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by lern_too_spel 2508 days ago
> Saying things like "blind hatred for anything produced by Google" isn't accurate or productive.

I don't see anybody complaining about Bing's AMP usage, do you? Most of the commenters don't understand what AMP does, but they still hate it. You yourself didn't understand how AMP worked when we started this discussion, wondering why origin SSR was necessary when it is obvious to anyone who understands what AMP does, yet despite not understanding the problem AMP solves, you still hate it.

Google does some shady things, but contributing to AMP is not one of them. In fact, AMP is far less shady than its competing technologies that get far less attention on HN.

> However using RSS does not give you higher placement. Are you disagreeing with that?

What does that have to do with anything? Publishers implement RSS, which allows instant loading but gives even less control to publishers than AMP does, yet you are not complaining about RSS. As far as placement, implementing RSS gives them placement in news aggregators including Apple News. Forget about poor ranking — you can't get placement at all in these systems with just a plain HTML page and instead have to hand full control over to the aggregators.

> Google can influence this speed through rankings without AMP.

Who said they don't?

> Instant is not necessary

Says who? If instant weren't necessary, explain Apple News. They could have implemented it as links to existing web pages, but they instead make publishers give them a feed to ingest.

> This has been the argument this whole time, one that you haven't provided any rebuttal against.

I've repeatedly rebutted it by saying instant is necessary. You've been sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending it isn't. I strongly prefer to click on AMP links, and I can guarantee that most other users do as well, or why would the search engines bother labeling them with an icon?

If it were just about control, there is no reason to tell the user ahead of time that a particular link is to an AMP page. If it were just about control, what is the point of SSR on the origin and signed exchanges to make shared links not go to Google or Bing?

2 comments

HN is a highly technical audience and the commenters here perfectly understand what AMP does. There's no irrational hatred here, and that's a silly thing to say in the face of multiple reasoned explanations of what people are finding wrong with it.

RSS is completely voluntary and used for inventory that is not serviced by websites. It has nothing to do with instant loading and can carry as little data as the pub wants. Apple News is Apple also wanting control, the same reason as FB-IA and AMP, and was also designed for offline use and device-local recommendations. Pubs willingly trade-off the loss of control for the extra reach but both FB-IA and AN support RSS feeds now because of pushback to use an existing syndication format.

You haven't actually provided as reason for why instant loading is necessary other than saying it exists and therefore it must be. That's not an argument, it's a tautology. If Google highly ranked sites loading under 1-second on the top half then you would get fast sites like HN. No AMP and yet here we are on instant loading website. Stackoverflow and dev.to are other examples, with no AMP required. Perhaps if publishers had both the incentive and didn't have to waste resources on AMP for SERP ranking, we could all be enjoying faster sites now.

> HN is a highly technical audience and the commenters here perfectly understand what AMP does.

You yourself provided a counterexample earlier in the thread. Here's another: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666920

These comments are highly upvoted, so the readers of the comments also don't understand AMP. If they haven't bothered to understand it but hate it anyway, that is clearly irrational, is it not?

> RSS is completely voluntary

Just like AMP.

> and used for inventory that is not serviced by websites.

Nonsense. RSS items almost always link back to plain web pages with the same content but with more publisher control.

> You haven't actually provided as reason for why instant loading is necessary other than saying it exists and therefore it must be.

I showed you an example of users preferring it. These results are clearly labeled, and users like me click them on purpose. If it was purely about control, they wouldn't be labeled.

As far as it being about control, you still haven't explained why Google ceded control to all other link aggregators just like RSS instead of following Apple's and Facebook's path.

And finally, if it were just about control, why wouldn't Google have set up a system for direct integration like Apple and FB instead of defining a publishing format that all link aggregators, including current and future competitors, could use and then make a steering committee for the format with only minority representation?
Because websites are standalone properties with much greater fidelity, design and content than a single article. Google is linking to results, not showing articles like FB or Apple News.

This is also why AMP is not used for much other than news sites, and yet another reason why it's limited, wasteful and unnecessary.

> Google is linking to results, not showing articles like FB or Apple News.

Results in general shouldn't be written in AMP. The AMP documentation is very clear that it is meant for content pages and by attacking it for a problem it isn't meant to solve, you are engaging in strawmanning.

> This is also why AMP is not used for much other than news sites, and yet another reason why it's limited, wasteful and unnecessary.

It is far less wasteful than Apple News, FBIA, and RSS, which are limited to the same problem but solve it in a much worse way for the publisher. Once again, why aren't you complaining about them?