Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

[bluetidepro]

It's ironic to me that AMP is a problem we all brought upon ourselves, really. It's almost (jokingly) a Prisoner's dilemma [1]. Had no one ever opted into it, it probably would have just been swept under the rug by Google, and a win-win for us all. But since a competitor of yours (probably) opted into it to get ahead of you, you now have to opt into it also, to compete and get the same SEO "power juice" it gave them. The fact that everyone now adds the code to their site to make it work with AMP is the problem. Google gave us the rope. And then all the SEO managers/marketers/specialists hung us with it. Ha

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

[apexalpha]

Counterpoint:

WE don't live in an ideal world and AMP is my only option of getting de-bloated webpages. I would love if managers and directors would do this themselves and AMP wouldn't be needed, but that's just not the case.

I have to choose between downloading some text and images to read an article or load 5MB JavaScript SinglePageApp with tracking, ads, auto playing video's...

I know in an ideal world AMP would be useless, but until we reach that world I'm going to prefer AMP links over normal ones.

[benjymo]

Unfortunately, Google can rank by whatever criteria they want and we are forced to implement it. And it isn't always in the best interest of the end user.

E.g. at a company we had to add "useless" content on our shop pages, otherwise google ranked the pages lower due to having not enough content.

[laumars]

Agreed. Further to your point, AMP was only ever needed because we made our pages so artificiality heavy in the first place

[etrma]

You think SEO specialists give a shit about AMP? They just care about how high your page ranks in Google--if anything, they'd love it if the web was more Google-centric.

[Fiahil]

Same thing happens in agriculture over pesticide use !

[StreamBright]

You are talking about a small fraction of companies. Anyways, I would not bend over for Google not for AMP not for anything similar to it.

[xupybd]

Just came to say I hate amp. If I want to go to a site I want that site not a google cache of it. It’s not a better experience. It just means another click to get to where I was going. Stop the madness Google kill amp.

[koboll]

AMP should be the first stop on the federal government's antitrust investigation. The sheer unfairness of being granted search priority if you hand over your content to Google is the pinnacle of leveraging monopoly power to gain power in another industry.

[OskarS]

I don't think I've ever seen anyone on HN defend AMP. We all hate it. It's a pox on the modern web.

[bmn__]

"Redirect AMP to HTML" https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/amp2html/

[benatkin]

"I want that site not a google cache of it" might be true for you, but for me, I don't want the site so much as the article or product listing, and for most users, they don't know that it's a google cache of it.

I think AMP provides the tools for a good UX but many sites don't provide it because they want the user to go to their site, because they mistakenly don't think they can get enough ad revenue or CTAs to get the user to sign up for mailing lists or add a product to a shopping cart on the AMP page. These are supported. So they only show an excerpt of the article on the AMP page and you have to go to the site in order to get it.

[Eric_WVGG]

I could have sworn that Google promised a user preference to disable AMP results this year, but I can’t find any references.

I’ve been using DuckDuckGo for over a year now and it’s just painful.

[yreg]

That moment when you tap the omnibox planning to copy the URL and realise you are not on the actual site you meant to visit.

[bduerst]

>If I want to go to a site I want that site not a google cache of it.

AMP isn't limited to Google cache. Websites and CDNs (like Bing and Cloudflare) can roll their own AMP and cache it themselves, while still getting the icon in search results.

Example: https://amp.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/6yj6iw/what_did_...

[tobr]

Arguably this means that Google is breaking point 11 of their own AMP Cache Guidelines [1]. If I ran any AMP pages, I would be quite upset.

1: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-c...

[rangerpolitic]

When you have the power to write the rules, you can break the rules. Google is too powerful.

[mtgx]

I think Google is only going to play this "incompatibility" card more and more now that Chrome is the dominant browser.

We need more pushback against Google doing stuff like this, even when at first glance what they push for seems "positive."

[plibither8]

Point 11:

No obstruction of the contents, branding or attribution of the original AMP document.

[granshaw]

I hope AMP is the straw that breaks the camels back in googles antitrust suit - its the most blatant and shameless abuse of their position, IMO

[eska]

When I attended the Drupal Europe 2018 conference I had the opportunity to talk to Barb Palser of the AMP global relations team. I asked her in an intentionally innocent way: "I thought AMP is supposed to replace RSS, but from the presentation it seems like it's trying to be a better HTML?" to which she replied yes. I acted all optimistic, so she wouldn't be defensive, but this conversation sent chills down my spine and I remember it to this day.

[gowld]

Why? AMP was promoted as a better HTML (a "good parts" subset plus a tiny extension) from day 1. It never had anything to do with RSS.

[ec109685]

What would it even mean to be better RSS? The idea is sites can preload an AMP page safely so that when you click on it, it can display to the user instantly.

In that specific case, isn’t Barb correct, no chills needed?

