<story><title>Google wants websites to adopt AMP as the default for building webpages</title><url>https://www.polemicdigital.com/google-amp-go-to-hell/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>inetknght</author><text>I, personally, hate websites that serve different content based on what device I&amp;#x27;m using. It makes it difficult to customize a device to view things the way I want to view them. All of the changes to navigation and features makes it difficult to navigate and use the site.&lt;p&gt;I do think there could be a case made for Google abusing their power here but frankly I&amp;#x27;m on their side for this: one site, one representation.&lt;p&gt;If you want a lighter load for mobile users, provide a lighter version for &lt;i&gt;every&lt;/i&gt; user. If you want to keep features available, allow users to opt-in or out to such features.</text></item><item><author>unethical_ban</author><text>&amp;gt;So Google&amp;#x27;s suggestion is that, if you&amp;#x27;ve already chosen to offer an AMP page, that page shouldn&amp;#x27;t have intentionally worse usability than the original?&lt;p&gt;Google is using its dominance in search (again) to force sites to offer AMP versions. Like a &amp;quot;reader view&amp;quot;, and lacking evidence at the moment, I bet many sites are building AMP versions with faster load times but reduced features to comply. Now Google is saying &amp;quot;Build your entire site according to our spec, or we&amp;#x27;ll de-rank you on search&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;That is a very bold move, and one that would be making front-page news if they said it straight-up in a way that Buzzfeed could write about.</text></item><item><author>xg15</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t like AMP at all and fully agree with all the lock-in concerns - but I didn&amp;#x27;t find this post particularly convincing.&lt;p&gt;This reads in places like a developer or publisher who has grown accustomated to stuffing his pages with gobs and gobs of javascript and questionable UI patterns and is now outraged at the prospect that someone wants to take that privilege away from him. I can&amp;#x27;t agree with that.&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The underlying message is clear: Google wants full equivalency between AMP and canonical URL. Every element that is present on a website’s regular version should also be present on its AMP version: every navigation item, every social media sharing button, every comment box, every image gallery.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;So Google&amp;#x27;s suggestion is that, &lt;i&gt;if you&amp;#x27;ve already chosen to offer an AMP page&lt;/i&gt;, that page shouldn&amp;#x27;t have intentionally worse usability than the original?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;For years Google has been nudging webmasters to create better websites – ‘better’ meaning ‘easier for Google to understand’. Technologies like XML sitemaps and schema.org structured data are strongly supported by Google because they make the search engine’s life easier.&lt;p&gt;Other initiatives like disavow files and rel=nofollow help Google keep its link graph clean and free from egregious spam. All the articles published on Google’s developer website are intended to ensure the chaotic, messy web becomes more like a clean, easy-to-understand web. In other words, a Google-shaped web. This is a battle Google has been fighting for decades.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sitemaps and structured data were the &lt;i&gt;non-proprietary&lt;/i&gt; attempts to structure the web. Those could have made the web more accessible for everyone, not just Google. They are something fundamentally different than AMP.&lt;p&gt;Yet, he condemns them too? Why?&lt;p&gt;He seems to argue that the chaos and messiness of the web infrastructure is itself a quality that should be defended. Why would that be the case?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ehnto</author><text>I agree it&amp;#x27;s not ideal to have different experiences. But this wouldn&amp;#x27;t be true if Google didn&amp;#x27;t start imposing AMP through their influence. This has been an elaborate attempt to push everyone into a requirements system so that they can control how websites are built. Like an app store policy for websites. That&amp;#x27;s bad news, because their influence is real, businesses rely on search traffic to exist, and will have no choice but to comply.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google wants websites to adopt AMP as the default for building webpages</title><url>https://www.polemicdigital.com/google-amp-go-to-hell/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>inetknght</author><text>I, personally, hate websites that serve different content based on what device I&amp;#x27;m using. It makes it difficult to customize a device to view things the way I want to view them. All of the changes to navigation and features makes it difficult to navigate and use the site.&lt;p&gt;I do think there could be a case made for Google abusing their power here but frankly I&amp;#x27;m on their side for this: one site, one representation.&lt;p&gt;If you want a lighter load for mobile users, provide a lighter version for &lt;i&gt;every&lt;/i&gt; user. If you want to keep features available, allow users to opt-in or out to such features.</text></item><item><author>unethical_ban</author><text>&amp;gt;So Google&amp;#x27;s suggestion is that, if you&amp;#x27;ve already chosen to offer an AMP page, that page shouldn&amp;#x27;t have intentionally worse usability than the original?&lt;p&gt;Google is using its dominance in search (again) to force sites to offer AMP versions. Like a &amp;quot;reader view&amp;quot;, and lacking evidence at the moment, I bet many sites are building AMP versions with faster load times but reduced features to comply. Now Google is saying &amp;quot;Build your entire site according to our spec, or we&amp;#x27;ll de-rank you on search&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;That is a very bold move, and one that would be making front-page news if they said it straight-up in a way that Buzzfeed could write about.</text></item><item><author>xg15</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t like AMP at all and fully agree with all the lock-in concerns - but I didn&amp;#x27;t find this post particularly convincing.&lt;p&gt;This reads in places like a developer or publisher who has grown accustomated to stuffing his pages with gobs and gobs of javascript and questionable UI patterns and is now outraged at the prospect that someone wants to take that privilege away from him. I can&amp;#x27;t agree with that.&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The underlying message is clear: Google wants full equivalency between AMP and canonical URL. Every element that is present on a website’s regular version should also be present on its AMP version: every navigation item, every social media sharing button, every comment box, every image gallery.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;So Google&amp;#x27;s suggestion is that, &lt;i&gt;if you&amp;#x27;ve already chosen to offer an AMP page&lt;/i&gt;, that page shouldn&amp;#x27;t have intentionally worse usability than the original?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;For years Google has been nudging webmasters to create better websites – ‘better’ meaning ‘easier for Google to understand’. Technologies like XML sitemaps and schema.org structured data are strongly supported by Google because they make the search engine’s life easier.&lt;p&gt;Other initiatives like disavow files and rel=nofollow help Google keep its link graph clean and free from egregious spam. All the articles published on Google’s developer website are intended to ensure the chaotic, messy web becomes more like a clean, easy-to-understand web. In other words, a Google-shaped web. This is a battle Google has been fighting for decades.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sitemaps and structured data were the &lt;i&gt;non-proprietary&lt;/i&gt; attempts to structure the web. Those could have made the web more accessible for everyone, not just Google. They are something fundamentally different than AMP.&lt;p&gt;Yet, he condemns them too? Why?&lt;p&gt;He seems to argue that the chaos and messiness of the web infrastructure is itself a quality that should be defended. Why would that be the case?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xvector</author><text>&amp;gt; I do think there could be a case made for Google abusing their power here&lt;p&gt;Which is the concern here. Abuse of power in order to push your own agenda could just as easily turn into abuse of power to push an agenda you despise.</text></comment>