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=== AMP Stories Editors and Builders ===
=== AMP Stories Editors and Builders ===
Since Google launched the AMP Story format, there have been a number of new [[Software as a service|SaaS]] that offer fast, no-code options to create AMP Stories. These tools are fit for content publishers who want to exploit the new technology but do not know how to code, or who wish to publish content in an accelerated manner without manually defining styling and layout.
Since Google launched the AMP Story format, there have been a number of new [[Software as a service|SaaS]] that offer fast, no-code options to create AMP Stories. These tools are fit for content publishers who want to exploit the new technology but do not know how to code, or who wish to publish content in an accelerated manner without manually defining styling and layout.



=== AMP Email ===
=== AMP Email ===

Revision as of 06:09, 24 January 2020

AMP (originally an acronym for Accelerated Mobile Pages[1]) is a web component framework and a website publishing technology developed by Google which has the mission to "provide a user-first format for web content".[2]

History

Announcement and launch

The AMP Project was announced by Google on October 7, 2015 following discussions with its partners in the Digital News Initiative (DNI), and other news publishers and technology companies around the world, about improving the performance of the mobile web. More than 30 news publishers and several technology companies (including Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and WordPress) were initially announced as collaborators in the AMP Project.

AMP pages first appeared to web users in February 2016, when Google began to show the AMP versions of webpages in mobile search results. Initially links to AMP pages were restricted to a “Top Stories” section of Google's mobile search results; by September 2016 Google started linking to AMP content in the main mobile search results area.[3] AMP links in Google search are identified with an icon.

According to one of the co-founders of the AMP Project, Malte Ubl, AMP was originally called PCU,[4] which stood for Portable Content Unit.

Growth and expansion

In September 2016, Microsoft announced support for AMP in the Bing apps for iOS and Android.[5]

In February 2017, a year after the public launch of AMP, Adobe reported AMP pages accounted for 7% of all web traffic for top publishers in the United States.[6]

In May 2017, Google reported 900,000 web domains were publishing AMP pages with more than two billion AMP pages published globally.[7]

In June 2017, Twitter started linking to AMP pages from its iOS and Android apps.[8]

In September 2018, Microsoft began rolling out its own Bing AMP viewer and AMP cache.[9]

As announced by AMP’s tech lead Malte at AMP Conf '19, AMP is now just AMP, and does not stand for Accelerated Mobile Pages anymore.[10]

AMP Framework

AMP HTML

The AMP framework consists of three components: AMP HTML, which is standard HTML markup with web components; AMP JavaScript, which manages resource loading; AMP caches, which serve and validate AMP pages.[11]

Most AMP pages are delivered by Google's AMP cache, but other companies can support AMP caches. Internet performance and security company Cloudflare launched an AMP cache in March 2017.[12]

AMP Stories

In 2018, Google introduced AMP Stories, a visually tappable experience that provides content publishers with a mobile-focused format for delivering news and information as visually rich, tap-through stories. In 2019, they announced that they will be rolling out new dedicated placement on the SERP for AMP Stories, starting with travel category first. On April 17, on their AMP Conference in Tokyo, they also announced ads and Google Analytics integration, and option to embed new types of content — specifically Twitter posts, Google Maps, and YouTube videos that they will be rolling out later in 2019.

AMP Stories Editors and Builders

Since Google launched the AMP Story format, there have been a number of new SaaS that offer fast, no-code options to create AMP Stories. These tools are fit for content publishers who want to exploit the new technology but do not know how to code, or who wish to publish content in an accelerated manner without manually defining styling and layout.

AMP Email

In 2019, Google announced the new AMP Email section of the AMP framework. AMP for email allows senders to include AMP components inside rich engaging emails, making modern app functionality available within email. The AMP email format provides a subset of AMP HTML components for use in email messages, allowing recipients of AMP emails to interact dynamically with content directly in the message.

Technology

Online Format

AMP pages are published on-line and can be displayed in most current browsers.[13] When a standard webpage has an AMP counterpart, a link to the AMP page is usually placed in an HTML tag in the source code of the standard page. Because most AMP pages are easily discoverable by web crawlers, third parties such as search engines and other referring websites can choose to link to the AMP version of a webpage instead of the standard version.

Third party integration

Any organization or individual can build products or features which will work on AMP pages, provided they comply with the AMP Project specifications. As of July 2017, the AMP Project's website listed around 120 advertising companies and around 30 analytics companies as AMP Project participants.[14]

Performance

Google reports that AMP pages served in Google search typically load in less than one second and use ten times less data than the equivalent non-AMP pages.[15] CNBC reported a 75% decrease in mobile page load time for AMP Pages over non-AMP pages,[16] while Gizmodo reported that AMP pages loaded three times faster than non-AMP pages.[17]

An academic paper about AMP[18] reveals that AMP pages' page load time is 2.5 times faster than non-AMP versions without pre-rendering in Google's search result page, and the AMP version is approximately nine times faster than the non-AMP version with the pre-rendering.

