Google are now making new standards which don't conform to the agreed standard, which restrict how you can build your site. If you don't do it, they'll destroy your traffic.
AMP is text book Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. No ad network but the Google ad network allowed.
We're sleep walking back into the same thing MS did 30 years ago, with Google this time. They really have just lived long enough to become the villain.
Are you talking hypothetically? Because right now...
This is not true.
https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-ad#...
What are you talking about? What standards? Most content websites are a combination of incompetence and active hostility to the user. The less control publishers have, the better.
If this "your traffic" is traffic from Google to your website, it isn't "your" traffic, it's Google's. If that traffic from Google is important to you, then it's in your best interests to work with Google's requirements.
People throwing this line out has ruined the dark knight for me.
Anyway, you're exactly right. It's textbook EEE.
Their behaviour with Android is also pretty bad.
and their security disclosure policy.
I already have a javascript spec; it's called ECMAscript. (still wish I could back in time and stop whatever fool decided to shove "java" into the name)
> Putting aside the Google bits, is there a case against building within the AMP HTML and JS spec? Or is the case against all down to Google's ownership of the project?
It's all down to how Google treats AMP pages in their SERPs. They only feature the ones in the Google cache.
Imagine if Google put sites hosted at GCE on the first page of results, and moved any site hosted by AWS or Azure to the 2nd page of results. Think anyone would get mad about that?
Why should it be remotely OK for them to use AMP to do the same thing?
That is why it is reasonable to promote AMP results. They load instantly instead of merely quickly.
Yes, you shouldn't need javascript for basic functionality like images.
That sounds like an optimisation that should be implemented by the browser, not the webpage.
But the likelihood of that happening seems... low.
Is google the worst company around when it comes to this sort of almost faux open source?
Fast, lightweight websites are great - it's just that AMP is completely unnecessary to achieve that goal and instead serves as a way pretense to keep users and content within the Google eco system. Google could just as well rank sites on how fast and optimized they are, regardless of AMP usage, and I'm sure we would see a race to remove the bloat the web is currently plagued by.
https://www.ampproject.org/about/amp-design-principles/
No whitelists.
We won’t give any special treatment to specific sites, domains or origins except where needed for security or performance reasons.
Even if it were proposed in good faith, the power it gives google is too dangerous.
My main issue is that Google hosts your site and tracks all of your visitors directly, whereas you never (directly) see any of those visits. This of course depends on your definition of "ownership of the project" and whether that extends to "ownership of your site and its visitors".
> these seem like issues with Google's cache and hosting, not the spec.
Based on your brief description, these don't sound like they could be issues with the cache or hosting; rather they sound like they're likely with Google's JS implementations of AMP JS libraries.
Sounds like your problem is specifically with Google's cache. Anyone can host an AMP cache. If you afraid of them tracking visitors, you're free to pay for your own hosting and host your own cache, instead of using their free one.
For Google Search (probably the primary link source on at least the anglophone web), Google hosts your content and tracks your visitors.
Putting aside the Google bits, is there a case against building within the AMP HTML and JS spec? Or is the case against all down to Google's ownership of the project?
On my iPhone AMP is frustratingly buggy: rotation doesn't work properly, the URL bar doesn't disappear on scroll, Reader mode works inconsistently, etc. But these seem like issues with Google's cache and hosting, not the spec.