AMP Spec Advises Platforms to Share Canonical Link When Possible ⇥ news.ycombinator.com

Federico Viticci on Twitter last week:

Very nice: when sharing AMP pages to iMessage or Reading List, iOS 11 Safari automatically removes AMP’s crap from the URL. Go Apple

Malte Ubl, the creator and tech lead of AMP, responded on Hacker News:

Just wanted to clarify that we specifically requested Apple (and other browser vendors) to do this. AMP’s policy states that platforms should share the canonical URL of an article whenever technically possible. This browser change makes it technically possible in Safari. We cannot wait for other vendors to implement.

A simpler solution is to not implement AMP in the first place. That way, users and browsers alike don’t have to worry about which link to share — it’s always the right link.

Also, if the AMP Project’s advice is to share canonical links, not AMP links, then what’s the point of AMP pages? I don’t think browsers should redirect to an AMP version if the user is on a mobile device, and I sincerely doubt any browser vendor but Google would build in such capability. So if AMP’s own spec doesn’t see AMP links being used for general referrals, social network referrals, or direct links, then their only function seems to be links from Google searches. That seems silly.