This is a good response and I appreciate Malte's effort to engage publishers, but it doesn't calm my nerves about the biggest publisher complaint about AMP:<p><i></i>Google owns the chrome (top navigation) on all AMP pages. This makes it easy to navigate back to Google (why would you ever want to leave?) and other publishers in the AMP ecosystem, but much harder to navigate to the publisher that created the page in the first place<i></i><p>In essence, this means that what was once a publisher-owned page is now shared property: between the Google and the publisher. By controlling the top navigation, Google more easily controls the content the visitor sees, keeps visitors on Google longer, provides greater opportunity to track visitors, and perhaps most importantly has the opportunity to earn more ad revenue.<p>Now imagine if this was a requirement for ALL pages served in Google search results. You publish a page and it appears in Google, but when the user clicks on it Google has pasted a new navigation on the top of your page. This is exactly what is happening with AMP.<p>This is especially troubling in light of all the anti-trust controversies Google is finding itself in, both in the US and abroad. A recent study showed that 49% of all Google clicks go to Google properties of one kind or another (Maps, YouTube, Ads, etc) <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/intro-to-mozcon-2016/24-Lots_of_NoClick_Searches_in" rel="nofollow">http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/intro-to-mozcon-2016/24-L...</a><p>Does AMP count as another Google property that will push more than 49% of clicks their way? Hard to say, but it's a disturbing trend for a monopoly and a hard pill for publishers to swallow.
As a user I've learned to avoid AMP pages because the UX is horrible:<p>* back button is broken 1/2 the time<p>* the bar wastes 1/3 of my screen<p>* I can no longer see what site I am on in the url<p>* it's hard to navigate to the / of the site<p>* I can't forward the link<p>* being on a good network in US it solves no problem that I have<p>What I'd really like to see is a way to opt-out of seeing AMP'ed pages in my search results. Or at least a way to navigate from AMP page to its native version.<p>Further, I noticed that AMP is a signal for low quality content. I am guessing sophisticated publishers are conservative enough to wait and see. And individuals haven't bothered dealing with it. So you get low-end publishers in between.
Yeah, I was quite surprised how positive a reaction the original complaint got, considering it was long-winded, repetitive, and seemed to go out of its way to misunderstand AMP.<p>The only valid criticism appears to be how google displays search results using its own URL and this toolbar – it seems to break rather fundamental assumption about http and has the potential to break all sorts of tools that rely on the established structure of the web and open standards, as has already happened with the refer(r)er as mentioned in this response.<p>I wonder if there's a way to get the same result without rehosting content on their own URL. Couldn't they allow publishers to achieve the same result with a CNAME, possibly for amp.<hostname>.<tld>? And do the google servers add anything beyond being distributed caches? Because if not, it seems this level of indirection is redundant for websites already hosted on CDNs.<p>Regarding the toolbar: yeah, that's a terrible idea. I have no sympathy for publishers who object to it because if it reduces your retention rates there's probably more wrong with the content than the presentation. But as a user, it's the sort of "assisted browsing" that feels intrusive, like resizing the window or a "you need flash" popup (I don't).<p>Considering their market share in browsers isn't far behind the in search, I wonder why that function isn't just a chrome feature. Funny thing is: it's a feature that exists in Safari ("Search results snapback").
Google has their version of the internet. Facebook has their version of the internet. As time slides forward just think of how many users won't know the real internet from these rubber doll versions.<p>Congrats humanity. Your best invention ever and it only 20 years or so to completely fuck it up. This is why we can't have nice things.
I think one important point is hidden within this sentence:<p>"The original idea behind AMP was to allow content to be distributed to <i>platforms (such as Google</i>, Twitter and Pinterest) in a way that retains [...] control for the publisher."<p>(emphasis mine)<p>So Google sees itself as a platform in the tradition of Twitter and Pinterest - i.e. a controlled space on which content (with more or less control by the authors) is published. That's a significant difference to the gateway to the open web that they primarily still are at the moment.
As positive as the response sounds, it is an empty promise.<p>> We’re looking at ways to make the source link more discoverable and will update once that is done.<p>If Google was <i>actually</i> going to fix the issue, they would have said "we will make the close button direct users to the original site and will update once that is done" OR "we are changing the x (close) button to a ← (back) button".<p>"x" means "close" and "←" means "back". This is confusing UX at the least and arguably a dark pattern.
Am I being uncharitable in saying the TLDR is:<p>This is working as expected and you need to do more work to make AMP work for you?<p>Why can't it work with templates, why does content that was created need to be created again for AMP? This doesn't seem very scalable.<p>Also, the attribution for ads and analytics basically means you need to reimplement your entire tracking code within the schema and spec of AMP's analytics attributes which only supports a subset of existing providers rather than allowing an abstract interface.<p>Also to the point that AMP doesn't affect search position, is this true if someone serves a shitty AMP page? Or is it only true that it won't boost position?
