Thumbs down to anyone enabling AMP’s success. Google should be measuring page speed only, it’s none of their business what methods you used to achieve that speed.
On the other hand, AMP Real URL is based on Signed HTTP Exchanges, which allow one site to send a cached copy of someone else’s site, in a much more straightforward manner. In theory, Google could now drop the bulk of what’s now known as “AMP” and cache arbitrary pages that indicate their willingness to be cached. That they’re instead integrating this with AMP suggests they may not drop it, which would be unfortunate. On the other hand, since Signed HTTP Exchanges will remain a Chrome-only feature for the foreseeable future, it’s arguably a bit early to expect Google to make that kind of commitment.
Maybe I'm just old, but I don't understand why this is a worthwhile goal. Even with its bloat the internet today is much, much faster than it was 15 years ago and I'm quite happy to wait a few seconds for a page to load. In addition, doesn't pre-fetching every result just waste bandwidth on mobile?
But personally, I’m a sucker for low latency across all of tech (and gaming as well). That’s why I use Safari instead of Chrome, Terminal.app instead of iTerm, C++ instead of Rust sometimes (compile times), and basically anything else instead of Java (startup time), among other preferences. I even prefer reading ebooks on normal screens rather than e-ink displays, simply because I don’t want to wait between pressing “next page” and seeing the page show up. Not surprisingly, then, I really appreciate website snappiness in general, including links that load instantly due to prefetching. I can’t say I appreciate AMP as it exists today, because the quick load comes with a host of UX issues, but I have hope for the future.
Take that perspective how you will. I think I’m a bit of an outlier in just how much latency bothers me, but pretty much everyone consciously or subconsciously appreciates when it goes down. Probably including you: the current speed might seem “fast enough” now, but if faster loading becomes the norm and the other issues are dealt with, I bet you’d have a hard time going back.