Google AMP: Don’t Be Evil?
The Accelerated Mobile Pages Trojan Horse and the health of the free and open web
Of course the age of abundant information is prone to beg, borrow, and steal your attention. Reading blogs, news, and research has always been an inefficient user experience — finding needles in haystacks. But now, Annotote is the antidote, check it out: Don’t waste time or attention; get straight to the point.
In case you missed it, Google had announced some major changes to its search algorithm that unabashedly forced widespread adoption of its own, proprietary Accelerated Mobile Pages project (annotated redux here). The web was caught ablaze by the resulting uproar: open letters, Medium blog posts, Tweetstorms, etc.
But, we might have gotten this wrong…
Exclusive AMP is exclusively anticompetitive
For background, I myself had also been very critical of this — specifically Google’s use of AMP as the one-and-only stick to the carrot of a better web:
“Google outsourced to a 3rd party moral arbitrator, the Coalition for Better Ads. Yes, Google itself happens to have a seat-at-the-table in that Coalition, which obfuscates the altruism of ‘outsourcing’ in the first place, but regardless, the standards set by that Coalition are now, effectively, generally accepted practices. Therefore, it follows that any web property should be able to access and implement those ‘open’ standards, and in doing so, said web properties would be in compliance with the Google Search algorithm’s quality standards — at least in regard to these criteria…
“[Google] isn’t saying ‘comply with generally accepted standards or your rank will suffer’; [they’re saying] ‘use our product or your rank will suffer’. If Google wanted to altruistically incentivize the former, they’d say ‘comply with the Coalition’s open, objective standards or your rank will suffer’.”
In general, I’ve been concerned with the anticompetitive paradox that’s inextricable in cases of principal-agent problems. Google giving primacy to AMP pages in search results fits my framework for that “agency problem”. After all, using market power in one proprietary product/service to seed a new one is anticompetitive, per the FTC’s description of “Refusal to Deal”:
“…for a firm with market power… the focus is on how the refusal to deal helps the monopolist maintain its monopoly, or allows the monopolist to use its monopoly in one market to attempt to monopolize another market.”
Once upon a time, Google organized the web’s chaos by incentivizing webpages to index and optimize for its crawlers. The same SEO-esque cleanup can happen here — without having to force the web into Google’s own AMP product.
Screed, interrupted
Given that perspective, I feel obligated to point-out the following antidote, because it turns out that — if we take them at their word — Google is actually working towards those altruistic, generally accepted, open standards I had lobbied for. Specifically, they won’t make AMP the exclusive vehicle of this mobile web uplift project. From The Verge (annotated redux here):
“…today, Google is announcing that it’s formally embarking on a project to convince the group in charge of web standards to adopt technology inspired by its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) framework. In theory, it would mean that virtually any webpage could gain the same benefits as AMP: near-instantaneous loading, distribution on multiple platforms, and (critically) more prominent placement on Google properties… make them a universal standard that has nothing to do with Google.” [highlights provided by Annotote]
It’s possible that this is a change-of-course being charted by Google in response to the popular outrage — but that’s neither here nor there. The upshot is that this is a big win for the web.
An ironic head-start (and an insurmountable first-mover-advantage)
That said, I find it ironic* that Google started by plowing full-steam-ahead with AMP unilaterally — without collaboration from open standards councils — because of a purported Sophie’s Choice. Again, from The Verge:
“Google faced a choice: take the time to try to convince the web standards body to adopt it and browser makers to support it or just go ahead and put it out in the world as a mostly Google-backed project on Google’s own products, primarily search… [AMP] had to get as good quickly — before people abandoned it for a million different custom apps and article formats. [Google’s VP of Search Engineering] says Google couldn’t wait for the committees that help craft web standards to get it done. ‘If you start by trying everything through the standards process, we would still be talking about it,’ he argues.”
For what it’s worth, that was a real catch-22 at the time: Rescue the mobile web from the tracks before the train runs it over or wait to collaborate with open standards boards? With AMP, Google admittedly chose the former (with which I have no problem). Given AMP’s empirical success, Google’s now revisiting the latter (which is commendable).
I don’t know what more a critic could ask for, but it’s interesting to note the following, from that same Verge article:
“[Implementing open standards] will take months — more likely it will be years. Various standards bodies have to hash out proposals, try them out, and agree to them. And it’s not just the W3C body that standardizes the web… And after all that, the companies that make web browsers and apps need to implement it all… Meanwhile, Google is absolutely going to continue to develop AMP and promote its use.” [emphasis mine]
In case you can’t infer the *irony I’m getting at, here it is:
- Google says it chose a proprietary approach (AMP) over a collaborative one (W3C, et al) because people would’ve irrevocably adopted ‘a million different custom apps and article formats’ in the time it would’ve taken them to reach collaborative consensus on standardization;
- Now that Google AMP has secured a foothold for said standardization of the mobile web, they’re deferring to that consensus-building;
- That due process will still take months or years, in which time AMP will continue to scale at the behest of Google’s search carrot;
- So, by the time open standards are implemented, AMP will already have achieved irrevocable adoption, in keeping with all we know about network effects and aggregation
In other words, this couldn’t work out any better for Google, who (wittingly/unwittingly?) steered this ship right into their own harbor. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that — in fact, I commend the entire approach, top to bottom. I can’t think of a more victimless example of “move fast and break things”. This is the kind of “better ask for forgiveness than for permission” that Uber’s PR only dreams of touting!
A win for the free and open web
Most importantly, if you understand how AMP’s server-side/caching work, this is a boon for returning the web to a more decentralized state — reverting it back from the clutches of increasingly centralized walled-gardens like Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News.
In sum, I needed to level this recent development with everybody’s criticisms of Google — mine included.
Furthermore, whether deliberate or accidental, proactive or reactive, this has materialized as textbook strategy and execution by Google, which warrants 👀👏.
