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Your hypothetical there assumes that AMP actually works well. My experience is it's got painful usability issues at least on android chrome. The worst one I see

Your hypothetical there assumes that AMP actually works well. My experience is it's got painful usability issues at least on android chrome. The worst one I see all the time is scrolling down to actually read the AMP page frequently results in the page closing, returning you to results. Fast is good, but at least it ought to be a good user experience. I used to use google news a lot, but i totally abandoned it after constant frustrating experiences with AMP. Plus most of the amp-ified pages don't seem significantly faster than the original page. I'm not seeing the utility for users, just for google.

imchillyb 9y ago
Perhaps it's your device @baconner? I'm using an LG V20 device, with Chrome mobile, and I see a significant improvement with AMP'd pages over normal sites. So-much-so that I dread going to non-amped pages as they are slow and the ads are horrifically annoying. I guess this is why anecdotal evidence is not as heavily weighed as a thoroughly tested and evidenced study. YMMV I <3 AMP
- baconner 9y ago
  To be fair I also use a VPN a lot of the time with adblocking. That does speed up a lot of high ad sites. Bugwise though I've had the same issues over a couple of different phones.
- snovv_crash 9y ago
  I use Firefox mobile with uBlock Origin, and the internet is fast for me without using any AMP pages. YMMV.
dingo_bat 9y ago
Although AMP is not a performance beast by any measure, your experience is coloured because you're using Chrome on Android. Google news works pretty well on Samsung browser. It still annoys me that I can't see the link to the actual website but that's it.
- freehunter 9y ago
  So you're saying that Google's official browser is slow on their official web technology on their official mobile platform? And Samsung, who is well known for their software quality issues, is a better choice?
  - jdironman 9y ago
    Well, he is speaking from experience. While this isn't the place for speaking from experience but more about enabling a better experience for all users he cannot deny what he has observed. However the user above us had the correct answer with filing a bug / legitimate issue with devs. That is the only way to increase usability for all users.
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    I thought this was common knowledge. Chrome is horrible on Android. If you look at benchmarks, the only browser/phone combination that is close to iPhone Safari performance is the latest galaxy flagship running Samsung Internet.
  - Mindwipe 9y ago
    Samsung's browser (and several other competitors) are faster on Android because they contain closed source rendering that's customised for their chipsets. Google can't integrate the closed source code into Chrome because they'd effectively have to fork it from Chromium to do so.
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      Doesn't Chrome already contain close source code? I thought it was chromium plus Google proprietary code. For example, some features are available only on Chrome (DRM etc. "features"). If they wanted, they could optimise for a selected few top selling devices.
kyrra 9y ago
[I work for Google, opinions my own] If you have specific issues you can spell out, consider filing a bug on it[0]? The AMP team is tracking most of their work via Github as far as I'm aware. As an iOS user, one bug that bothered me for a long time with AMP was scroll inertia, which seems to be an issue with Webkit rather than AMP[1]. If you poke around the tracker, you can see the team does what it can to fix issues across all platforms/browsers. [0] https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues [1] https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/5125 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/5125
- theWatcher37 9y ago
  You work for google, so you're unabashedly supporting a terrible attack on the open web because it's "fast"?
- ENGNR 9y ago
  Problem: A giant Google banner over web page, URL is broken Solution: Remove banner, redirect to URL Resolution: Closed, Google likes it that way. Actual solution: Don't use AMP, and slowly get pushed out of Google search.
- epistasis 9y ago
  Funny that AMP just happened to use some sort of page structure that triggered an iOS bug that >99.9% of the rest of the web does not trigger... What are the chances that Google would listen to big reports, supposing that anybody could find those links? Google is notorious for being inaccessible unless you happen to know an employee personally or have enough juice on twitter. They do not have a reputation as an open or accessible company.
mkawia 9y ago
AMP is also literally breaking internet. People share google.com/amp links,sometimes there'd be no preview and hard telling what the actual website being linked is.
- cheeze 9y ago
  On ff/windows 10 I just get redirected to the non AMP version of pages. How is this breaking the internet?
  - deno 9y ago
    Google can (or refuse to) redirect you anywhere. They also get to know about it, in case the analytics on target page was not enough. That said, I don’t actually agree that AMP’s link rewriting is necessarily the thing that breaks internet, because the original link is still contained in the modified URL, and can be recovered completely offline. URL shorteneres are much more harmful in that aspect. The real danger of AMP is giving Google that much (more) power. They don’t hide links today, but what stops them from turning evil(er) tomorrow. Preferring AMP pages is a clear monopoly practice, and should be the straw that breaks the camel’s back (if you didn’t care about the censorship…). I’m really trying to have faith in free market sorting this out, but I don’t have much faith in the Facebook drones that brought us all this shit in the first place. Are there enough free people left?
- _jtrig 9y ago
  On safari I get nothing except AMP links in google and cannot get myself routed to the actual site even with extensive searching. This disables sharing the link for me as well.
  - rbjorklin 9y ago
    Have you considered switching search engines? I've been using https://duckduckgo.com https://duckduckgo.com for the last two years and this is the first time I'm hearing of Google AMP.
    - 9y ago
bitmapbrother 9y ago
>The worst one I see all the time is scrolling down to actually read the AMP page frequently results in the page closing Anecdotal, but I've never had this happen to me. Chrome on Nexus 6P 7.1.2
Diederich 9y ago
I have an excellent user experience with AMP on my phone using Chrome. I agree with the fundamental and structural concerns associated with it though. Is there anything you're doing on your connection that's unusual?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
beefield 9y ago
> The worst one I see all the time is scrolling down to actually read the AMP page frequently results in the page closing, returning you to results. Fast is good, but at least it ought to be a good user experience. I used to use google news a lot, but i totally abandoned it I use "request desktop site" on google news to get that working properly on my android.
Mindwipe 9y ago
They're also often significantly more feature poor, and the ugly URL bar is a net usability detractor.

