The Meaning of AMP (adactio.com) 95
Last week, Ethan Marcotte, an independent web designer, shared how Google describes AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). People at Google says AMP "isn't a 'proprietary format'; it's an open standard that anyone can contribute to." But that definition, Marcotte argues, isn't necessarily an honest one. He writes: On the face of it, this statement's true. AMP's markup isn't proprietary as such: rather, all those odd-looking amp- tags are custom elements, part of the HTML standard. And the specification's published, edited, and distributed on GitHub, under one of the more permissive licenses available. So, yes. The HTML standard does allow for the creation of custom elements, it's true, and AMP's license is quite liberal. But spend a bit of time with the rules that outline AMP's governance. Significant features and changes require the approval of AMP's Technical Lead and one Core Committer -- and if you peruse the list of AMP's Core Committers, that list seems exclusively staffed and led by Google employees. Now, there's nothing wrong with this. After all, AMP is a Google-backed project, and they're free to establish any governance model they deem appropriate. But when I hear AMP described as an open, community-led project, it strikes me as incredibly problematic, and more than a little troubling. AMP is, I think, best described as nominally open-source. It's a corporate-led product initiative built with, and distributed on, open web technologies. Jeremy Keith, a web developer, further adds: If AMP were actually the product of working web developers, this justification would make sense. As it is, we've got one team at Google citing the preference of another team at Google but representing it as the will of the people. This is just one example of AMP's sneaky marketing where some finely-shaved semantics allows them to appear far more reasonable than they actually are. At AMP Conf, the Google Search team were at pains to repeat over and over that AMP pages wouldn't get any preferential treatment in search results ... but they appear in a carousel above the search results. Now, if you were to ask any right-thinking person whether they think having their page appear right at the top of a list of search results would be considered preferential treatment, I think they would say hell, yes! This is the only reason why The Guardian, for instance, even have AMP versions of their content -- it's not for the performance benefits (their non-AMP pages are faster); it's for that prime real estate in the carousel. The same semantic nit-picking can be found in their defence of caching. See, they've even got me calling it caching! It's hosting. If I click on a search result, and I am taken to page that has a URL beginning with https://www.google.com/amp/s/... then that page is being hosted on the domain google.com. That is literally what hosting means. Now, you might argue that the original version was hosted on a different domain, but the version that the user gets sent to is the Google copy. You can call it caching if you like, but you can't tell me that Google aren't hosting AMP pages. That's a particularly low blow, because it's such a bait'n'switch.
Yay! There's a new TLA (Score:5, Funny)
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Can somebody please explain the TLA (Three Letter Abbreviation) when they post an article about it?
In my world, amp is generally used as a contraction of amplifier. I don't know what TFS is babbling on about.
Wikipedia lists 40 alternatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It is a specific kind of amplifier.
A money amplifier, for Google.
Re:Yay! There's a new TLA (Score:4, Informative)
The editors ninja-edited TFS to make you look like a fool.
Like a fool!
Accelerated Mobile Pages (Score:5, Informative)
AMP is Accelerated Mobile Pages [wikipedia.org], an HTML dialect that's processed by JavaScript hosted by Google. Google claims that AMP is quicker for at least three reasons:
1. The AMP script is less heavy than some of the ad, responsive image, and video display scripts on popular sites.
2. Elements far above and far below the viewport are removed from the DOM. This makes it less likely that the browser will have to purge other tabs from RAM, nor the operating system other applications.
3. Documents are mirrored by the www.google.com host, to which the user already holds a TCP connection.
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Yes, inefficiently displayed ads make the web suck. That said, not all ads are inefficiently displayed.
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Yes, they did; they admitted that if websites host their own ads, it sucks even more than if they let google host google ads!
I'm glad you enjoyed the little talk they had they with you.
definition is on the first line of the summary (Score:4, Informative)
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Committee to Abolish TLAs.
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cat manifesto.txt > /dev/null
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I usually agree with this comment-- I hate TLAs!!!!-- but in this case, the definition is on the first line of the summary.
It wasn't when the story first posted. They added it after the collected pernickety hoards of slashdot started pointing it out.
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I thought is was an abbreviation for coulomb/second.
