Google tried to fix the web – by taking it over (AMP)

49 points by throwaway2056 2 years ago | 7 comments
  • bryan_w 2 years ago
    The problem was that some (news) sites were/are designed by myspace profile artists. Elements jump around the screen 15 seconds after the content loaded.

    How many display ads do we want to show on a page? Yes.

    • robin_reala 2 years ago
      …and Google’s now solving this in the way they should have from the start: by penalising (via CLS metrics) sites with this behaviour in the search results.
    • porkbeer 2 years ago
      AMP was an attempt to link hijack the whole net, funnelling everyone through a demostarably worse google implementation. Dystopian is to soft a word.
      • Alifatisk 2 years ago
        AMP was a cool piece of technology that was actually faster, they (Google) just had to infect it with bad intentions.
        • robin_reala 2 years ago
          AMP was a shitshow from day one: when every instance of the product had to load a piece of JS from Google’s servers[1] unless you wanted a 8sec delay[2] then you knew that you were in for a bad time.

          [1] <script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> is required on every AMP page

          [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21714264

          • CharlesW 2 years ago
            I don't recall AMP ever having a "cool, uninfected" form — it was pretty clear what Google's intentions were from the start, using the promise of "rank higher in Google" to strong-arm adoption.
          • tanepiper 2 years ago
            IMHO Matle Ubl will in the future be known as 'The Web Thomas Midgley Jr" for the damage done with AMP - and his relentless push to make it a thing.

            Now he's left Google, and they are abandoning it - that's another decade of web content that will just die without the chance to be archived.