[firasd]

When AMP was introduced I assumed the actual content would be loaded from the canonical URL anyway. This whole in-between caching layer G introduced is very weird.

Also, I think what AMP was pitted against--Facebook instant articles--no longer exists, or at least doesn't particularly matter (now that FB is several pivots beyond the whole 'newsfeed is full of articles' stage).

[jefftk]

One way to think of AMP is as a solution to "When people click on links from search the pages often load very slowly. Can we make this instant?" Any preloading based solution has to involve caching, because otherwise sites could learn that they had shown up in your search results without you having clicked on then.

(Disclosure: I work at Google, not on AMP, and I'm only speaking for myself)

[graeme]

AMP links are a major reason I switched to duckduckgo on mobile. Google seems to be shortsighted in doing this.

Yes, only a tiny minority of technical users will know what amp pages are and switch search engines to avoid them. But, a larger group will likely find the amp pages annoying, even if they can't precisely articulate why. This weakens google's hold on the market.

[michaelmior]

Why do you think a larger group will find AMP annoying? I know I'm in the minority, but I generally like AMP in my search results.

[maaaats]

Google is serving a broken page for Firefox on Android (intentionally serving something along oldschool wap pages). I used an addon to fix that, but then the page suddenly was full of ads, videos, smart boxes and amp links.

[mtarnovan]

<tinfoil> What if it's not a bug, but Google testing user response </tinfoil>

(assuming Google is not stupid so Hanlon's razor may not apply)

[SCHiM]

Your post remined me of this twitter thread from one of mozzilla's developers:

https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871240432660480

Downthread:

""" And every time, they’d say, “oops. That was accidental. We’ll fix it in the next push in 2 weeks.” """

[mtgx]

No tinfoil required. When in doubt about such issues think about whether or not the "bug" or "error" that people found in Google's solutions benefits Google. If it does, then it's much more likely than not that the "bug" was intentional.

At best they wanted to test user reaction, or at worst, they were hoping it wouldn't be discovered (see Wi-Fi scanning, Safari cookies block bypass, tracking Android users' location at all time, even when "disabled", etc).

Don't attribute to stupidity what can easily be explained by profit incentives (did I just invent a new saying/law?!).

[tobr]

Not unreasonable, but then they would probably A/B test it rather than just break it for everyone. Although I guess they might be A/B testing and I’m just in the same group as OP.

[loudtieblahblah]

I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to ponder.

[seieste]

This seems to be a way for Google to make revenue from news sites and is a clear abuse of monopoly power. When I click on an AMP news link, I see a “carousel” at the top that shows multiple news articles. I can go to various articles on a topic by swiping left or right, all without going back to the news site.

But now that Google has removed the link to visit the site, it is clear they don’t want you to visit the actual news site but do everything through Google.

This means that only the Google ad network will be allowed, so they stand to benefit from this arrangement, and news sites can have no hope of receiving any traffic.

[ec109685]

No, multiple ad networks (100+) are allowed in google amp, so publishers are free to chose what monetizes best: https://marketingland.com/google-says-100-ad-networks-suppor...

[justicz]

Yes! I’ve been having this issue for days but assumed it was just me. It is particularly frustrating for sites like Reddit where the AMP version is too aggressively cached and misses most of the recent comments.

[tannhaeuser]

Reddit plays it's own games. While they dropped the aggressive "Use app" nagging, they now frequently and purposefully (?) break back-navigation (eg. from individual posts to the subreddit) with the all too common "Oh snap. Something went wrong" and cutesy picture excuse for a dysfunctional site.

[ehnto]

It feels like a solution to a problem no one was having, and now it's breaking the internet for people who never asked to use it.

[mattmanser]

Reddit implementing AMP seems such a bad decision, it defies the entire point of the site.

[SiempreViernes]

I don't know anything about AMP, so I'm genuinely amazed that one could create bugs in it that just downright break hyper references.

I though links was a pretty important part of HTML, and so people took care to ensure they work?

[piecu]

Not for google. They want to kill links.

[tyingq]

It a bug that's breaking some JavaScript that renders the AMP page header. It's breaking a link Google is supposed to generate via their mandatory included js for AMP pages.

[dgellow]

Interesting, I didn't even consider that could be a bug. I just assumed that was how AMP was supposed to behave and moved to Duckduckgo for mobile search.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I'm surprised I haven't seen more discussion on the actual bug in the comments. In the screen capture the user shows, the AMP header shows the link icon in the upper right corner, and when you click it it should show the real URL and let you navigate through (but that's not happening, hence the bug).

However, in my experience the header is totally different. There is an (i) icon in the upper left corner that shows the link when tapped, and the upper right corner shows the share icon and tapping it opens the share dialog. Note this changed for me recently (I used to get the link icon like the poster).

So Google is clearly testing different behavior, which probably led to the bug. In any case, I'd note the version I got that I think the (i) is much less clear than the link icon, and I'm sure the end result is people clicking through to the source site less often. Fuck Google and their aggressive attempts to hijack the web even more than they already have.