Embrace and extend (Score:5, Insightful)
AMP is google dabbling in the microsoft originated corruption process known as Embrace and Extend. You take a standard and fully implement it, then add a few new features. You create huge incentives to use those features such as an IDE that doesn't distinguish between standard and non-standard HTML, and a browser that gets better performance when you use the new features. Pretty soon everyone inadvertently uses the features and all the other parts of the web break except for those using the google browser and google news feeds and google search. The competition and the general standard withers on the vine. You then keep introducing new features, and especially insidious ones, that gather information from users or are introduced ahead of their adequate documentation to stay one step ahead of other implementers. Finally you tie it to features only available on your system, such as the Microsoft OS, or to logged in google users.
2. profit.
there is no ??? step in embrace and extend.
Google is the new AOL & CompuServe. (Score:3)
AMP is google dabbling in the microsoft originated corruption process known as Embrace and Extend.
Google is the new AOL & CompuServe. Through their powerful search engine and other services they have basically taken over the free web and own it by default. It *is* a sort of embrace and extend, albeit one that comes with quite some empowerment. And for 'free' as in "Brave New World meets 1984 with the brakes removed and you'll love it" sort of vibe.
While MSes old-school e (embrace extend extinguish) wa
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You left out the bit about extending with proprietary functions - that only work with the Microsoft implementation of the open standard, and that you're quietly nudged toward using without quite understanding that they're locking you in to that Microsoft implementation.
This thing, while controlled by Google, isn't quite proprietary. It can be forked. And it since it depends on machine-readable tags in otherwise standard HTML, it can be removed if you decide you don't like Google's influence. I don't see
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At least give them credit for innovation; instead of embrace and extend they extended and embraced!
Oracle and Sun both tried that and got laughed at, Google may have it figured out.
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Last week, Ethan Marcotte, an independent web designer, shared how Google describes AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages [wikipedia.org]).
That first sentence includes both an expansion of the acronym and a link for more information. What more do you want? The Wikipedia article to be copied and pasted into the summary?
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What Google has done here is create an open standard that is a superset of HTML5; that is, it includes all of HT
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I think you partly misunderstood my V/ATT reference, at least how it relates to AMP. Back in the pre iPhone days, Verizon and AT&T both had "proxy" web services that would facilitate "faster" service by compressing and caching web content for remote sites, which they then served to you. So you never knew if you were getting a real web site or something cached, along with ads as favored by ATT/V, injected into the cached pages and/or from proxy'd sites.
I'm sure you're seeing where that's leading me.
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You completely missed the main point of the fine article - Google is going to considerable lengths to make web developers think AMP is open but in reality it is completely controlled by Google.
At least you managed to pick up on the fact that article contained the word Google. I guess that's a start.
Re: OMG OMG OMG (Score:1)
In an attempt to be a smartass you missed the entire point of why he's saying those things. Everything he said about google and amp is common knowledge that backs up his points of why amp isn't really open.
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Except that it's hosted on GitHub and has an Apache license. You could quite literally fork it, make changes to it, and sell it if you wanted to. It's hard to understand how much more open it could be?
I think the criticism here is more about how much weight Google has in de-facto web standards. That's valid, but this the open source isn't open source nonsense is a red herring.
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MightyYar pointed out:
I think the criticism here is more about how much weight Google has in de-facto web standards. That's valid, but this the open source isn't open source nonsense is a red herring.
Yep.
Note, for instance, that critic Ethan Marcotte's complaints include:
Significant features and changes require the approval of AMP's Technical Lead and one Core Committer -- and if you peruse the list of AMP's Core Committers, that list seems exclusively staffed and led by Google employees.
AFAIK, "significant features and changes" to the Linux kernel require the approval of Linus Torvalds. Full stop. Is he trying to imply that none of the Core Committers would be willing to second the approval of the Technical Lead?
I don' theeng so, Quickstraw.
Is there any bar to an outsider becoming a Core Committer? Marcotte seems to imply that there is, without bothering to provide any evidence that that
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The meaning of AOSP (Score:3)
This is much easier to explain through a much more common practice by the same company: the Android "Open Source" Project.
Let's get this out of the way: Android isn't open source (outside of China at least, where Google is blocked). Period. No discussion. When you have a market so flooded by Android devices shipping with a closed source module, with super user powers, that responds to remote requests, it's not open source. That's Google Play Services for you.
AMP is just another tool for Google to keep a trendy brand on the dev community, while achieving secondary goals in the process, goals usually related to keeping or stretching their core business, which as we all know, is Big Data and Ads. They want to standardize indeed - standardize your usage patterns into their technologies.
But the true question is: is that so bad? We eventually have to place our trust in a paltform. Some already live with the apples, others with the windows, yet the gogles always get the bad rep. Maybe we shouldn't worry so much about this specific company. I mean, it is heavily scrutinized already by the competition.
