AMP seems less like a response to 'the web is slow' and more a response to 'people who are tired of slow websites are using content blockers so we need an alternative so they don't block our ads'.
Re:Google launches AMP for email
by lern_too_spel on Tuesday March 26, 2019 @07:33PM
(#19496901)
It's a solution to the web is not instant, which closed proprietary competing solutions like Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News solve.
I (sincerely) appreciate reminders like this of just how much online opinions and experiences vary.
My sense of the last few years of web changes is that performance is mostly a product of script-blocking or AMP-degraded functionality, and new multimedia is mostly a user-hostile attempt to boost revenue. Whether it's five-point stories broken across five page loads, Reddit's "use our app" links breaking in AMP, or Techcrunch's insane scroll-down-to-redirect-to-homepage layout, the last ~3 years of web development are full of changes I find actively negative.
I understand the fight over something like AMP for email much better when I remember how far from universal that is. It's not really a surprise there's so much disagreement over what to do next when there's this much divide over what's working well at present.