imchillyb 9y ago

Perhaps it's your device @baconner? I'm using an LG V20 device, with Chrome mobile, and I see a significant improvement with AMP'd pages over normal sites. So-much-so that I dread going to non-amped pages as they are slow and the ads are horrifically annoying. I guess this is why anecdotal evidence is not as heavily weighed as a thoroughly tested and evidenced study. YMMV I <3 AMP

baconner 9y ago
To be fair I also use a VPN a lot of the time with adblocking. That does speed up a lot of high ad sites. Bugwise though I've had the same issues over a couple of different phones.
snovv_crash 9y ago
I use Firefox mobile with uBlock Origin, and the internet is fast for me without using any AMP pages. YMMV.

dingo_bat 9y ago

Although AMP is not a performance beast by any measure, your experience is coloured because you're using Chrome on Android. Google news works pretty well on Samsung browser. It still annoys me that I can't see the link to the actual website but that's it.

freehunter 9y ago
So you're saying that Google's official browser is slow on their official web technology on their official mobile platform? And Samsung, who is well known for their software quality issues, is a better choice?
- jdironman 9y ago
  Well, he is speaking from experience. While this isn't the place for speaking from experience but more about enabling a better experience for all users he cannot deny what he has observed. However the user above us had the correct answer with filing a bug / legitimate issue with devs. That is the only way to increase usability for all users.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  I thought this was common knowledge. Chrome is horrible on Android. If you look at benchmarks, the only browser/phone combination that is close to iPhone Safari performance is the latest galaxy flagship running Samsung Internet.
- Mindwipe 9y ago
  Samsung's browser (and several other competitors) are faster on Android because they contain closed source rendering that's customised for their chipsets. Google can't integrate the closed source code into Chrome because they'd effectively have to fork it from Chromium to do so.
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    Doesn't Chrome already contain close source code? I thought it was chromium plus Google proprietary code. For example, some features are available only on Chrome (DRM etc. "features"). If they wanted, they could optimise for a selected few top selling devices.

kyrra 9y ago

[I work for Google, opinions my own] If you have specific issues you can spell out, consider filing a bug on it[0]? The AMP team is tracking most of their work via Github as far as I'm aware. As an iOS user, one bug that bothered me for a long time with AMP was scroll inertia, which seems to be an issue with Webkit rather than AMP[1]. If you poke around the tracker, you can see the team does what it can to fix issues across all platforms/browsers. [0] https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues [1] https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/5125 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/5125

theWatcher37 9y ago
You work for google, so you're unabashedly supporting a terrible attack on the open web because it's "fast"?
ENGNR 9y ago
Problem: A giant Google banner over web page, URL is broken Solution: Remove banner, redirect to URL Resolution: Closed, Google likes it that way. Actual solution: Don't use AMP, and slowly get pushed out of Google search.
epistasis 9y ago
Funny that AMP just happened to use some sort of page structure that triggered an iOS bug that >99.9% of the rest of the web does not trigger... What are the chances that Google would listen to big reports, supposing that anybody could find those links? Google is notorious for being inaccessible unless you happen to know an employee personally or have enough juice on twitter. They do not have a reputation as an open or accessible company.

mkawia 9y ago

AMP is also literally breaking internet. People share google.com/amp links,sometimes there'd be no preview and hard telling what the actual website being linked is.

cheeze 9y ago
On ff/windows 10 I just get redirected to the non AMP version of pages. How is this breaking the internet?
- deno 9y ago
  Google can (or refuse to) redirect you anywhere. They also get to know about it, in case the analytics on target page was not enough. That said, I don’t actually agree that AMP’s link rewriting is necessarily the thing that breaks internet, because the original link is still contained in the modified URL, and can be recovered completely offline. URL shorteneres are much more harmful in that aspect. The real danger of AMP is giving Google that much (more) power. They don’t hide links today, but what stops them from turning evil(er) tomorrow. Preferring AMP pages is a clear monopoly practice, and should be the straw that breaks the camel’s back (if you didn’t care about the censorship…). I’m really trying to have faith in free market sorting this out, but I don’t have much faith in the Facebook drones that brought us all this shit in the first place. Are there enough free people left?
_jtrig 9y ago
On safari I get nothing except AMP links in google and cannot get myself routed to the actual site even with extensive searching. This disables sharing the link for me as well.
- rbjorklin 9y ago
  Have you considered switching search engines? I've been using https://duckduckgo.com https://duckduckgo.com for the last two years and this is the first time I'm hearing of Google AMP.
  - 9y ago

bitmapbrother 9y ago

>The worst one I see all the time is scrolling down to actually read the AMP page frequently results in the page closing Anecdotal, but I've never had this happen to me. Chrome on Nexus 6P 7.1.2

Diederich 9y ago

I have an excellent user experience with AMP on my phone using Chrome. I agree with the fundamental and structural concerns associated with it though. Is there anything you're doing on your connection that's unusual?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

beefield 9y ago

> The worst one I see all the time is scrolling down to actually read the AMP page frequently results in the page closing, returning you to results. Fast is good, but at least it ought to be a good user experience. I used to use google news a lot, but i totally abandoned it I use "request desktop site" on google news to get that working properly on my android.

Mindwipe 9y ago

They're also often significantly more feature poor, and the ugly URL bar is a net usability detractor.