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That's Google Play Services for you.
I've got an ancient (circa 2011) smartphone and Google Play Services keeps reinstalling itself on my phone unbidden.
Re-installing without explicit authorization is a page from the malware playbook.
My next phone will be one that I can easily root and put LineageOS on.
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Google Play Services keeps reinstalling itself on my phone unbidden.
It's "bidden" all right, by Google Play Store. Remove that and Google Play Services will stop trying to reinstall itself.
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Tap Uninstall Updates, then tap Disable.
If you unlock the bootloader and replace the stock ROM (which has GMS) with a build of AOSP (which lacks GMS), then Google Play Store won't be installed in the first place.
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then all of a sudden all apps dependant on gservices will stop responding or reduce functionality to a "no play services, computer says no" dialog, and I don't mean just google but anything that uses any of their platforms from Google Accounts, drive, search or firebase/cloud messaging, to name just a few.
My country's top money "lending" platform (lending as in "hey I dont have cash Bob, give me 5 bucks and I'll wire you"... cha'ching: 10 seconds later he gets the money on his app), which is like a whatsapp
Amazon Appstore (Score:2)
then all of a sudden all apps dependant on gservices will stop responding or reduce functionality to a "no play services, computer says no" dialog
Then use applications from F-Droid and Amazon Appstore, most of which do not depend on Google Play Services. Or use mobile web applications instead of Google Play Services-dependent native applications.
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Oh god, here comes the "stores and apps that nobody uses" argument all over again. The good thing is I know for a fact those who use that argument pretty much have an opinion formed, so no point arguing, yet are hopping someday those stores will actually gain the popularity they need to actually matter... Good luck with that. Even on such an unlikely event, those pro-whatever-I don't-even-undeestand "stores" will find a business model that screws you right up the ass just like every other company's exit str
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Yes my Linux OS isn't open source either because I have a binary Nvidia driver and run Chrome as the browser.
Please learn the difference between the OS specifically advertised with tie-ins to a specific service that companies are shipping on mobile phones, and the Open Source project that has given rise to a number of spin-off tablets by third parties is actively in development with the source code freely available and distributed under an approved license.
It will make your comment sound less like the rambl
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Google Play Services probably has all the aspects that you attribute to it. Though, if I recall, much of the reason a lot of that stuff migrated to Play Services from AOSP was to make sure that it was available on devices that never got OS upgrades. I don't know if that was by design, but I'm willing to give Google the benefit of the doubt and assume that when AOSP was released, they didn't have some nefarious plot to get OEM's to 'force' them to take bits proprietary by not keeping their devices up to da
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> Let's get this out of the way: Android isn't open source (outside of China at least, where Google is blocked). Period. No discussion. When you have a market so flooded by Android devices shipping with a closed source module, with super user powers, that responds to remote requests, it's not open source. That's Google Play Services for you.
True, but there are ways around that. Google Play Services isn't mandatory on FOSS releases of android like Lineage.
My current tablet (a lenovo yoga tab 3, bough
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Hi cas. Maybe I didn't add context: I flash every other week. I've flashed ever since froyo times and I've lived with and without "gapps". I use f-droid for all my open-source needs.
What I'm trying to say is: I know which kind of alternatives exist and use them regularly, but not exclusively. I'm not your run of the mill commenter and what I said wasn't said lightly.
Sorry to put it so offensively, but I won't take shit arguments from someone who admitedly doesn't have apps installed for the simple fact he c
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Was I making an argument about Android? No, I was pointing out for the benefit of other readers that neither GPS nor gapps are required. Your disclaimer doesn't diminish the fact that you're an arsehole.
In fact, it was you who was making a (demonstrably false) argument: "Let's get this out of the way: Android isn't open source (outside of China at least, where Google is blocked). Period. No discussion. When you have a market so floode
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Congrats on actually replying, it's good to see some still won't drop a good discussion out of the internet's "lost in translation" factor. (I'm giving you a straight compliment if that wasn't clear. No irony).
I read, and actually understand every single point you mention. I might have even empathized with some it. But I agree with none (!). I value my privacy in different ways - so different they don't prevent me from the perks of societal evolution. Maybe you read Darwin wrong. I won't say I agree with ev
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AMP is free (in cost). In effect, though, they limit access to your brand and ads and the content almost appears to be sponsored by Google.