Parity with canonical pages

Google has announced that as of February 1, 2018, it will require the content of canonical pages and those displayed through AMP be substantially the same.[19] This is aimed at improving the experience of users by avoiding common difficulties with the user interface, and increase security and trust (see below).

Reception

General criticism

AMP has been widely criticized by many in the tech industry[20][21][22][23][24][25][26] for being an attempt by Google to exert its dominance on the Web by dictating how websites are built and monetized, and that "AMP is Google's attempt to lock publishers into its ecosystem".[27] AMP has also been linked to Google's attempt to deprecate URLs so that users will not be able to immediately see whether they are viewing a webpage on the open Web or an AMP page that is hosted on Google's servers.[28]

Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, said: "there is a sense in which AMP is a Google-built version of the web. We are moving from a world where you can put anything on your website to one where you can’t because Google says so."[29] Ramon Tremosa, a Spanish member of the European Parliament, said: "AMP is an example of Google dialing up its anti-competitive practices under the nose of the competition regulators."[29]

Comparison to other formats

AMP is often compared to Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News.[30][31] All three formats were announced in 2015 with the stated goal of making mobile content faster and easier to consume.[32][33] AMP Project supporters claim that AMP is a collaborative effort among publishers and technology companies, and that AMP is designed to work on the web instead of proprietary mobile apps.

Google's Richard Gingras said:

"There's a very big difference between having a proprietary platform that says it's open, and having an open-source platform that is open to anyone to modify and adapt. It's the difference between saying come into my walled garden vs. not having a walled garden."[34]

However, some critics believe that AMP is an impending walled garden as Google begins to host AMP-restricted versions of their websites directly on google.com:

They say AMP is not actually supporting the open web because it is a "fork" or variation on HTML and one that Google essentially controls...Some publishers have complained that as Google prioritizes AMP links—as it recently said it will do in mobile search—media companies will lose even more control because AMP pages are hosted and controlled by Google. "Our mobile search traffic is moving to be majority AMP (Google hosted and not on our site) which limits our control over UI, monetization et al," said one digital media executive, quoted in a Fortune article.[34]

Google control

Matthew Ingram of Fortune expressed concerns about Google's role and motives regarding the AMP Project:

"In a nutshell, these publishers are afraid that while the AMP project is nominally open-source, Google is using it to shape how the mobile web works, and in particular, to ensure a steady stream of advertising revenue… More than anything else, the concerns that some publishers have about AMP seems to be part of a broader fear about the loss of control over distribution in a platform-centric world, and the risks that this poses to traditional monetization methods such as display advertising."[34]

These charges were rebutted by Google. Madhav Chinnappa stated that AMP must be a collaborative industry initiative in order for it to succeed in the long term:

"I get a little bit irritated when sometimes people call it Google's AMP, because it's not … AMP was created as an open source initiative and that for me is the reason for its success."[35]

In September 2018, Google began to transition AMP to a more open governance model, with a technical steering committee composed of AMP-using publishers.[36]

Problems on pre-rendering

AMP's instantaneous webpage access speed is partly from its pre-rendering in Google's search result page. This pre-rendering is out of the user's control but can fetch an unwanted page.[18]

"AMP prefetching and pre-rendering results in some additional data (and power) use with each search. The average 1.4 MB of additional data per search that is used for pre-rendering an AMP page that the user may not visit is not trivial overhead for certain users with limited data plans."

Furthermore, this can be a privacy issue, since the unwanted downloaded data will be logged even though the user does not choose to download it.

WordPress

December 7, 2018, AMP announced their official WordPress plugin,[37] which allowed to transform WordPress websites into include AMP-ready pages.

Monetization

Some publishers reported that AMP pages generate less advertising revenue per page than non-AMP pages.[38] The Wall Street Journal's Jack Marshall said:

"AMP pages rely heavily on standardized banner ad units, and don't allow publishers to sell highly-customized ad units, sponsorships or pop-up ads as they might on their own properties"[39]

Other publishers have reported better success with AMP monetization. The Washington Post has been able to generate approximately the same amount of revenue from AMP pages as from standard mobile pages, according to director of product Joey Marburger. CNN chief product officer Alex Wellen said AMP Pages "largely monetize at the same rate" as standard mobile pages.[40]

To improve advertising performance, the AMP Project launched the AMP Ads Initiative which includes support for more advertising formats and optimizations to improve ad load speed.[41][42]

Exploitation for malicious purposes

Some observers believe AMP allows more effective phishing attempts. One serious flaw, noted by tech writer Kyle Chayka, is that disreputable parties who misuse AMP (as well as Facebook's similar Instant Articles) enable junk websites to share many of the same visual cues and features found on legitimate sites. "All publishers end up looking more similar than different. That makes separating the real from the fake even harder," said Chayka.[43]

In September 2017, Russian hackers used an AMP vulnerability in phishing e-mails sent to investigative journalists critical of the Russian government, and hacked into their websites.[43] Google announced on November 16, 2017 that it will stop allowing sites using AMP for formatting to bait-and-switch sites.[19] Google said beginning February 2018, AMP pages must contain content nearly identical to that of the standard page they're replicating.