[kunday]

I think in general anything about amp receives a bit of attention to put it mildly. I'm curious if anyone from amp/google is lurking around to give a perspective. It is reproducible on all my devices now. I remember it working at least yesterday...

[geofft]

Why should a community of highly skilled engineers provide free debugging labor to a giant corporation to fix a bug in a product that only exists because Malte Ubl wanted to get promoted?

[vbsteven]

So many people in this thread complain about AMP being forced on them as an end user. Nobody forces you to use Google...

Just use another search engine like DuckDuckGo. It is sufficient for over 90% of my searches and I haven’t seen an amp page in ages.

AMP for SEO is another discussion, in that case it is kind of forced on you if you want to rank high on the Googlenet.

[ckuhl]

The problem is that _everyone else uses Google_.

Even though I don’t use Google for search, my friends do and they’ll gladly share AMP pages with me.

[CDSlice]

First of all, I'm not a web developer, so I may not get all the problems with AMP.

I actually love AMP on mobile. Every site I've used(1) that has an AMP version loads faster and works better even with some ads than the normal version on Firefox mobile with uBlock Origin. Given that it's possible for people to host their own AMP cache (like Cloudflare does), I really don't see the problem with AMP itself.

(1) Other then Reddit, but considering how much of a dumpster fire their normal mobile site is I honestly think that it's broken on purpose to try and make people use the app.

[krn]

The AMP links to visit the original site are working fine for me on Brave (based on Chromium) on Android: clicking on the "(i)" icon shows the URL.

The easiest way to to get rid of all AMP pages in Google search results is to disable javascript on www.google.com/*.

[tobr]

Doesn’t work on iPhone Safari for me, I get the same translucent gray overlay regardless of where I tap.

[seieste]

I don’t think you can disable AMP if you’re not signed in.

[dgellow]

Maybe an obvious or stupid question, but that's worth asking: As a user, do we have a way to disable AMP?

[robin_reala]

Use DuckDuckGo instead? There’s no switch in Google.

[ComputerGuru]

Not a dumb question at all! The answer is no, but there are workarounds like playing with the user agent or using an unsupported browser.

[SimeVidas]

A reminder that AMP results don’t show up on Google Search if you use the mobile version of Firefox ;)

[robin_reala]

Yet…

[onesmallcoin]

Chromium on mobile has always had issues with AMP for me, I've just come to acept it I think it's wrong for a monopoly to take control of what another entitys site looks like. It's a we can take care of EVERYBODY feature: we were fine without it and will be fine when it doesn't exist anymore

[ycombonator]

Try this https://phys.org/news/2019-06-mass-anomaly-moon-largest-crat... on iOS safari. The source link does not open.

[sn_master]

I also absolutely hate how it lets you zoom out but not zoom in. Have to reload the entire page to get it to the original size :/

[godelmachine]

May I ask what screen recording app is he using?

[baloki]

It’s built into iOS nowadays, you can add it to your control centre via settings.

[dhruvrrp]

iOS has screen recording built in which stores the video in your photos.

It's the circle on the bottom right in the first frame of the video.

[sexy_seedbox]

Use Kiwi Browser, it has built-in AMP removal.

[raverbashing]

Oh look another "completely innocent mistake" by Google

[luckylion]

You're getting downvoted, presumably because "they wouldn't be evil", but I find the alternative just as problematic: a superpower tech company with a budget larger than many nation states hiring the best and the brightest and paying them unbelievably well so they do their best.. breaking fundamental features in widely used software and not realizing it themselves (they wouldn't ship the update otherwise, I believe). What's happening there?

And the follow up thought: "move fast and break things" suggests that we should think twice before relying on these companies for anything close to critical infrastructure.

[kerng]

Google's power abuse with AMP is really upsetting. Hopefully this is being looked into and AMP canned before its spread via monopoly is irreversible. It's bad for all, but Google.

[ycombonator]

Happens in iOS Safari too

[otabdeveloper3]

Why would you want to visit sites that aren't Google (c)? They're probably very unsafe and full of very annoying ads!

[hexo]

Simple. Don't use it. It doesn't make any sense anyway.

[tannhaeuser]

Sure if it's your site, you don't use AMP - it just indicates disregard for basic web usability and competence. But what about the (rare) site using AMP with you having no control? Hmm ... ok thinking about it I don't know any site using AMP worth reading. I guess using AMP, like script-heavy content, is just a negative marker for quality content.

[geofft]

How do you do that?

The broken feature is the exact feature that lets you not use it....

[vortico]

Isn't AMP blatant copyright infringement? If so, how does a website owner demand the infringement to be taken down?

[bluetidepro]

The sites themselves are opting into AMP, I believe. Google isn't just converting the site to AMP automatically. The owners of the site themselves have to add code to their site for it to work with AMP...