AMP is broken (Score:5, Insightful)
I find that AMP breaks pages and I'd rather turn it off if I could find a way. I can't bookmark the pages, the links are wrong, and sometimes they don't render properly. If I can hack the URL and find the *real* page it usually works better. Google is using AMP as an excuse to take over pages from other sites so they can track people better. At this point, just turn on private browsing mode before using any Google page.
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Click the paperclip icon to go the "real" page (Score:2)
I got so annoyed with that too. Then I decided to try clicking the paperclip-looking icon at the top of AMP pages. Clicking that displays the source url (to share it), clicking the URL loads the original origin page.
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This is a bug and will soon be fixed.
Dominance game (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me: Google is becoming more abusive. (Score:5, Interesting)
When I go to web pages, often the NoScript and Ghostery add-ons list one or more Google processes. Google is following web site visitors everywhere.
Google allows cell phone providers to prevent updates to its Android operating system. That forces people who need security to buy new cell phones.
In general, it seems to me that hardware and software providers are becoming more and more authoritarian. They take advantage of the fact that most people don't know much about technology.
In my opinion, Microsoft's Windows 10 is NOT USABLE! How can you deliver a computer to a customer when you know what you are delivering is spyware? One article: Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. [networkworld.com] Quote from that story: "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." A previous comment about Microsoft: Window 10 Spyware [slashdot.org].
Technology companies are not only abusive in their design of products, they are abusive in other ways, also:
Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book. [businessinsider.com]
Apple: Cupertino Mayor Says Apple 'Abuses Us' [fortune.com]
Apple again: Criticism of Apple Inc. [wikipedia.org]
Adobe Systems: Adobe Flash, The Spy in Your Computer -- Part 1 [welivesecurity.com] Adobe seems to me to be one of the original abusers. The company demonstrated to others that average people don't know how to protect themselves from technology abuse.
Adobe Systems rents software: Software as a Monthly Rental [nytimes.com]
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Google is becoming more and more abusive
You preface your post with "becoming" implying an ever increasing change, but all your examples detail an ~5-10 year status quo. 3
Google has always tracked visitors.
Android has always always been beholden to the vendor (not the carrier, that is something that seems uniquely American at this point, and side note that Google has put effort into separating the security update process from the core features specifically to make it easier for vendors to provide security updates).
How can you deliver a computer to a customer when you know what you are delivering is spyware?
Because users don't care, and cer
Google search improved our lives ENORMOUSLY. (Score:2)
Google search improved our lives ENORMOUSLY, I agree. In other areas, Google is not as well-managed, in my opinion.
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gmail.
In the past we had to use imperfect spam filters. In 1999 I even missed an important email because it was a false-positive in spam! gmail never puts my real mail in spam, and very very little spam makes it through (maybe 1 per month I click on "spam")
Google search was really good when there was a search language, but now it just mixed keywords with no advanced use control at all. The only thing you can do in most cases is to creatively alter the keyword list; in the past there were a whole bunch of pr
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Oh yes Google search is the only benefit we have received. To say nothing of:
Competition in the mobile smartphone marketplace
Mapping
Navigation
Realtime traffic analysis of cities
Competition in the tablet marketplace
Competition in the cheap laptop marketplace
Competition in the browser market place, something which Google specifically emphasised the move towards standards compliance as well as kicked off the race for faster Javascript interpretation.
Before Google our email inboxes were small,
Speaking of email
I have studied companies that self-destruct. (Score:2)
Nothing I said was intended to be a complete analysis of Google management of the last few years. I agree that GMail is a wonderful contribution.
I'm studying how successful companies eventually fail. For me, it was painful to watch Hewlett-Packard destroy itself. One article: How Hewlett-Packard lost its way [fortune.com] (May 8, 2012).
Another example: Tektronix was once a wonderful leader i
License Proliferation (Score:4, Interesting)
yes, that's true but... (Score:4, Insightful)
i'm willing to entertain the claims of this article, but seriously, if "working web developers" had any more input on standards, we'd all need 16-core CPUs and 64GB of RAM just to use a web browser.
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That's actually a big part of the motivation for my upcoming upgrade to a Threadripper CPU with 64GB RAM.
I use both chromium and firefox (simultaneously, for different things), currently chromium has 14 windows open with a total of 91 tabs. firefox has 16 windows open with a total of 216 tabs. chromium ( v61.0.3163.100) is currently using 11GB of RAM, and Firefox (v56.0) is using 5GB....that's a large chunk of my 32GB. With everything else that's running on my system, I'm always on the edge of running ou
Re: yes, that's true but... (Score:2)
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That's actually a big part of the motivation for my upcoming upgrade to a Threadripper CPU with 64GB RAM.
