[nothrabannosir]

AMP is an example of the bad faith exercising of that monopoly. Bad faith because we judge it by the negative press: there is considerable push back and controversy, yet it remains. That alone separates it from other factors like “actual page speed”, which is also used but which everyone agrees with, which is why it’s considered good faith.

No need to judge it based on its technical merit: a significant amount of people hate it, yet here it is. End of.

This is not a legal question (yet), this is a moral question. The legal [and technical] question is relevant, but not the be all end all of any discussion. People sometimes also just want to discuss how they feel. It’s relevant to get consensus about that. And people feel bad about AMP.

[shawnz]

Yes it's true that they forced AMP despite some people not wanting it (and I think you are greatly overestimating the fraction of customers that actually care about this either way). But you know what they say, ask customers what they want and they'll say a faster horse. I don't think there's anything wrong or immoral about going against the current wishes of your customers to further the long term wishes of your customers instead.

That is much different than saying that Google is using AMP to make it easier to control results which was what the parent seemed to be implying. If this discussion is really not about AMP at all, but just about Google flexing their monopoly to do things customers don't want, then why is AMP the technology getting criticized for it? Why weren't we criticizing using SSL everywhere when Google depriortitzed non-SSL results?

[stephenr]

It's cute that you think people either searching on Google, or people/organisations with organic results shown on Google are their "customers".

I mean it's also naive, and wrong, but it's cute too.

[shawnz]

Give this tired quip a break. You don't have to be spending dollars to be a considered a customer, that's not what customer means.

[stephenr]

It literally means a person who purchases something.

No sane person on the planet would consider a person using a search engine for free, "the customer". The customer is the person who buys something - in Google's case, advertising.

[shawnz]

Right, and users of the engine aren't using it for free. They're paying in ad impressions.

[stephenr]

Ad impressions are like shares. They're only valuable if someone is actually paying real money for them somewhere.