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There's been a good deal of ongoing discussion about Google AMP – Accelerated Mobile Pages.
Quite a few high-profile web developers have this year weighted in with criticism and some, following a Google conference dedicated to AMP, have cautioned users about diving in with both feet.
These, in my view, don't go far enough in stating the problem and I feel this needs to be said very clearly: Google's AMP is bad – bad in a potentially web-destroying way. Google AMP is bad news for how the web is built, it's bad news for publishers of credible online content, and it's bad news for consumers of that content. Google AMP is only good for one party: Google. Google, and possibly, purveyors of fake news.
[...] What it is, is a way for Google to obfuscate your website, usurp your content and remove any lingering notions of personal credibility from the web.
If that appeals to you, here's what you need to do. First, get rid of all your HTML and render your content in a subset of HTML that Google has approved along with a few tags it invented. Because what do those pesky standards boards know? Trust Google, it knows what it's doing. And if you don't, consider yourself not part of the future of search results.
Why a subset of HTML you ask? Well, mostly because web developers suck at their jobs and have loaded the web with a ton of JavaScript no one wants. Can't fault Google for wanting to change that. That part I can support. The less JavaScript the better.
So far AMP actually sounds appealing. Except that, hilariously, to create an AMP page you have to load a, wait for it, yes a JavaScript file from Google. Pinboard founder Maciej Cegłowski already recreated the Google AMP demo page without the Google AMP JavaScript and, unsurprisingly, it's faster than Google's version.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ilsa on Thursday May 25 2017, @05:38PM (4 children)
I mean, if we're going to abandon standards and use some proprietary crap that a big corporation happened to shit out, that serves themselves under the guise of helping others, we may as well have just stuck with ActiveX and IE6.
I mean, come on... I can understand if people have forgotten the lessons learned from a generation or more ago, but this all happened barely a decade ago!
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday May 25 2017, @07:01PM (3 children)
One line in TFS says it all--web developers mostly SUCK, especially the ones who woek for newspapers. My sites are in HTML 4.1 and render fast (unless the page has heavy graphics) and render well on any device you can get on the internet with. I look at code for others' web pages ans say "WTF, this is a damned mess!"
I find it completely unacceptable, ESPECIALLY on a science or tech site. Some won't render on my phone at all.
Also, take what Google says with a grain of salt. Lat year or the year before they said they were going to downrank sites that won't render well in a phone, but Google News still serves me those unreadable pages.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 25 2017, @09:35PM (1 child)
They meat the latest (most expensive) phones with the last bug ridden OS. Not your old proven to work phone :p
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 25 2017, @09:39PM
They meant ..
:-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @12:24AM
web developers mostly SUCK, especially the ones who [work] for newspapers
Amen.
What's especially annoying is when one of those outlets -does- get a guy who knows his ass from a hole in the ground and he makes some changes to the site which -improve- things--then, shortly, he's gone and another nitwit comes in and not only undoes what the smart guy did, the new monkey makes changes that make things _worse_ than before the smart guy got there.
AlterNet, ThinkProgress, and Telegraph.co.uk are examples in recent memory.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]