from Hacker News

The Why and How of Google AMP at Condé Nast

by taveras on 8/30/17, 10:09 PM with 91 comments

  • by MBCook on 8/31/17, 1:00 AM

    Why are they crowing about how much faster it is?

    I imagine if they stripped off all the stuff from their own sites that doesn't show up on AMP the speed would basically be the same, and they wouldn't be under Google's thumb.

    No massive header with lots of images of other stories, no master folder with lots of images of other stories, no giant sidebar with lots of images of other stories… get rid of all of them. All of a sudden your page is really fast and doesn't take 45s to load.

    Remember what the web was like on dial-up? Design pages for that but with large images. Text goes a LONG way for navigation and discovery of other stories. You don't need ridiculous big images.

    Do something really simple. Make a page with content that looks exactly like the AMP page. AB test that against the AMP page. I'd be willing to bet they basically perform the same, modulo any benefit Google gives you for being part of their lock-in.

    Text articles with pictures do not require the complexity of googles infrastructure and systems to be fast and lite.

  • by yakz on 8/31/17, 12:42 AM

    As an end-user, AMP breaks 'back' on my iPhone when I navigate to articles (including those from Condé Nast) linked to from Google News. I have to scroll up and use Google's custom back button; using left/right swipe gestures or the browser's back causes problems. Sometimes it's so bad that when I reload the page, I get some weird error from Google about how I got there, which is doubly weird because it's their fault I'm there because they're intentionally wrapping/breaking standard functionality.

  • by prewett on 8/31/17, 1:05 AM

    > AMP delivers many benefits in terms of performance, consistency, and experience for our mobile users.

    Performance: yes.

    Consistency: NO. It looks like one of those annoying download-my-app bars, but it isn't, it's a back button. As if I didn't already have one of those.

    Experience: NO. It sucks up space on my mobile device, and I can't get rid of it.

    User feedback: can't wait for iOS 11 and Safari's anti-AMP. Unfortunately, I don't see anywhere I can give user feedback.

  • by SquareWheel on 8/30/17, 11:20 PM

    Wow, 36% of traffic seems pretty high. That's a huge chunk of mobile (79% apparently), with an almost doubled click-through rate.

    As much as HN loves to bicker about Amp, in this case it was clearly a net positive.

  • by WillPostForFood on 8/31/17, 3:48 AM

    The real problem is the "why" which, whether people admit it or not, is because Google is blackmailing publishers to follow their rules else be punished in search results. The whole modern web is basically defined by trying to conform to what Google wants.

  • by tannhaeuser on 8/31/17, 2:16 AM

    If Google ranks AMP pages higher than regular pages just because they're AMP pages and hosted on Google property, this simply spells the begin of the end for Google search as we know it. Who needs that kind of manipulated crap search? Given the race to the bottom on the web, soon Wikipedia, StackExchange, Reddit and HN search already covers everything that Google search does anyway. Oh, and Google, don't let the EU know about this new anti-competitive behavior of yours.

    Interesting time for small-scale and custom search sites ahead.

  • by donohoe on 8/31/17, 1:03 AM

    Completely 100% nit-pick here, but just wanted to say that The New Yorker was the first Conde property up on AMP (June 14th 2016), and we used WordPress. Wired and Pitchfork followed after that.

    But its not a competition.

  • by garganzol on 8/31/17, 9:19 AM

    Google AMP is an attempt to racket the web by stealing content and traffic while bribing a poor victim with "increased SEO" factor.

    How dare are you, Google? Open and decentralized world wide web is the thing that allowed you to exist in the first place.

  • by zackbloom on 8/31/17, 12:25 AM

    FYI if you're interested in AMP but don't want to be served from a google.com domain, Cloudflare also has a compatible implementation: https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/accelerated-...

  • by whyagaindavid on 8/31/17, 6:07 AM

    Suggestion: use AMP-api to modify all browser requests to load Google CDN AMP page. Save data.

  • by javindo on 8/31/17, 1:02 PM

    I really wish Google AMP didn't overrule the Chrome android "force enable pinch to zoom" from an accessibility standpoint.

  • by taytus on 8/31/17, 12:23 AM

    Google AMP has a lot of success stories: https://www.ampproject.org/case-studies/