AMP content shows up before other organic search results. So it's not really optional unless you want to lose all your search-driven traffic.

I think Google had to do something, publishers overdid it with their crappy websites with 50 tracking links and banner ads. The mobile web was slowly dying and everything was moving to apps. AMP is their effort to reverse that trend somewhat. I haven't heard any better ideas (Facebook Instant Articles is worse imo).

do you realize Google bought and now owns 49 of those 50 tracking systems you mention?

the main goal of amp is to monopolize it further and make that last one they couldn't buy stop working.

Google can rank fast pages better. It's perfectly possible to build fast pages with html, but Google wants to own the Internet.

It's like spying on everyone so we can make world safer.

The guy said AMP doesn't influence ranking. Who do we have to believe ?

it may not be a direct ranking signal but i think this is a little disingenuous. by putting this "lighting" icon next to some results, the CTR (click through rate) on the SERPS (search engine results pages), will likely be higher for AMP pages, and that higher CTR _is_ a direct ranking signal which will eventually lead to better rankings.

that is for organic results, but the AMP news carousel _does_ appear at the top of the search results pages.

It doesn't influence ranking. It shows up at the top in the carousel.

Is there an option to avoid it from an end user's perspective? It's made google news so frustrating for me, it will go back a page in history or slide to the next story for no reason whatsoever. I have a Nexus 6P, use Chrome so there's no reason for it to act like that other than just being shitty.

I kinda just stopped reading Google news rather than try to fix it (:

You could try using the Firefox browser. I haven't seen any AMP pages since I moved to it.

Because those that do not opt in will be implicitly penalized by users trained to prefer AMP pages, whether that preference is warranted or not.