[gregable]

The linker (google in this case) could rewrite the link to use a redirector if they choose. If Javascript is off, AMP and thus Signed Exchanges are disabled on Google search results anyway.

You misunderstand the 8 second CSS animation in the AMP boilerplate. Here's the code (simplified):

  <style>
    body { animation:-amp-start 8s steps(1,end) 0s 1 normal both}
    @keyframes -amp-start{from{visibility:hidden}to{visibility:visible}}
  </style>
  <noscript>
    <style amp-boilerplate>
      body{animation:none}
    </style>
  </noscript>

See the noscript section: if javascript is disabled, the CSS displays the body immediately. If Javascript is enabled, but for some reason the AMP javascript fails to load, after 8 seconds, the page is displayed anyway. The page is probably somewhat broken without the javascript loading, but the 8s is a fallback, not code to slow down non-javascript browsers.

[48309248302]

There are legitimate (privacy/speed) reasons to not load AMP's JavaScript while still not turning of JavaScript entirely. Google does have the capability to know when you're on an AMP page, because the JS loads from ampproject.org, which is registered by Google.

An 8-second delay seems like an intentional "bug" to coerce users to turn on JavaScript (and advertising).

[gregable]

The javascript is heavily cached, so will not give a request on every page load.

That is not the intention. If javascript is disabled entirely, Google Search won't even load AMP pages. The scenario you describe of a user loading an AMP page directly without javascript enabled is somewhat rare.

[48309248302]

Many people use tools to block third party JS from loading. AMP can't be called privacy-friendly while making it extremely difficult to use when tracking (AMP Analytics) is blocked. The 8-second delay happens to me every time I accidentally click an AMP URL in my browser.

[lucideer]

I don't use Google Search, and I frequently get sent to Google's AMP cache via other link sources (e.g. HN).

I don't have javascript blocked, but I do have Google's tracking blocked via standard tracking protection (which is now a built-in feature in most non-Google browsers), which means <noscript> tags are not triggered, and I get the 8 second delay due to non-loading JS resources.

I don't think my setup is as rare as you make out.