I was reading some articles on Hacker News about how we’ve lost the internet to big companies and how we are not doing anything about it and it got me thinking about Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) again.
My story with AMP started in early 2016 when I enabled it on this site. It kind of exploded in October 2016 when I realized that Google AMP was caching my content on their server, and wrote a provocatively titled post – Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic. That post took off on Hacker News, and Google’s AMP team even invited me to have lunch with them to learn more about my concerns.
Two leads of AMP project are very nice people and were really responsive to my feedback. One of my big asks at the time was to give users a way to get to the original link, instead of only being able to see google’s cached version of the URL in the browser’s tab. They already had something like this in the works, but (I believe) my article helped prioritize this feature, adding a button to view the original URL.
AMP took off. Over two billion pages are using AMP, and there are some studies that show that a lot of users really like AMP and the speed up that it provides, and Facebook Instant Articles just announced support for AMP less than a week ago. I believe that this genie is firmly out of the bottle, and I have little hopes of putting it back, even though I still have my concerns with AMP.
What I realized today, however, is that while I don’t so much mind AMP as a publisher, I really hate it as a user. I realized that EVERY TIME I would land on AMP page on my phone, I would click on the button to view the original URL, and would click again on the URL to be taken to the real website.
I don’t know why I do it, but for some reason it just doesn’t feel “right” to me to consume the content through the AMP. It feels slightly off, and I want the real deal even if it takes a few seconds extra to load.
I’ve looked through AMP the open source project issues on Github, and noticed that a similar request was closed with the following comment:
AMP is a JavaScript library. You cannot make an opt out for it, just like you cannot make an opt out for jQuery, except by disabling JavaScript.
While this is technically correct, this is not the REAL point of this request. I have no issue with the AMP library itself. I don’t care that Facebook Instant Articles or Pinterest use AMP. To be honest, I don’t even know what Facebook Instant Articles are.
My issue with AMP being used inside Google the Search engine, that I use very heavily on my mobile phone. My issue is with the fact that I have to add two extra click to my browsing experience on Mobile Google, to get the desired behavior.
I am not asking for Google to get rid of AMP, but it would be VERY NICE if I could disabled it.
I know that I am not alone in this desire, because when I search for “google amp” on Google I get this:
and this:
So please consider making Google AMP optional!
Update 06/18/2017: Some people expressed a valid criticism that just saying “doesn’t feel right” is not good enough. While I agree, I don’t have any solid data to back up my argument. I believe AMP (to some extent) is a hack. As a result a number of small things (like scrolling) don’t work (on my iPhone) as I would normally expect. Considering that this post received over 1000 up-votes on Hacker News (making it one of the top 300 posts of all time), I believe that I am not alone.
Update 06/26/2017: I disabled AMP support on this site when I realized that Twitter was redirecting mobile users to AMP version of my content. I also outlined some of the reasons why AMP didn’t feel right to me.
Update 09/19/2017: While I still have concerns with AMP, I wanted to point out that it did make things better for users and there is currently no good alternative.
Me says
August 31, 2018 at 2:28 amI’m really sorry to say, but there are stupid people who work @ Google.
Just try to search for more content from AMPed website – it won’t work as expected, it’ll search amp subdomain. So dont require too much from folks @ Google.
prkadi says
June 26, 2018 at 9:50 pmI also hate Google AMP. It saves some time a few times, but only when I want to visit news rubbish sites which have no other value other than that particular article I am reading.
For good sites, I’d rather get the full version, Google has made it difficult to reach by adding 2 steps instead of 1.
Even Tim Ferriss’s blog which is a great read is showing up in AMP, the links from twitter or from Google are showing a stripped bare bones version.
I don’t seem to understand, does Google think we all running a charity?
We run websites, they are businesses, we want people to sign up to our newsletter, we want these things, by controlling that very part, how can Google expect us to survive and continue to create content?
This is something that needs to be stopped, otherwise the internet will only be the domain of big players.
me says
August 31, 2018 at 2:32 amThat’s whole point of AMP, get rid of that useless crap that slows down everything. If your goal is something else than delivering content then you shouldn’t use it.
ProfessorLongbody (@prof_longbody) says
June 26, 2017 at 5:54 amScrolling doesn’t work properly in Chrome for Android either. Ironic that these are all Google products!
I agree completely, the whole experience is horrendous and I would much rather wait a bit longer if it meant I could see the site properly.
Michael Mason (@_mickmason_) says
June 25, 2017 at 5:29 amTotally agree. If I were a content owner I would uncomfortable with this. AMP often does not pull in newsletter sign-ups, related stories etc, the whole point of those is further user engagement and site reach. This causes sites to diminish rather than grow. Maybe the goal for FB and Google is that the entire web should run through their environment?? I don’t know but I know I dislike it.
Wouter says
June 22, 2017 at 11:11 pmWonderfull read and Amp is a devil. Yes it may help at first glance but after that Google is in Charge. Of how fast my site renders. Of how fast api data is pulled in and yes even the api itself could be blocked.
