[apexalpha]

Counterpoint:

WE don't live in an ideal world and AMP is my only option of getting de-bloated webpages. I would love if managers and directors would do this themselves and AMP wouldn't be needed, but that's just not the case.

I have to choose between downloading some text and images to read an article or load 5MB JavaScript SinglePageApp with tracking, ads, auto playing video's...

I know in an ideal world AMP would be useless, but until we reach that world I'm going to prefer AMP links over normal ones.

[austinshea]

Why is it your only option? AMP sucks, and I don't see why any user would feel like they need it.

AMP is about getting into the carousel search results, and if AMP wasn't the only way to do that, we wouldn't feel forced to use it.

To just download text and images I use www.outline.com, but there are lots of ways to accomplish this.

[tracker1]

I think the issue is so many sites load too much crap into their pages, for what should be relatively simple articles. The websites could have just written really simple/fast pages... but they didn't. AMP forced the issue.

Of course, google could have just favored really small/fast site that worked well on mobile... but this way they get the extra lock in.

[dcbadacd]

How is using an external service to debloat pages okay but AMP isn't? Feels ass-backwards to me.

[r3bl]

Maybe because that's not the only thing it does? It is what Google likes to pretend that AMP is all about, but you're also handing over the control of your traffic directly to Google, and being awarded with the SEO boost.

That's significantly different than debloating your website and remaining in control of the traffic, but you don't receive the SEO boost as a consequence. Even if you make your website faster than it would be if you were using AMP (which is not that difficult to achieve), you're still being punished for not giving control to Google.

[qtplatypus]

If you put your page on the web it is going to get cached. The http depends on this. You are not giving up control of your traffic. You never had it in the first place.

[dcbadacd]

But giving the control of the traffic to some third party website is okay? Not really. Especially not really with signed exchanges.

[austinshea]

It doesn’t matter if it’s okay. I just brought it up because some guy was making the silly claim that his only option was to bow to standards set by google.

I don’t think google should be in charge of that, especially if they use search results as a way to force adoption.

[austinshea]

because using that service is entirely optional.

Countless posts have been made by site operators who needed to adopt AMP to remain competitive in google search results.

[untog]

> AMP is my only option of getting de-bloated webpages

It isn't, though. Plenty of sites out there are de-bloated, and things like Reader Mode in browsers makes the rest work just fine.

[privateSFacct]

Is this really true - every time I switch to non AMP / non Adblock my eyes bleed. User numbers for AMP and Adblock say at least something about the “fact” that sites are debloated.

[untog]

User numbers for AMP only say something about Google placing AMP pages at the top of their search result pages. Few people are actively choosing or seeking out AMP.

[jeltz]

Every time I go to an AMP page my eyes bleed. I switched to Firefox just to avoid ending up at ugly and broken AMP pages.

[kevin_thibedeau]

NoScript debloats sites very effectively. It's like the entire web is running on AMP.

[dcbadacd]

Unfortunately site owners haven't debloated without AMP. "Reader Mode" is much less perfect than a proper AMP page.

[bluetidepro]

I understand your point, but I guess I just wish it wasn't an "either or" world, so we both could enjoy the web how we would respectively like. Why won't Google let us have both? Right now, I don't believe there is a way to disable AMP (unless you use like a Firefox mobile extension for that specific use case). That's what bothers me the most, personally. Google shoving it down our throats, and force feeding us AMP is so user hostile. Let the user decide, even if it was hidden under a super obscure setting in something like chrome://flags/, that'd be better. It's a simple win-win for everyone.

[apexalpha]

I agree with you. I would prefer a world where AMP isn't needed and websites don't ad 4MB of bloat to their sites.

But, we don't live in that world I'm afraid. And for many news websites I don't want to even begin downloading the auto-playing video on their page. So AMP is for many the easiest choice.

[fauigerzigerk]

AMP is not needed to promote less bloated websites in search results. Google could easily boost the ranking of lightweight websites without AMP.

AMP is an obvious abuse of a dominant market position and Google will come to regret it.

[tracker1]

I wish they would... boost websites with < 1mb of html+css+js payload (exclude images). Extra points for optimized images for mobile by default, with upsizing for high density or larger displays.

Google could very well have given huge boosts to small/fast websites, and then the sites would have had to figure it out wrt advertising and bloat. It would have been a much better result.

[dcbadacd]

They could, but then we'd see a lot of cheaters even there, AMP is very locked down. I don't like the market position abuse either, but the other parties are far from guilt free.

[fauigerzigerk]

Of course SEO will never end. But if the question is how to improve the open web, then turning the open web into a Google property is not an answer.

[dcbadacd]

Signed exchanges are a thing, I don't see how Google intervenes there more than just providing the AMP standard.

[bluetidepro]

Again, I'm not arguing that. I'm saying, Google should let us choose. If I want to download 4MB of bloat, let me. I don't like them making the choice for me that AMP is "the best" option. What you want, isn't what I want always, and that's my point. It is user hostile/a dark pattern for Google to force AMP on me, with no way to disable it.

[apexalpha]

In which way is Google forcing you to AMP? I've never encountered a website that didn't also have a not-AMP version.

[bluetidepro]

It's forcing me to go through AMP, that's what I'm saying. And in the case of the parent OG article this is all on, that is currently broken. Thus, forcing me to be stuck on AMP, with no way to bypass it. That's why it needs a setting to disable it entirely. I don't want to have to go through a website to get to the one I wanted. I don't need the AMP middleman.

You are completely not understanding my point of having the OPTION to disable it, so users who don't want to deal with AMP at all (myself, and many others) can have that ability.

