Accelerated Mobile Pages
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Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a Google-led project that (often) speeds up a subset of HTML through caching and dependencies on Google infrastructure.
IndieWeb Support
The pull request https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/pull/499 by 
Aaron Parecki adds h-entry support to AMP example(s) and thus makes AMP more IndieWeb friendly by default
The PR was subsequently closed with the comment "We decided to remove metadata requirements from AMP." See: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/pull/593
Articles
W3C TAG finding (note, different meaning here of "distributed" (more like "content distribution") than what is usually mean by "distributed web")
- 2017-07-27 : Distributed and syndicated content (archived)
- 2022-08-26 : What happened when we disabled Google AMP at Tribune Publishing? Shockingly little. So you should try it, too (archived):
Given the higher page RPMs and subscriber conversion rates of a non-AMP page, pulling the plug on AMP looks like an easy win for both programmatic and consumer revenue. And most importantly, we regain full control of the user experience. And that’s perhaps the biggest upside.
- Tweet announcing the article:
The data is in. Just drop AMP. You'll be fine
- Tweet announcing the article:
- 2017-02-06 : What's in an AMP URL?
Issues
XML like fragility
It appears that initial implementation(s) of AMP HTML consuming code treat it similarly to old XML consuming code, which is to fail in a fragile way, e.g. as noted in https://web.archive.org/web/20190405153959/https://twitter.com/bryanrieger/status/651782717676216320
Screenshot of an Android device showing www.google.com trying to display an article from m.nydailynews.com with only a sad-mobile-device graphic and an error message:
Sorry, this page is not valid AMP HTML
followed by a footer link to continue to www.nydailynews.com.
Additional citations:
- iOS screenshot of problem: https://twitter.com/shinypb/status/733302396995010561
When developers turn their problems into users' problems: AMP, following in XHTML's proud footsteps.
Criticism
- 2023-05-08 : Speed Trap: Google promised to create a better, faster web for media companies with a new standard called AMP. In the end, it ruined the trust publishers had in the internet giant (archived)
- 2019-12-05 : How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer (archived)
- 2019-05-14 : A report from the AMP Advisory Committee Meeting (archived)
- 2019-03-19 : Google AMP lowered our page speed, and there's no choice but to use it (archived)
- 2017-08-31 : AMPersand (archived)
- 2017-08-16 : Google AMP is bad for E-commerce (archived)
- 2017-06-26 : I decided to disable AMP on my site (archived)
- 2017-05-19 : Kill Google AMP before it KILLS the web (archived)
- 2017-03-13
Jeremy Keith: In AMP we trust - 2017-01-19 : Google AMP is Not a Good Thing via @jevdemon:
AMP is poisonous to the underlying concept of an open internet
- 2016-11-27 : Google's AMP is a gilded cage
- 2016-10-15 : Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic
- 2016-04-06 : Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP): Open or closed? (archived)
- 2016-02-24 : CPP: A Standardized Alternative to AMP (archived)
- 2015-10-10 Jeremy Keith: AMPed up
See Also
- 2017-10-26 Ethan Marcotte: Seven into seven.
Significant features and changes require the approval of AMP’s Technical Lead and one Core Committer, that list seems exclusively staffed and led by Google employees
- http://ampletter.org/
- 2018-06-03 Jeremy Keith AMPstinction
performance on the web is so important that it deserves a long-term solution, co-created by all of us: not some commandents delivered to us from on-high by one organisation, enforced by preferential treatment by that organisation’s monopoly in search.
- https://icosahedron.website/@Xkeeper/100495082662258086
- "lol, amp. i noticed that a page would suddenly appear after 8 seconds of waiting if i disabled js, which seemed pretty weird.
turns out that there's a css3 anim to hide the page for 8 full seconds (that is skipped when the js loads ofc). this is *required* by the amp standard.
your page fails validation if you don't do this.sure makes these goog results look kinda suspicious, huh" @🌺 Revya Centauros 🌸 August 5, 2018
- "lol, amp. i noticed that a page would suddenly appear after 8 seconds of waiting if i disabled js, which seemed pretty weird.
