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Comment by lern_too_spel | Hacker News Reader

Saying that the URL problem is Google's attempt at taking over the open web is nonsensical. Google's main competitors in large markets, like Microsoft, Yahoo Japan, and Baidu, also implement AMP caches. How does that help any of them fend off any of the others? Each one of them gets to prerender the same provably prerender-friendly pages.

I am not an AMP publisher or an AMP developer, but I vastly prefer AMP results, and I suspect my preference lines up with the majority outside of HN, or why else would all these search engines do this?

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> Saying that the URL problem is Google's attempt at taking over the open web is nonsensical.

The point isn't that only Google can use AMP. (I agree that many people incorrectly think that AMP is Google-only.) The point is that with AMP, you've lost control of your web site.

The fact that you've lost control not only to Google, but also to Microsoft, Yahoo Japan, and Baidu doesn't help at all!

> The point is that with AMP, you've lost control of your web site.

Did I miss the news article "Armed googlers rampaging wildly and threatening all website owners with violence for noncompliance with AMP guidelines"? Who forces you to use amp?

We are forced by the prominent AMP carousel that shows up in search results that drives meaningful revenue to publishers (but cannibalizes our traffic to the regular page where on a CPM level ads are worth more).

If they removed that then AMP would die quickly.

> The point is that with AMP, you've lost control of your web site.

How does Google, etc., caching content and delivering it to users mean that you've lost control of your website?

"Caching your content," on a google.com URL, makes it their web site, not yours.

I disagree. Using cloud flare doesn’t make your site belong to cloudflare.

Cloudflare doesn't shove a header at the top of your page and JavaScript with unwanted behavior.

I mentioned the carousel problem in another comment. But the default behavior is suboptimal too. That injected header has an [x] button. Users expect it to dismiss the header. Instead, it navigates away from YOUR page, back to Google.

Does cloudflare change all your urls to theirs?

They control the reddest part of your page's heatmap. They inject JavaScript that does whatever they want. If you show up on a carousel result, for example, they inject JavaScript onto YOUR page that makes a left/right swipe navigate to a competitor. There's more, but yes...you've lost control.

The main bit of this is that Bing and Baidu HAVE to support AMP, because as Google's competitors, they can't allow Google to have any advantage, even if the solution poisons the Internet. And because Google has 87% of all search traffic, if a site is going to support a solution, it's going to be AMP.

Google's playing with nukes here. It's not just people under their domain who are affected, but anyone who wants to stay in the same game as them. Why do other countries look to build nukes? Because the US has them, and if you want to not be taken out by the US, you need them too.

AMP is like Amazon's listing of 3rd party merchants' products.

It's great for consumers in the short-term but commodifies businesses into an informational API for Google's UX.

> why else would all these search engines do this?

because lower latency increases user activity and search volume

The question you aren't asking is: "What are the long term implications to the ecosystem when Google controls the UX for all 3rd party data?"

> because lower latency increases user activity and search volume

more importantly, it reduces bounce and helps conversion. neither of which matter much to users...

They each get to put a giant back button on the top of your site that takes you back to the search results instead of deeper into your site. If Google is going to steamroll over independent websites, then the others want in on the action too. If they don't jump in, links to "your website" will all point to google.com rather than the other companies' domains.

> why else would all these search engines do this?

if it expands the business in a positive way who cares what users think, right?

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