Then I guess "everyone else" should find a way to make a usable mobile content website without AMP, because apparently that's a nearly unsolvable problem. It's hard to be anti-AMP when the user experience is that much better with AMP.
"Pinboard founder Maciej Cegłowski already recreated the Google AMP demo page without the Google AMP JavaScript and, unsurprisingly, it's faster than Google's version."
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/19/open_source_insider...
Yes, it's possible to create fast mobile pages without AMP. So if that's true, why does AMP make such a big difference to so many consumers?
The bottom line is that the theoretical possibility of fast non-AMP pages is meaningless to consumers if few content providers actually act on that possibility. What matters is what happens in the real world.
I wish AMP simply wasn't a thing, and they put more effort in promoting progressive web apps (PWA's) instead. There's too much tie-in to Google on the internet already.
AMP is basically "Hey, you suck at your job. Here's a subset of HTML/CSS that not even YOU can eff up."
PWA is "Hey, you suck at your job. Here's the industry's best practices for mobile-first development."
But people didn't, and here we are. Again, as a normal user, I'm relieved to see the AMP symbol. I click on those links first, to the exclusion of others given the chance, because multiple years of trust have been broken.
Maybe I'll rue the day I wrote this, but we're going to have to see. This is a self-created problem, and now publishers of all stripes will have to work to earn back the trust they poisoned.
Let/encourage developers (front-end and back-end) to optimise for performance and I'm sure we'd all see fantastic gains! All without needing to feed Google even more than we already do.
Google is a company, its motivation is profit. Did you really expect otherwise? Do you really think Facebook wants to "make the world more connected"?
Where do (or would) you put your savings? Let me guess, in the assets that provide the best return/risk? Why do you expect that the companies you're investing in expecting the highest returns would act in any different way?
Just because they can make a profit doing something doesn't mean they should be allowed to continue, especially if the mechanism of profit damages public or communal infrastructure/resources/etc.
Do you really want to sit by and let them ruin the web just because they can make money doing so?
Who's talking about consequences? I'm debating OP's point about "Google's (less than neutral) motivations/actions".
It is a private, for profit, company, why would anyone expect neutral "motivations". The motivation is profit.
I understand the usability case for AMP, but let's face it -- making a mobile-friendly web site really isn't that difficult, as long as you're not insisting on jamming things up with untold megabytes of JS woo. Google's argument to publishers is essentially "jam up your desktop sites with whatever JS woo you want, and let us unjam the mobile site for you." And, you know, fine, but to take advantage of it, you're essentially tailoring your web site to let Google reformat your content in a similar fashion to Safari Reader -- and, unlike Reader, Google is doing it by rehosting your content. They get the clicks, and you get whatever analytics and revenue they deign to share with you. And worse, that opens up the strong potential for Google's search results to penalize those of us who would rather maintain control over our own content.
You need to load the page first to do that.
1) iOS loads the full site, displays it in reader mode?
2) Some server (Apple's?) fetches the site, strips it down to reader mode, iOS fetches it from that server?
#1 requires downloading the full site. #2 is just using an old "reformat pages for mobile" proxy.
It's a hard problem.
Having everyone use Google as a proxy and content server, trusting them to deliver ads and so on, is one way to improve quality of service, but it's a way that's hostile to publishers and infringes on the privacy of users, so the industry absolutely hungry for a solution here.
A major issue is that Google acts as a gatekeeper for competing products, so we're unlikely to see any effect unless high profile publishers take a stand, or we individuals lobby our government to intercede.
> It's hard to be anti-AMP when the user experience is that much better with AMP.
I know. Ben Franklin warned us in a way about convenience, so his words seem quite appropriate here; I value my quality of life and my privacy, and I see it as such a slippery slope, so I don't implement AMP on my properties.
My organic Google traffic has admittedly suffered since the AMP logo program started, but focusing on making my sponsored search buy stickier has proven a lot more valuable to me fiscally, while allowing me to preserve my morality.