS/JS pages aren't a desired product for the people who make those decisions on publisher websites.
If AMP went away tomorrow I would just browsing on my phone. Ad blockers are not good enough, and I refuse to fight popups and scroll blockers and blah blah blah in 2017.
what does google get out of it? The experience is better for users who like fast, lightweight pages, but as far as i can tell there's no tangible direct benefit to google when you load an AMP page. The only benefit to google is if their users like the experience and continue to use Google search so they can access AMP-cached pages. If users don't like AMP, google gets no benefit.
Google's entire business model is tracking users as they use the internet in order to target ads.
Every AMPed page is contributing work towards improving the effectiveness and appeal of Google's product (selling ads), by adding data to the targeting algorithms.
If every piece of content on the internet is tracked -- through full UX hijack on Google's infrastructure -- that might be a trillion dollar holy grail.
The ux hijack will progress over time as well. Google knows how to boil users slowly so they never notice the heat.
AMP carousel pages have some subtle capture features that regular AMP pages don't. They will add more, then slowly move them to the regular AMP pages over time.
you think google doesn't already track the links you click on the SERP? they aren't learning anything new by putting a tracking code on the page that link takes you to.
Google is tracking you. If you don't want to be data-mined, you shouldn't be using Google. If you are using Google, it means you don't mind being tracked. It means you are placing the convenience that Google provides above your concerns about what a faceless corporation can do with your data. If you don't mind being tracked, AMP is not a problem.
I understand how you could dislike Google. I don't understand how you could dislike AMP specifically, but not necessarily google.
seriously? If you want to use any of a companies services, you have to agree to like any and all of their future changes to said service, no matter how monopoly-like they are or how many privacy protections they hack around?
I want to prevent my users from being datamined, even if they found my site via Google.
But I also don’t want to end up basically deranked on Google by sites that have nothing to do with the result.
Just look at this example to see how AMP distorts the actual search ranking, by moving pages to #1 that have nothing to do with the topic, but happen to be on AMP: http://i.imgur.com/84FvZmA.png
Fact is, Google would already have a complete profile on you for advertising purposes even without AMP. They offer more than enough services that track you that they don't really need AMP for tracking purposes.
Even served from my cheapo shared web host and not Google's AMP cache, I have pretty-much instant loading of all pages: http://multithreaded.link/2017/08/lyft-customer-acquisition-...
It's a good framework for building super fast pages. I will admit it's a little riskier to build a site on top of technology a large company owns, but this is a risk that you also have when you use React or other frameworks.