Yes, Google owns a significant portion of search but I don't think it qualifies as a monopoly.<p>* They have no exclusive rights to "search". Bing, DDG, Yahoo, and more all compete in the same space.<p>* They do not have a geographic right to any areas.<p>* They are not prevent me from using another search engine<p>I choose to use Google because it gives me the results I expect. Nobody is forcing me to use Google over other search engines. If anything, Google has raised the quality for all search engines by consistently producing the best product available.
The first theory that some designers think URL's are bad for users seems more plausible. Most people don't think of themselves as the villains in a movie. What kind of conversations do you think Googlers have?<p>We've seen this before with Gmail hiding email addresses. You can still show them with one click. These redesigns are annoying but world didn't come to an end.
<i>> The hiding of URLs fits perfectly with AMPs preferred method of making sites fast, which is to host them directly on Google’s servers, and to serve them from a Google domain. Hiding the URL from the user then makes a Google AMP site indistinguishable from an ordinary site.</i><p>Hiding URLs isn't necessary for sites hosted on the AMP cache to look just like other sites; Web Packaging will allow this while preserving the URL: <a href="https://www.ampproject.org/latest/blog/a-first-look-at-using-web-packaging-to-improve-amp-urls/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ampproject.org/latest/blog/a-first-look-at-using...</a><p>(Disclaimer: I work at Google)
> If this sounds all conspiracy theory, then good for you - you’ve just earned the Junior Meta Sceptic Badge.<p>At least the author seems to be aware that the article isn't anything more than a conspiracy theory. What is not clear, is why they then published it.<p>There are plenty of things to complain about with AMP. But, it also does address some very real problems - slow, inneficient, hard ti use web pages. What I'd love to hear about is a different approach to address these issues - and not something handwavy about how it could be done in a weekend. Actual code.
At first glance, AMP will make life easier for Google's search robots, but the standard would also seem to benefit a competitor like Duck, Duck, Go by standardizing code organization, making it easier to find the true 'intention' of a website's pages. Is AMP contrived to benefit Google? For sure, but not sure it's a terrible idea.
This article, and the one it references about AMP, all throw the word 'force' around a lot. No one is 'forcing' you to do anything with your website, wanting to be top of Google SERP is optional.