Step a few years into the futimure and we can see a very likely scenario emerging:
– with Amp your website is served at a certain rate. Want it faster? Ugrade your account.
– do want better ranking than say your competitor – even though you do the same? Now you can Pay for that.
-all your traffic is rerouted by how google wants it. Want your own traffic back? Pay for it.
– those adds? Google can decide whats served. Want no ads? Pay for it. Or a different set of banners – because they could serve say season based ads – please pay.
Hack they might even serve you high quality or low quality ads.
And with them servi g your site at their convenience they can also decide what content – your own! – quality is served. Imagine all your images are downsized in quality! And if you want your own! High quality images served you would need to oay for it.
They would literally sit between your own content and the web. Some doorbitch I’d say!
So today I like the idea but consider it a pokemon about to evolve i to something big, something with enormous power.
Cheers
Brade says
June 20, 2017 at 8:35 pmLet me know when they’ve done this. I’m not holding my breath.
Only then will I consider switching back to Google search on my iPhone. For now, DuckDuckGo is getting the job done just fine.
Kimberly White says
June 14, 2017 at 7:41 pmGreat post! I was blissfully unaware of this issue with AMP, though I should have been on top of it. Thanks for the info and for speaking up. The only chance we have of slowing the mass content ‘appropriation’ trend is through awareness and public objection.
Jack says
June 13, 2017 at 9:40 amIf you don’t like AMP, why are you publishing to it?
Alex Kras says
June 13, 2017 at 10:37 amThis would be a good post, but tldr just because I don’t like AMP as a user, I can’t assume that all my readers don’t like it. I just wish users that didn’t like it had an option to turn it off.
That, and as a publisher I want to participate in incentives that Google offers for using AMP.
Kyle Studd says
June 11, 2017 at 8:19 amYes please. I’ve hated AMP from the beginning, and I have some experience in the SEO world. I’m tired of clicking a Reddit post in Google and seeing an out dated AMP version of the post instead of opening the actual post in the Reddit app. I would much rather wait an additional 800ms compared to having to click the link at the top of an AMP to see the original article. I bairly ever notice the original article loading slower unless they have it swamped with ads in which case I hold it against the website for being spammy.
iquanyin says
June 11, 2017 at 6:52 ami agree with the extra clicks irritation, and you can’t share from amp either, you have to click back to the original post.
but on my phones, on anything i use, it is ootional. it asks if i want to male the pagemobile friendly, and if not i ignore it and keep reading and the question quickly vanishes.
so what is different for you? im confused.
Peter Nam says
June 11, 2017 at 6:42 amCan’t you make a direct link to your site’s page auto generated on your article templates?
Anonymous says
June 11, 2017 at 5:03 amWhy not use a search engine that doesn’t use AMP?
Chris Warrick says
June 11, 2017 at 8:22 amBecause all alternatives suck? If you search for “Dolphin emulator” with Bing and DuckDuckGo, you get a fake, outdated page as the first result. Google gets it right.
Vrk says
June 11, 2017 at 5:18 pmstartpage.com works for me for that search.
(but then, so does duckduckgo)
nephanth says
June 11, 2017 at 9:30 pmI agree about duckduckgo, it’s been a while since I last used ot, so my info may be outdated, but it sometimes gives pretty crappy results. I didn’t know bing was even considered an alternative…
Have you tried qwant though ? It generally gives results that are sensibly the same as google.
Since I’ve been using it, I’ve sometimes hat to turn to google for things it couldn’t find, but only to find out google was unable to give any result to these requests either.
sunny kumar aditya says
June 11, 2017 at 2:07 amAMP should be optional. Cannot deny speed is very important but it is not everything. At theayurveda.org we experimented with AMP and as a user felt it is not what I was really looking for. Finally we disabled it for good.
james millard says
June 10, 2017 at 10:52 pmI couldn’t agree more. For me it’s because I read a lot straight out of the Google Now cards, and wanted to only use a browser that supports a dark mode for the massive battery savings and general speed. I should be able to click on an article and open it with whatever I want. I don’t like being rail roader or forced to do anything and like doing things how I want, which is a large part of why I’m with Android and Google.
Nick Chapman says
June 11, 2017 at 11:25 amDark themes and such only help with AMOLED screens, I think?
I found a setting that allows your default browser to be called when Google now card links are accessed. Bet you can find it!
Hashim Warren says
June 10, 2017 at 6:41 pmI thought I was the only one who clicks on the original link every single time
Nom Deplume says
June 10, 2017 at 5:03 pmIf Google asks you to go to lunch again, ask them to explain this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14529605
Alex Kras says
June 10, 2017 at 8:39 pmI am pretty sure they will not.
But AMP lead is very responsive on Twitter. You can find him there – @cramforce
No Notso Much says
June 10, 2017 at 4:18 pmI deeply hope AMP goes the way of Wave or Glass quickly.
Vit Jedlicka says
June 10, 2017 at 4:35 pmYou got a HN thread.