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by graeme 2562 days ago
AMP links are a major reason I switched to duckduckgo on mobile. Google seems to be shortsighted in doing this.

Yes, only a tiny minority of technical users will know what amp pages are and switch search engines to avoid them. But, a larger group will likely find the amp pages annoying, even if they can't precisely articulate why. This weakens google's hold on the market.
2 comments
michaelmior 2562 days ago
Why do you think a larger group will find AMP annoying? I know I'm in the minority, but I generally like AMP in my search results.
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graeme 2562 days ago
If it breaks things. For example, I had a common issue where reddit links in search didn't have comments and I had to click through to get to them

If the amp page displays what you expect, it works well. It it makes you click through, it doesn't.

Of course, users may or may not realize amp/google are the reason a site is broke.

Dunno how many people have issues like this though. Reddit was the main one for me, plus a few random sites having issues.

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michaelmior 2562 days ago
"broken" and "requiring an extra click" seem like two different things to me. Although I understand that you're not getting what you expected, so my judgement here is subjective.
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graeme 2562 days ago
It may not be obvious to users why their site is broken. Of course, at that stage they may blame the site unless they know why the site appears that way in the first place.

But it isn't always obvious how to get to the site from an AMP page.

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michaelmior 2562 days ago
My point was that "broken" feels like the wrong term. I think the site owner should be blamed if content the user needs is not either on the AMP page or accessible with an easily found link.
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larkeith 2562 days ago
> I think the site owner should be blamed if content the user needs is not either on the AMP page or accessible with an easily found link.

Hmm. If AMP participation were voluntary, I would agree, but given how necessary it is to SEO ranking, Google deserves a large portion of any blame for broken content - They do not get a free pass to enforce usage of a protocol, but dodge the consequences of its implementation (which will always involve friction and some breakage).

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maaaats 2562 days ago
Google is serving a broken page for Firefox on Android (intentionally serving something along oldschool wap pages). I used an addon to fix that, but then the page suddenly was full of ads, videos, smart boxes and amp links.
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