I use both chromium and firefox (simultaneously, for different things), currently chromium has 14 windows open with a total of 91 tabs. firefox has 16 windows open with a total of 216 tabs. chromium ( v61.0.3163.100) is currently using 11GB of RAM, and Firefox (v56.0) is using 5GB....that's a large chunk of my 32GB. With everything else that's running on my system, I'm always on the edge of running out of RAM.
OK, I have something like 23 windows with multiple tabs each (multiple meaning more than 4, not much reason for a window with less the way I organize them) in Safari,I have 24GB, run roughly 3-7 IDEs concurrently (different needs made it easier to customize each IDE for its respective environment) 3 servers, 2 DBs, multiple builds, mail, FireFox for debugging specific performance issues on web pages and host of minor other programs, and I still have 3GB free after 50 days of uptime. (I run all this on a 980
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Yeah, there is a problem, and it's Chromium. It uses easily 2-4 times as much RAM as Firefox for far fewer tabs/windows. The multi-threaded model uses a LOT of memory. Firefox is getting worse though recently as it is also starting to use multiple threads/processes...a few versions ago, FF averaged around 2-4GB, now it's using 4-6GB. OTOH, it performs better and hopefully one day it will have a task manager view like chromium's so I can see which tabs are using the most CPU or RAM.
My browsers and other
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Backups that used to take 10s of minutes or even hours now complete in a few minutes, and I can keep hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly snapshots for each backup....without the abysmal performance of something like rdiff-backup.
I've been considering moving to ZFS for a few years now, just never got the hardware/time together to test the functionality so I'm comfortable with it, and I still want an offsite copy. As for rsync being slow, it can be, but for my particular use case it's not bad at all. I'm not backing up millions of files with this one, just a write seldom, read a lot store devices (photos, music, movies etc) There's little change once the items get dropped here, and not too much writing. rsync works fine for this. Tha
The Trinet (Score:4, Interesting)
It is important to move all urls to google.com, facebook.com, or amazon.com. Because soon, these will be the only 3 websites. GOOG and FB already account for 70% of internet traffic, with AMZN in much of the remainder. This is why all three corporations have mobile apps - so that you don't need that pesky browser that can access other sites. So much angst over DNS and ICANN - but soon DNS will be irrelevant. You'll need a Google or Facebook group. https://staltz.com/the-web-beg... [staltz.com]
Google can't be trusted (Score:1)
Google is the new Microsoft. It's using the whole embrace, extend, extinguish game. Embraces Opensource to appear progressive and like the good guy. Extend it with proprietary stuff without which the open source bits won't work, then eventually extinguish it when there is no hope of using the Opensource alternative which has been left to wither and die.
There is no way anyone should embrace AMP..it's just a way for them to take the open web and close it off to promote Google. I considered implementing it but
AMP (Score:2)
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AndyKron noted:
AMP: 3',5'-cyclic adenosine monophosphate
Mod parent +1 Funny, please ...
The most important question is not answered: (Score:2)
AMP scripts: self-hosting prohibited (Score:1)
I consider privacy a very important issue, especially these days when companies like Google constantly scan our Wifi and our locations.
What really impressed me, is how Google requires that AMP scripts (like v0.js and so on) are REQUIRED to be hosted on Google servers and self-hosting is prohibited. Someone else already noticed this issue and opened a Github issue, but the request to allow self-hosting has so far been ignored.
This is unacceptable for a supposedly "open" standard.
The defnition of AMP. (Score:2)
Amp, also known as Ampere. Electromagnetic force between electrical conductors carrying electric current.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Due to this prior art, I request that any other use of AMP be changed to a different name. Also that AMP not be copyright-able nor patent-able.
I Fucking hate AMP (Score:1)
When I was trying to access a site I have an account on (and I'm already signed in), it was showing me a limited-experience (aka broken experience) page and it adds an extra/unnecessary click to get to the "real" page...
AMP is miserable (Score:2)
AMP is the reason I switched my phone to DuckDuckGo instead of Google. It loads web pages in ways that I canâ(TM)t interact with and there is no way to opt-out.
No thanks Google!
AMP breaking your balls? Bypass it. (Score:2)
Meanwhile, the general consensus ITT is everyone hates it, but no one knows what to do about it. Easy fix. Set defaults to and search via encrypted.google.com. Not sure how, but it breaks AMP functionality on every machine I have set it on.
Enjoy!