[privateSFacct]

Can’t you still go to regular pages? I’ve never been forced to go to AMP pages. But I like them - people forget the full screen videos that popped up pre-AMP. Seriously - all this complaining you can’t load your bloatware pages is weird. AMP wouldn’t even be a thing if devs hadn’t trashed their own websites.

[tyingq]

By not having a config item for their search to return the real url.

And, as in the main story, the AMP page bricking the link to the real url.

[dcbadacd]

They're working on signed exchanges, you'll soon see the "real URL" of the content.

[WD-42]

You can disable AMP by not using Google. DuckDuckGo doesn't have these problems.

[JoshMnem]

You can disable it for now, but there are already some companies building their entire websites in AMP like independent.co.uk.

A better solution than AMP would be to only consider raw page speed, and then use a neutral schema markup for whatever extra features Google wants to display in Google Search.

[fjsolwmv]

What's wrong with AMP websites? AMP is a fast subset of HTML. That's different from using Google's AMP cache.

[SahAssar]

A subset wouldn't require you to load js to use built-in features like forms. A subset would just remove features or elements, which would make the whole load a js lib to make it work superfluous.

AMP is not a subset of HTML. It's a superset of a (badly defined) subset of HTML.

[detaro]

A "subset of HTML" that by specification is required to load Javascript from a central CDN, and by specification will let you wait multiple seconds before it shows anything if that JS doesn't load, even if perfectly usable content is loaded already.

[JoshMnem]

AMP is an unethical scheme by Google to appify and control of the Web. There are many articles about it.

Here are some other pages:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+amp&t=...

[oceanstone]

> Right now, I don't believe there is a way to disable AMP

Desktop mode disables AMP on Chrome Android for me. I haven't tested with iOS though.

[jwr]

> AMP is my only option of getting de-bloated webpages

How about de-bloating your webpages instead?

Seriously, people, come on — just put less cruft in your web pages. Don't load 500 trackers. Say no when the marketing guys come over and tell you to add 10 more. Tell your bosses that marketing is incompetent. Push back and tell people that adding cruft is bad.

Please don't bother telling me how it "can't be done". It can, but you might not want to.

I'm actually quite happy about the way this AMP thing is unrolling: the bloated crappy sites will walk into the jaws of AMP and get badly owned by Google eventually, being completely dependent on them.

[jasode]

>How about de-bloating your webpages instead? [...] — just put less cruft in your web pages. Don't load 500 trackers. [...] Tell your bosses that marketing is incompetent.

For context so people don't get the wrong idea... I just want to point out that the gp you responded to (apexalpha) wrote "my option" and _he_ (as a web surfer) is not the manager in charge of those other programmers adding in the cruft. In his next sentence he wrote:

>I would love if managers and directors would do this themselves and AMP wouldn't be needed, but that's just not the case.

[tempguy9999]

Sure you can. Put in a blocklist and turn off JS. Some pages break but many run much faster, and without the risk of malware or tracking. A strangely simple solution that people don't try.

NB. the remaining animated gifs can be stopped on palemoon and I think FX with shift+escape.

You occasionally gets CSS animations but they are pretty rare.

[jasode]

>Put in a blocklist and turn off JS. [...] A strangely simple solution that people don't try.

I'm not an iPhone expert but those don't seem simple.

In iOS, you can enter urls one at a time in the blocklist which is cumbersome. Obviously, this doesn't work for thousands of ad network urls. What people do on desktops is import a big hosts file but my cursory research says you can't do that on a non-jailbroken iPhone.[1]

If you mean "block" via DNS such as pointing to Adguard DNS servers, you can only manually change the DNS server ip address on wifi connections and not the cellular connection. For DNS blocks on cellular, you have to install vpn software.[2]

Disabling Javascript breaks sites like "cnn.com" (Yes, people should go to other sites instead of CNN but I don't mean for people to fixate on that one example. It's just one example of breakage of a widely known site instead of an obscure one.) Also on reddit.com, the collapse button "[-]" and the upvote/downvote buttons no longer work.

(But I'm not saying any iPhone setup difficulties means you should use AMP.)

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2028544/does-hosts-file-...

[2] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/303168/ios-11-how-...

[tempguy9999]

I was thinking desktop. I should have read up on amp first. Sorry. Thanks for the thoughtful reply though.

[Kalium]

> Seriously, people, come on — just put less cruft in your web pages. Don't load 500 trackers. Say no when the marketing guys come over and tell you to add 10 more. Tell your bosses that marketing is incompetent. Push back and tell people that adding cruft is bad.

It's politically untenable. Marketing brings in the $$$ and you don't.

So when you can point to the carousel and say "You can either have that or the trackers" you actually have some leverage to push back on marketing.

[asdff]

Reader view gives you a nice debloated page. So far firefox has been able to accurately cleanse most mobile websites I've used reader view on (some sites like reddit disable it, but I bet threading would be poor on reader view anyway).

It would be nice to just disable JS on mobile though.

[LoSboccacc]

you can still put your wallet to vote and support outlets that provide a RSS feed, like a proper one with full articles and images

[SomeOldThrow]

I will never get prioritizing speed over quality. Search results are worse than ever but Google is still claiming to know what we want. If only they had a business model that encouraged development of high quality tools rather than selling ads....

Meanwhile, the easiest way to speed up pages is to stop selling ads and splitting up content over multiple clicks.

[JoshMnem]

umatrix and ublock origin are better options for getting de-bloated webpages. If you're stuck on mobile, ublock origin works in Firefox for Android.