[marbletiles]

Mobile networks and smart phones have incredible performance.

AMP is about making up for the race-to-the-bottom behaviour of sites that can’t resist using 6mb and a boatful of JS just to render an article(+analytics+ads)

[superkuh]

Do you really believe that? They can't even hold a TCP connection open without running out of battery or terrible latency. And $diety forbid trying to host or use ports.

[marbletiles]

I have a device that fits in my trouser pocket that allows me to stream and watch HD video for multiple hours over a cell network while being powered by a battery roughly the volume of a matchbox.

Yes, I think that's incredible. Does it have TCP characteristics similar to an Ethernet-equipped desktop? No, probably not -- but that's got nothing to do with the characteristics that led to the creation of AMP.

Mobile networks and phones are powerful enough for video, so they're powerful enough to download and render a web page. If they're slow at web pages, it's very likely the fault of the page creator, not the network or device.

AMP is an attempt to force the hands of the page creators out there, since they apparently can't self-regulate.

[superkuh]

It has everything to do with it. Mobile phones have special needs due to their lack of energy and lack of a real network connection. Sure, they can be powerful... for a dozen minutes before thermal throttling and draining the battery. Sure they can stream video like a good consumer but you can't do anything productive on them. You can't even really run a decent NoScript interactively or related due to the lack of a decent UI. So, AMP.

They're really quite shitty computers but luckily there are so many users that tech companies are figuratively bending over backward to make up for their performance problems.

[regularhackerer]

Could do that without centralization.