Except that AMP pages are often in the band of promoted results that show above the remainder of the search results, at least in the mobile app. And are prominently icon'ed in the desktop results.

So yeah, Google's not honest about this.

From my test the AMP icon in Google's search result is gone (Chrome, Android, Incognito tab).

Disclaimer: I work for Google but not on AMP product.

Search for Trump on iOS and you'll see an AMP icon.

Is the issue the icon or the carousel being at the top? I just checked and the carousel had both AMP and non-AMP content for me.

If you can make your page load as fast as an AMP page you'll probably get ranked there as well. But that's really not easy to achieve. The reason Google can say they don't prefer AMP is because AMP is extremely fast (esp with high latency)

The First Amendment gives them the legal right to curate results as they wish without interference by the U.S. government. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that other people aren't allowed to get pissed off.

I don't think the letter authors were calling for an Act of Congress. My read is that they were calling attention to the damage that AMP does to the content providers. And perhaps they could have put more emphasis on the fact that it's in Google's long-term interest not to bleed content providers dry.

They seem to suggest that Google's control over their own site's design/function is somehow an affront to their cause, not mention malicious.

They certainly see it as a big enough grievance to include in a manifesto type document which repugnantly entitled.

Free speech cuts both ways.

You seem to suggestthat OP's control over their own site content (ie the manifesto) is somehow an affront to your belief in google's free speech.

You certainly see it as a big enough grievance to write a comment on HN which is repugnantly entitled.

They get to pass comment on google's behaviour (a comment which, incidentaly, a lot of people seem to agree with). You get to pass comment on their behaviour. I get to pass comment on your behaviour.

Holding people and companies to account in a soft manner, without resorting to force (legislation counts as force) is an important aspect of a functioning free society. The freedom of speech is not freedom from criticism but freedom to criticise.

God, I hate this argument with a passion. The First Amendment was a means to and, which was protecting free expression from undue influence of the day's most powerful institutions. While it's technically true that all kinds of censorship and other shady shit from powerful organizations complies with it, I consider that a oversight and a bug. An organization as powerful as Google needs more constraints put on it, whether that's through antitrust or some other mechanism.

Speech is protected.

Anti-competitive business practices are not.

They are certainly entangled in this instance.

It's funny how everyone's a legal scholar these days.

It's true that AMP doesn't affect organic search rank. What's misleading about that statement though is that Google displays a carousal specifically for AMP results.

They'll probably do away with the carousal eventually, but for right now an AMP page does have an advantage in search.

The carousal displays both, amp and non-amp content.

Does it? Then I may be misinformed (I very rarely use mobile).

If that's true, and amp doesn't have any preference in the carousal, then Google's comments are completely accurate.

I personally don't believe it.

Does anyone actually believe a fancy AMP powered site isn't getting nice traffic boost from Google?

> Does anyone actually believe a fancy AMP powered site isn't getting nice traffic boost from Google?

If they were to get a nice traffic boost, would it be because the site actually loads faster or because it was ranked higher. I think both would increase the traffic boost.

But the question is do the speed changes made (only regarding adding AMP) effect the PageRank

You’d have to be pretty daft to take their word for it. Google hasn’t played fair in the search space in over a decade.

Well, they may not be risking it, as the EU would happily give em another monstrous fine for that.