(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, and I'm friends with some of the people at the link. Speaking only for myself.)

Edit: I misread. Corrected below. Sorry!

Also worth noting that we should probably judge AMP as a whole product. What if it didn't make things faster at all, but did make them predictable and amenable to prerendering? The product is AMP+Cache+Prerendering. Prerendering unquestionably gives huge speed advantages in many scenarios. If you don't have AMP, you don't have prerendering, which means AMP-as-a-product gives significant speed advantages, since it's on the critical path to prerendering. (All of this is of course predicated on the idea that you can't practically prerender normal HTML pages, which perhaps you can, I don't know. I'm just saying if that justification for AMP is correct, it shouldn't necessarily matter that HTML+AMP markup is not faster than HTML markup.)

You just answered it yourself. If someone follows good habits already, then AMP isn’t faster for them (aside from Google not allowing non-AMP loads to start sooner).

Is that what I'm reading?

And yeah, it's a technical issue.

That's it. I'm putting a 1-second delay into my webserver right now, when it detects Google Chrome.

This whole AMP mess just shows how insidiously evil a HugeCorp can be through sheer system complexity. Was it intentional? Well, I guess court cases will show that, but sheesh... even if unintentional it's extremely chilling.

How about a pop-up telling the user that the UX of this website is better on Firefox? (which is true because e.g. it will not show the annoying pop-up)

Then don't add it for Googlebot User-Agents or IPs.

They'll drop content like a rotten egg from search results of they see a discrepancy.

If you and/or your organization can keep up with all of that... then good for you. That's not the reality for most of the world. And in "world", I include most IT organizations, btw.

EDIT: Btw, do note that I'm not even sure if the alleged issues/problems are even intentional or not... and that in itself is problematic... which was my larger point.

I don't have any solutions.

I don't think any single person can predict/know what's actually going on at this point.

Not handing them data for free would be a start (Analytics & Gmail)

Isn't it the CEO?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_quotes

The CEO can, in most cases, be removed at any time by the board and be replaced by someone else. Without the boards approval none of this can happen.

So if you need to blame someone. It’s the board of directors.

Google does a LOT of crap like that these days. Most people just aren't aware just how "evil" they've become, or prefer to defend them with nonsensical arguments like "see, Google still throws the Don't Be Evil motto somewhere at the very end of their multi-page work of conduct document, so technically they still believe in it!"

I believe this line of thought and justification was addressed for good in the Nuremberg Trials.

If you believe that people are responsible for their actions, and they have a choice of what to do, then just because someone gives them an order doesn't mean they have to follow it. They could refuse. If they accept they are then responsible for their own decision and its consequences.

It is not an excuse. What they did sets the nature of the penalty which may or may not even come out to being a substantial punishment. That they were told to do it, and knew it was wrong, but did it anyway merely fails to absolve them of guilt.

It was used prior, and has been used since, with outcomes ranging from being ignored to being absolved of all responsibility.

It comes down to the scope of the crime. If you helped murder 6 million people (apologies if that's not the correct number), "I was told to" is not an appropriate defense. If it's Karen's birthday and she's lactose intolerant, but your boss says to get an ice cream cake anyways, "I was told to" is a perfectly valid excuse.

Slowing down ads falls somewhere in between, but far closer to pissing off Karen's lactose intolerance than attempting genocide.

I always wonder this with things like the Volkswagen emissions cheating - how do those engineers rationalise it?

A nice fat paycheck will often be enough to quiet a lot of people's doubts. And if it still bothers them, they can make themselves feel better by donating some of the money to charity.

Also, people who do things they know are wrong can mollify their consciences by comparing themselves to people who do even worse, and then patting themselves on the back for not being as bad.

They think things like, "at least I'm not literally robbing anyone", and the robbers think, "at least I'm not physically hurting anyone", and those that hurt people think "at least I'm not killing anyone", and then killers think, "at least I'm not torturing anyone to death," and the torturers tend to have some excuse too, like doing it for the greater good.

Unless you are literally the worst of the worst there'll always be someone worse you could compare yourself to and think that at least you're better than them.

There are already some examples of this kind of justification in this very thread.

I see your point, and I agree. "In the end, it's better for the consumer this way, we're just giving the process the tiniest of nudges." has fueled a lot of anti-consumer hogwash over the years, I'm sure.

For an engineer the end justifies the means when it involves putting food on the table and ensuring there's a roof over your families head - whistle-blowing is not an option, and quitting mid-project is never a good look either.

Every time I hear this ... no. Google engineers could get a job elsewhere easily. It is not like software engineers would be like miners in dying industry struggling to survive. We are well paid and can get jobs easily.

I am not saying that everyone should leave Google. I am saying that if your company demands something unethical from you, rationalizing it through "ensuring there's a roof over your families head" is just lie for most of us.

I completely disagree. Have you noticed how much targeted advertising has sold out our world and affected peoples ability to rationally think?

No, it's the same as any other industry. A single company or negative behavior doesn't define everyone.

It's a race to the bottom, and someone has to code them there. It's bad.

It's a hill I'd be happy to die on. I feel like 6/10 engineers wouldn't care to have that fight, let alone risk their job over it. I'm lucky to be in a position that I am even able to. So many are not. Yet another example for the banality of evil.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/wait-wait-tell-me/

In this case they are using the same approach for HTML/JS ads on AMP pages, but if they know it's AMP they don't need to.

So I dunno - from an engineering point of view it seems pretty well justified to me.