"The original idea behind AMP was to allow content to be distributed to platforms (such as Google, Twitter and Pinterest) in a way that retains branding and monetization control for the publisher. AMP traffic is the publisher’s traffic. Period."<p>So far I haven't thought of Google as a platform like Twitter or Pinterest. I thought there was a free web with Google and Bing and good old Altavista searching and indexing it. Is making a website now similar to posting something on Facebook? Or why would they have to assure you that your traffic is your traffic, "period"?<p>If that's the case we need an urgent change in direction!
It's nice to see Google investing in direct responses to the community. If you build a developer product, monitoring HN for criticism and responding is very high ROI. Few companies actually do this.
If hacker news had a speed rating next to the links I would probably click on them more instead of just reading the comments to decide if it's worth pulling up an article.<p>Note, It has been suggested that a speed rating on Google would be equivalent to the amp experience with less Google control.
Doesn't convince me. Top bar is the biggest problem and they are "working on it"™ (we all know what does it mean) and "it will be landed in Chrome soon", when Chrome is not only browser in the world of mobile devices. Also from this response I see they want to make Chrome the new IE (if problem is solved in Chrome - it's solved), and it's frustrating.
End users, in generall, don't know and don't mind about these complaints against AMP.<p>What matters is if one gets the results he was searching for. And somehow those pages that have "amp" written nearby open faster, so let's click more on those.<p>Market pressure will drive decisions on whether it's better have amped pages (with those claimed drawbacks) or try to capture attention to the whole site with navigation and lighter pages.<p>And as a prisoner's dilemma, if sites that don't have amp are as fast as the amped, having "amp" near your link won't matter. If they are slower, the distinction will matter, independently of your specific optimization.
I don't see why Google needs to have its own cache for AMP pages. If a publisher has its own fast CDN, why not just let it serve the AMP pages from its own domain?
There's also this little chestnut:<p><a href="http://searchengineland.com/google-amp-will-override-app-deep-links-foreseeable-future-259905" rel="nofollow">http://searchengineland.com/google-amp-will-override-app-dee...</a><p>TL;DR Google AMP also hijacks app deep links
Previous HN comments on the original story: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12722590" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12722590</a>
> “If Google cares so much about the mobile experience, why cover 15% of the small mobile screen with a fat bar at the top?”<p>> The Android users might have already noticed that it is now scrolling out of the way<p>It doesn't scroll away. Just checked on Google news with both Chrome and Opera. Android 6. Am I missing something?
Does Google have any plans to let users opt out? Maybe an icon that takes you to the original? I tried opening the AMP link in a new tab and it took me to the site, so at least there's a workaround.<p>Since I normally use Firefox Mobile (has to try it with Chrome), I don't get the AMP icon and I'm taken to the requested site. I'm guessing this functionality is limited to Chrome and (maybe?) Safari on mobile.<p>AMP is attempting to solving a challenging problem, and although I don't personally agree with their solution, I've gotta recognize that opening the embedded AMP version of the page from the result of "git tips" was faster on Chrome than on Firefox. I'm hopeful that the lessons learned from this will be pushed upstream and help improve the web.
One of the problems here is that when users click on a search result (marked AMP in Google's SERPs), they expect to visit a website. Instead, they visit a cached version of the page, on Google's site.<p>This is deceiving.<p>If Google's going to cache the page, then there should be a "cache" link so the user knows that they're clicking on a cached version of the page. Otherwise, deliver the user to the site that they think they're clicking on.
I'm interested in the intellectual property aspect of this.<p>Why exactly is it permissible for Google to "cache" my page and then serve it up to users?<p>That's literally them copying my page to their own servers, which is my content, my intellectual property, and then serving it up however they like.<p>I'm a little confused how that is legal.
>Hey, this is Malte and I am the tech lead of the AMP Project for Google.<p>Of all his 725-words response only 18 words directly address the problem:<p>>We’re looking at ways to make the source link more discoverable and will update once that is done.<p>That's 2.5%. Is he really a <i>tech</i> lead?
He avoids really hard addressing the only bit that matters<p>> Guess what happens when the "close" button is clicked inside the AMP view?<p>And the amount of disingenuous on this just rubs me the wrong way:<p>> If you are not comfortable with traffic on your AMP pages, please do not publish AMP pages.
So basically this guy says all of the issues are by design and you can choose not to use amp if you don't like all of it. Google isn't going to penalize non amp pages in search ranking. They are just going to not show your page in the carousel.<p>I think it's a pretty fair position to take. If you don't like amp don't use it. We'll see if amp catches on over a period of time.