Google claims the purpose of the AMP project is to improve website performance.
However, I will be sharing with you, about AMP and why Google AMP is harmful to web content publisher.
So, I recommend that you continue to read, to understand that in practise, AMP is harmful to users and to the Web at large.
What is AMP?
Accelerated Mobile Pages, is a non-standard subset of HTML developed and pushed by Google.
AMP pages are served from Google’s servers, though designed to look like they’re coming from the original publisher’s site.
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For example, if you search for “ Ogbeta Online” on Google Search, google.com will preload most/all of the stories in the background thus downloading unnecessary data on your device and when you click a Top Story, the article will be served from google.com while making you believe you are on ogbetaonline.com.
Google claims the purpose of the AMP project is to improve website performance, through a combination of preloading, serving pages from Google’s (sometimes) faster servers, and removing some legacy browser features.
Why is Accelerated Mobile Pages is Harmful?
In practice, AMP is harmful to users and to the Web at large.
First, AMP is harmful to privacy. AMP gives Google an even broader view of which pages people view on the Web, and how people interact with them.
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AMP encourages developers to more tightly integrate with Google servers and systems, and penalizes publishers with decreased search rankings and placements if they don’t, further allowing Google to track and profile users.
Second, AMP is bad for security. By design, AMP confuses users about what site they’re interacting with.
Users think they’re interacting with the publisher, when in actuality the user is still within Google’s control.
User-respecting browsers defend the site as the security and privacy boundary on the web, and systems like AMP intentionally confuse this boundary.
Third, it furthers the monopolization of the Web. AMP encourages more of the Web to be served from Google’s servers, under Google’s control and arbitrary non-standards.
It also allows Google to require pages to be built in ways that benefit Google’s advertising systems. AMP is one of many strategies to further monopolize the Web, and build a Web where users serve Google, instead of websites serving users. 1
Finally, AMP is bad for performance and usability. Though Google touts AMP as better for performance, internally Google knows that “AMP only improves the ‘median of performance’ and AMP pages can actually load slower than other publisher speed optimization techniques”.
In many cases AMP is so bad for performance and usability that Web users literally pay money to avoid AMP.
