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by bassman9000 2002 days ago
"At this point in time with the AMP project, Google can’t retroactively release the control it had in AMP’s adoption. And we can’t go back to a pre-AMP web to start over [...]"

Why not? Someone with AMP knowledge knows why? Wouldn't it be as easy as removing a few tags?
4 comments
nightcracker 2002 days ago
Load of horseshit. Google could make every single AMP URL redirect to the real page and scrap the whole thing tomorrow.
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fzzzy 2002 days ago
Yes. Straight up lie. Do they know that? It seems like lying would be bad damage control, but I guess fud works
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WhyNotHugo 2002 days ago
Actually, we pretty much can. Anyone _not_ using Google's search engine and browser is still living on a non-AMP word, and is able to access the web pretty much fine.
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rpdillon 2002 days ago
This caught my eye as well. The quote is pulled from the final paragraph of this EFF blog post:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/googles-amp-canonical-...

That post also doesn't really explain, but justifies its position by linking to the AMP blog:

https://blog.amp.dev/2018/02/13/amps-new-horizons/

That page is basically trumpeting the massive adoption of AMP. So my read here is that the author is viewing this a bit like Flash: yes, we could kill it, but it would take years, because of the billions of pages that use it, as well as the custom markup it uses, along with the unique caching structure discussed in the EFF post.

I don't find that particularly compelling, but I can see the reasoning. It may be a case where it would be possible to just redirect all traffic away from AMP, but that would kill page speed, and therefore search ranking, for those using it. Theoretically possible? Sure. Practical? Possibly not.

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mroche 2002 days ago
I don’t think the EFF rep was trying to say AMP is technically integral to the web experience today and can’t be removed (which it definitely can be). Rather that it is a technology that is useful and can be powerful, and we should pursue continued development of it in an open way. As much as I don’t like AMP myself, there are numerous people in regions worldwide who do appreciate it that live in low bandwidth, data limited, bad connection areas.
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