Accelerated Mobile Pages (Amp) offers a redesigned, slimmed-down version of HTML, the language in which web pages are written, and a set of rules for publishers and advertisers that stops them putting data-heavy graphics, interactive features and ads in their articles. As part of the programme, Google is also offering to store versions of the pages on its own servers around the world, and will show Amp articles in a carousel at the top of search results.(source)
He unpacks the user experience and the commercial benefits for Google. In the end, he argues that the experiment has gone on long enough and that we need the open web back now.
Andrew Betts lays out the argument against Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). A lot of the discussion is pretty technical, but they boil down to the assertion (which is well-founded) that AMP essentially turn the web into a private portal for Google, and that Google is not managing this stewardship responsibly. As Betts says, “If Google was my doctor, they’d be currently explaining to my family that although the experiment they tried did sadly kill me, they got a ton of useful data from it, and they think they can definitely work on fixing that bug in the next version of the experiment.” The article also links to a really interesting set of resources worth exploring, including the Portals specification, feature policy, Newsguard, and content passes (which “would require publishers of paywalled content to declare the paywall in the metadata of the article” instead of trying to trick people into clicking). Via Aaron Davis.