- 2018-09-05 The mysterious case of missing URLs and Google's AMP
- 2018-02-13 WIRED starting using AMP: https://twitter.com/WIRED/status/963455446232322048
- "Starting today, you may spot a few WIRED stories that look a little different than the ones you usually see on our website. These are Google's “AMP Stories," a new storytelling format designed for mobile. http://bit.ly/2nVONDu
In this thread you'll find some examples:" @WIRED February 13, 2018
- "Starting today, you may spot a few WIRED stories that look a little different than the ones you usually see on our website. These are Google's “AMP Stories," a new storytelling format designed for mobile. http://bit.ly/2nVONDu
- ^^^ 2018-02-13 WIRED: Introducing AMP Stories, a Whole New Way to Read WIRED
- Criticism: https://twitter.com/wordsandbits/status/963483380984827905
- "Really awfull reading experience. What's wrong with scrolling? AMP = bad UX. Feels like you're stuck in some old slide deck." @wordsandbits February 13, 2018
- ^^^ criticism of WIRED's position re: AMP and publishers: https://twitter.com/mnot/status/963660801621061633
- "AMP is a bad deal for publishers, @wired. http://ampletter.org" @mnot February 14, 2018
- Criticism: performance not important enough to shift so much power to Google https://twitter.com/mnot/status/966034304156315648 with NYT citation
- "AMP allows Google to do this for more content - especially news - and they even use the same justification - performance. Perf is important, but it’s not so important that we need to shift so much power to Google.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against-google.html" @mnot February 20, 2018
- "AMP allows Google to do this for more content - especially news - and they even use the same justification - performance. Perf is important, but it’s not so important that we need to shift so much power to Google.
- Criticism: Using search engine results to incentivize AMP adoption discomforts some, note disingenous re: claim to be for the open web: https://twitter.com/hj_chen/status/964690783784726529
- "“So, to recap, the web community has stated over and over again that we’re not comfortable with Google incentivizing the use of AMP with search engine carrots. In response, Google has provided yet another search engine carrot for AMP.”" @hj_chen February 17, 2018
- ^^^ expansion: Criticism: disingenous claim to be “for the open web” https://twitter.com/tkadlec/status/963809784658120704
- "Wrote some thoughts about AMP, this time about their new stories format and what I consider a disingenuous claim to be "for the open web". https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2018-02-14-the-two-faces-of-amp/" @tkadlec February 14, 2018
- Criticism: 2018-09-05 Google AMP Can Go To Hell
- Criticism: https://twitter.com/scottjehl/status/1164228776466800641
- "You absolutely do not need to use AMP to make a fast website. Yet increasingly, companies find that they do need to use AMP to remain visible in search against competing sites that use AMP.
That feels wrong. It feels bad for the web.
I wish we could do something to stop it." @scottjehl August 21, 2019
- "You absolutely do not need to use AMP to make a fast website. Yet increasingly, companies find that they do need to use AMP to remain visible in search against competing sites that use AMP.
- Criticism: Google is using AMP to create a proprietary gmail app-platform https://developers.google.com/gmail/ampemail/ which they are calling “dynamic email” https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/take-action-and-stay-up-to-date-with-dynamic-email-in-gmail/ and as a side effect effectively creating another proprietary app store:
When you are ready to start sending dynamic mail to your recipients, you must register with Google.
- Criticism: https://twitter.com/parrots/status/1164555536874070018
- "Piece by piece AMP stops being about a "lightweight page" and more a full replacement to the standards that power the web.
They are using thier search engine dominance to force everyone to adopt this stuff, otherwise no one would. No one needed or asked for this stuff." @parrots August 22, 2019
- "Piece by piece AMP stops being about a "lightweight page" and more a full replacement to the standards that power the web.
- Alternative: For anyone not wanting to use AMP, reader mode in firefox is pretty cool, as are lightweight pages
- Criticism: “I’ve long described Google as an incredibly curious and intelligent five-year-old with no concept of consequences or history. Right now they are seeming also like they’ve found an original historically-significant manuscript, torn a page out of it, scribbled all over it in crayon, and called it their own original story. And people are rushing to put it on their refrigerators.”
- https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/11/19/as-antitrust-pressure-mounts-google-to-pull-back-benefit-to-news-sites-that-adopted-its-preferred-mobile-technology
- https://twitter.com/tmcw/status/1451938637982142467?s=21
- "google… intentionally slowed down non-amp ads to give amp a "comparative boost"? ahem, did google's very-visible-public-engineer-amp-representatives know about this?" @tmcw October 23, 2021