[stephenr]

AMP is google flexing its control over the web.

If Google wanted to highlight fast/penalise slow sites, they could simply measure the load time of a site when they index it.

But that would only achieve their stated goals, it wouldn’t achieve their actual goals.

[realusername]

They could also just have mandated serving AMP with some random HTTP header and the client would cached a whitelist of the AMP scripts if got that header, nothing in the AMP design needs to have an AMP server, it's an arbitrary limitation from Google to control the web.

[systemBuilder]

No, they couldn't. That is browser and transport-dependent. There are some things even Google cannot do ....

[stephenr]

I didn't say, "they could guarantee the time it takes to load for every user on every connection on every browser".

I said "they could simply measure the load time of a site when they index it." Their indexer, running from their servers could be their "reference point" for this content.

[toufiqbarhamov]

It feels like AMP is Google nailing its own coffin to me. It probably felt like a winning move when Bell and AT&T made people buy their own products to use telephone systems, but it led directly to their disruption by the DOJ. Even though some poeple at Google probably realize that, it won’t matter if they cash out beforehand, if working on a project gets them promoted, and if institutional inertia is in control.

Google is hurtling toward an antitrust case they won’t win, and it will really be all their fault.

[thrwwysearcheng]

Throwaway Google search engineer here. People here really do care about making the web faster and moving metrics, both because that is how the company is set up to reward employees but also because they believe it makes the product better. Google has been penalizing slow sites forever. It stopped moving the needle (I suspect because it isn’t marketable). Amp on the other hand really is working, metrics show a faster, smoother experience, and user studies have been positive. That’s why Google is doubling down so much with it. Not because they have goals to control content providers or wall off the web, but because it makes a dramatic difference on the whole.

[stephenr]

So if the "only" goal of AMP is to make things faster, why isn't the carousel based purely on "your result must load in < X ms"? If a company can "force" other companies to adopt AMP, it can surely "force" them to improve load times on their own.

Also, if speed is their goal, why does the mandatory AMP 'boilerplate' include a CSS-driven 8 second delay before content is shown, that is removed if the client loads the AMP JS?

Oh right. I know the answer. It's to give the impression that blocking third-party resources (such as AMP JS) via e.g. a content blocker, won't make the site faster. Which as we know, is a load of shit.

You might have the best of intentions and donate your entire salary to homeless blind children - that doesn't mean for a second that I believe google's actual goals with AMP are anything less than exerting more control over the web for their own purposes.

[48309248302]

> "they believe it makes the product better."

You should stop and do some serious research on why people don't like AMP. You're talking about the Web like it's a Google "product." You're hijacking the Web in a way that will eventually destroy it.

Publishers don't want their content restricted and hosted on Google's servers on Google's domain, but they are getting their arms twisted by reduced rankings if they don't implement it. They also don't fully understand the long term implications of what they are doing.