Jeremy Keith Resigns from AMP Advisory Committee: 'It Has Become Clear To Me that AMP Remains a Google Product' (wptavern.com) 34
Jeremy Keith, a web developer and contributor to the web standards movement, has resigned from the AMP Advisory Committee. Keith was selected for the committee last year, despite his well-documented criticisms of the AMP project. From a report: In his resignation email, he cites Google's control of the project and its small percentage of open source parts as reasons for his growing resentment: "I can't in good faith continue to advise on the AMP project for the OpenJS Foundation when it has become clear to me that AMP remains a Google product, with only a subset of pieces that could even be considered open source. If I were to remain on the advisory committee, my feelings of resentment about this situation would inevitably affect my behaviour. So it's best for everyone if I step away now instead of descending into outright sabotage. It's not you, it's me."
During his time with the committee, Keith worked on defining what AMP is and pushing for clarification on whether the project encompasses more than just a collection of web components. The Google-controlled AMP cache and validation aspects of the project were the most concerning in evaluating his continued participation.
During his time with the committee, Keith worked on defining what AMP is and pushing for clarification on whether the project encompasses more than just a collection of web components. The Google-controlled AMP cache and validation aspects of the project were the most concerning in evaluating his continued participation.
What is AMP? (Score:4, Informative)
Since the summary doesn't mention it, AMP is Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages project (https://developers.google.com/amp/). I could be wrong, but for mobile devices, it's basically a means for caching/serving web sites with "optimization" (AMP creates an mobile-optimized version of the page, presumably without stuff that will slow down most mobile browsers).
Re:What is AMP? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a way for every web page to actually be hosted by Google. What a nightmare.
Re:What is AMP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google and Facebook grow more and more alike as time goes on - an example of convergent evolution, I guess. Both companies are doing their utmost to keep people within their sphere of control, no matter what they're doing.
Facebook still appears to be better at it, though.
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Google and Facebook grow more and more alike as time goes on - an example of convergent evolution, I guess. Both companies are doing their utmost to keep people within their sphere of control, no matter what they're doing.
Facebook still appears to be better at it, though.
And, much like anything they do, Apple is the best at it.
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Re:What is AMP? (Score:4, Insightful)
I see it as a platform for Google to inject unwanted ads and tracking into your experience.
Re:What is AMP? (Score:4, Informative)
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Also, we all knew this many years ago. Jeremy just now figured this out? Better late than never, I guess.
Re:What is AMP? (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's also a rather pointless idea (even if it had been implemented well), because mobile internet speeds are so much faster now.
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8 years ago, it used to take several seconds for a page to load. It takes the same amount of time now, despite the faster internet speeds and processors. Developers simply found a way to fill that extra capacity with even more scripts and bloat.
Bold of you to assume that the faster speeds simply won't be a crutch for bad and evil developers.
Re:What is AMP? (Score:5, Interesting)
First of all, don't blame the developers. You think they choose to add bloat? No, it's marketing adding the forty-seventh fucking analytics script, or yet another giant banner carousel. Developers just execute business requirements, they don't come up with them. Sure they can push back on technical grounds to a certain extent, but at the end of the day the stakeholders call the shots, not the devs.
That being said, believe it or not, this is all changing. Right now. Web performance is now being taken very seriously at major companies.
Why is that? Because as of a couple of months ago, performance ("Core Web Vitals") now directly affects your google page ranking, and that's huge: https://www.sodawebmedia.com/b... [sodawebmedia.com]
Everyone is scrambling to make their shit faster now that it directly impacts their search ranking.
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Damn right, unless it is going to physically put someone's life in danger I'll write code anyway the person paying me would like. I don't work for the love of the internet, I work for money.
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First of all, don't blame the developers. You think they choose to add bloat?
Yes, a lot of times they do.
No, it's marketing adding the forty-seventh fucking analytics script, or yet another giant banner carousel.
If analytics scripts are slowing your page load down noticeably, then you are doing it wrong.
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Indeed !
After working as a software developer for over 35 years, and working with at least 50 different other developers, I can assure you that most problems are down to developer incompetence. I estimate that about 15% (at most) of the people doing software development have comptence, the rest are clueless about almost everything.
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If they pay me, I'll go fix it for them. No need to blame anyone.
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Incompetence certainly abounds too. It's rather disheartening.
But even places with solid talent dance to the whims of business needs.
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Oh ok. Developers just wake up and decide to add bloat for no reason. Because they're "evil" (not your word, but the person I was originally replying to). Please tell me you don't actually believe in such an absurd reductionism?
Yes of course there are all sorts of techniques to defer things. But at the end of the day it's still a bloated page consuming way more bandwidth and CPU than necessary.
Code only gets you so far, truly slimming down a page requires a multi-pronged approach.
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Oh ok. Developers just wake up and decide to add bloat for no reason. Because they're "evil" (not your word, but the person I was originally replying to). Please tell me you don't actually believe in such an absurd reductionism?
Of course not, they add it because they are incompetent, and it's the path of least resistance. Alternately, project managers allow them to add it because they don't use "page load time" as a metric they care about.
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Re:What is AMP? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure its Anti-competition Manipulation Process.
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thanks. I could only think of WinAMP the MP3 music player from the 90s.
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.. from every direction.
Winamp 3, etc.
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You know, I'd like it better if it did.
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While the goal of reducing the complexity of a page is a noble goal, the other goal of having Google themselves exclusively serve the pages is not so much.
If you pick golang (Score:2)
Chrom* (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like Google trying to take over the web, then please make sure not to use or promote Chrom* browsers (any major browser that is not Firefox or Safari is almost certainly based on Chrome, thus "Chrom*"). Chromium is what gives Google the power to push non-open standards stuff like AMP on the populous. They just insert what they want in Chromium and all of Chrom* is affected. Chromium might be open source, but it is not overseen by an open group; it is almost solely controlled by Google. So anything they do, becomes a "de-facto" standard, whether it was based on any real standard or not.
And if you think that non-Google browsers that are based on Chromium are exempt from this, think again. Those 3rd parties cannot drift too far from the original because it will quickly become some un-maintainable fork. Just because they tweak the UI or add a few sparkles to it, that doesn't make it their browser.
Resist the 21st century's version of "IE only".
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Ironically, in a complete turnaround, this is the first time where if Microsoft were to embrace, extend, extinguish Chromium using Edge, it would actually be a net positive for the world.
I wonder how naive Webdesigners are? (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, it's a project designed to route web traffic through Google, a company that makes their money by spying on users. Why on earth should any company design anything that goes against their interests?
Essentially it's the same problem as with HTTP/2 or any other one of those new company controlled protocols which are to complex to be implemented by a single person, yet provide no significant benefit.
Amp is Evil (Score:1)