Speaking of the health of the open web, Maciej Cegłowski gave a talk on web page bloat at the Web Directions conference, and he put the slides and notes online (via Daring Fireball). It’s fun to read and there are many great points, but I want to focus on Accelerated Mobile Pages:
“The AMP project is ostentatiously open source, and all kinds of publishers have signed on. Out of an abundance of love for the mobile web, Google has volunteered to run the infrastructure, especially the user tracking parts of it.”
Sarcasm aside, I think Google’s involvement is mostly transparent, and I was hopeful about it when I wrote about this in November. Google wants the web to be fast. A faster web includes more ad impressions and is more competitive with native mobile apps. I don’t think this disqualifies Google from proposing this project.
High Scalability has a long article exploring AMP:
“Google needs an open and rich ecosystem of knowledge. If that’s not there then Google search won’t be relevant. Which is Google’s direct self-interest, which is also the same objective of the publisher. Publishers need access to an open ecosystem of distribution. Otherwise they’ll have a harder time building audiences if they have to appeal to closed platforms. Yes, Google is a private company that has business interests, but that philosophy and that core similar objective is something very important when considering Google’s role in AMP.”
I’m willing to give Google the benefit of the doubt on AMP. The alternatives are too focused on specific platforms and so even less available to the rest of the web.
