AMP Letter ⇥ ampletter.org

An open letter to Google:

We acknowledge the problem of Web pages being slow to load, relative to alternative, proprietary technologies such as Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. Publishers (especially in news media) have long faced difficult choices and poor incentives, leading to bad decisions and compromises, and ultimately to terrible user experiences.

Search engines are in a powerful position to wield influence to solve this problem. However, Google has chosen to create a premium position at the top of their search results (for articles) and a “lightning” icon (for all types of content), which are only accessible to publishers that use a Google-controlled technology, served by Google from their infrastructure, on a Google URL, and placed within a Google controlled user experience.

Malte Ubl of Google announced today that, later this year, Google will stop rewriting AMP pages to their own domain. That still doesn’t fix the critical dependency problems that the AMP letter raises. I co-signed this letter with dozens of others. I think it’s important to recognize the dominant position Google has on the web.