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Comment by dmitriid | Hacker News Reader

I’ve yet to find an AMP page that downloads less than 1MB of crap for what edsentially id a dtatic text page (sometimes with images).

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1 MB is incredibly compact by news site standards.

Try a random article page like https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/07/tech/australia-encryption...

I refreshed a few times, scrolling to the bottom of the page each time. According to Chrome dev tools even without a video playing between 6 MB and 21 MB was transferred just for me to scroll to the bottom of the page.

True. The problem with AMP though is that it doesn't push content sites to do anything about their actual sites. Content/news sites produce a stripped down version for AMP in the hopes to get into the search carousel, and that's it.

That's why I view other initiatives by Google such as https://web.dev [1] laughable at best.

[1] Is a rehash of what has been in their docs for ages: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/w...

> it doesn't push content sites to do anything about their actual sites

Literally nothing has ever achieved that, and it likely never will, it's also no AMP's job, AMP's job is to be a workaround for that systemic issue.

AMP's job is to lock publishers in a Google-controlled system where you jump when Google tells you to jump, or else you lose your spot at the top of Google's search results.

Oh. And ads. It's always about the ads.

They don't even attempt to hide it, really. Right there on AMP's page (emphasis mine):

--- quote ---

The project enables the creation of websites and ads that are...

What AMP Provides

Higher Performance and Engagement

....

Flexibility and Results

Publishers and advertisers can decide how to present their content and what technology vendors to use, all while maintaining and improving key performance indicators.

...

More than 1.5B AMP pages have been published to date and 100+ leading analytics, ad tech and CMS providers support the AMP format.

--- end quote ---

The AMP Project site itself is ~500kb.

https://www.ampproject.org/ (desktop version is AMP-ified too).

For me it was over a megabyte, could not scroll smoothly, and had a broken header once I started scrolling.

Do people not use the web, particularly media sites.

PLEASE go browse a bunch of non-AMP media sites with adblocker off. 500kb is TINY by comparison to what is out there outside of AMP.

Oh, that was with an adblocker on. But aside from that, many of the websites I go to don't have AMP and load quickly. Hacker News is a pretty good example; I try to keep my own website relatively lightweight as well, just like many other personal blog sites.

People do. And people who understand what the web and AMP are know that AMP isn't the solution.

By the time you've loaded CNN's AMP page, you'll have loaded at least 4 MB: ~2 MB of AMP prefetching done on Google's search results page and another ~2.2 MB on the AMP page itself.

If Google adhered to its own page performance standards, as outlined here: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/w..., CNN's AMP page would be demoted in search results. However, since its AMP, it gets put front and center in search carousel.

Same goes for every single other AMP page.

Isn't CNN something like 7-8MB without AMP?

To reduce weight issues please replace all your dogs with cows. Research shows that cows are much lighter than your average whale and for this reason should always be used.

Your S key is having some problems...

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