References

  1. ^ "AMP as your web framework". AMP.
  2. ^ "Vision & Mission". AMP.
  3. ^ "Google opens the AMP fire hose". Search Engine Land. October 3, 2016. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  4. ^ Ubl, Malte. "AMP Contributor Summit 2018 Keynote". YouTube. The AMP Channel. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
  5. ^ "Bing App joins the AMP open-source effort". Bing Webmaster Blog. September 23, 2016. Retrieved April 8, 2019.
  6. ^ "Google AMP: One Year Later | Adobe". Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe. February 23, 2017. Retrieved August 31, 2017.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  7. ^ "Turbocharging AMP – AMP". www.ampproject.org. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  8. ^ "Twitter ramps up AMP". Search Engine Land. July 7, 2017. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  9. ^ "Introducing Bing AMP viewer and Bing AMP cache". Bing Webmaster Blog. September 19, 2018. Retrieved April 8, 2019.
  10. ^ "AMP Conf Keynote". April 19, 2019.
  11. ^ "Overview – AMP". www.ampproject.org. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  12. ^ Inc., Cloudflare,. "Cloudflare Announces Ampersand, the First Open AMP Cache, to Give Publishers More Control of their Mobile-Optimized Content". GlobeNewswire News Room. Retrieved August 31, 2017. {{cite news}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ^ "Supported Browsers". www.ampproject.org. Retrieved September 7, 2018.
  14. ^ "Supported Platforms, Vendors and Partners – AMP". www.ampproject.org. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  15. ^ "Search results are officially AMP'd". Google. September 20, 2016. Retrieved August 31, 2017.[permanent dead link‍]
  16. ^ "CNBC – AMP". www.ampproject.org. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  17. ^ "Gizmodo – AMP". www.ampproject.org. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  18. ^ a b Jun, Byungjin (October 25, 2019). AMP up your Mobile Web Experience: Characterizing the Impact of Google's Accelerated Mobile Project (pdf). The 25th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking. Los Cabos. Retrieved July 23, 2019.
  19. ^ a b "Google will stop letting sites use AMP format to bait and switch readers". The Verge. Retrieved November 20, 2017.
  20. ^ at 08:25, Scott Gilbertson 19 May 2017. "Kill Google AMP before it kills the web". www.theregister.co.uk. Retrieved April 16, 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  21. ^ "AMP letter". ampletter.org. Retrieved April 16, 2019.
  22. ^ "AMP for email is a terrible idea". Retrieved April 16, 2019.
  23. ^ "Web developers publish open letter taking Google to task for locking up with web with AMP". Boing Boing. Retrieved April 16, 2019.
  24. ^ Bohn, Dieter (March 8, 2018). "Inside Google's plan to make the whole web as fast as AMP". The Verge. Retrieved April 16, 2019.
  25. ^ Bright, Peter (March 10, 2018). "Google claims it's going to build its proprietary AMP using Web standards". Ars Technica. Retrieved April 16, 2019.
  26. ^ "Google Announces Plan to Improve URLs for AMP Pages, But Even If It Happens, Which Remains Uncertain, AMP Will Still Suck". Retrieved April 16, 2019.
  27. ^ at 21:33, Kieren McCarthy in San Francisco 30 Oct 2017. "Google AMP supremo whinges at being called out on team's bulls***". www.theregister.co.uk. Retrieved April 16, 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  28. ^ at 01:36, Shaun Nichols in San Francisco 7 Sep 2018. "Official: Google Chrome 69 kills off the World Wide Web (in URLs)". www.theregister.co.uk. Retrieved April 16, 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  29. ^ a b Scott, Mark (June 1, 2018). "Google's mobile web dominance raises competition eyebrows". Politico. Retrieved April 16, 2019.
  30. ^ Novet, Jordan (August 14, 2016). "Why I prefer Google AMP pages to Facebook Instant Articles". VentureBeat. Retrieved February 28, 2019.
  31. ^ Travis, Ben (December 13, 2016). "Your Guide to Mobile Publishing Formats: AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, and Apple News | Viget". viget.com. Retrieved February 28, 2019.
  32. ^ "Introducing Instant Articles | Facebook Media". Archived from the original on November 18, 2017. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  33. ^ "Apple Announces News App for iPhone & iPad". Apple Newsroom. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  34. ^ a b c Ingram, Mathew (August 16, 2016). "Google Says It Wants to Help Publishers Fight Facebook". Fortune. Retrieved August 4, 2019.
  35. ^ "'It's not our project' says Google of AMP as the open format gains advantage over Facebook's Instant Articles". The Drum. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  36. ^ "Answering its critics, Google loosens reins on AMP project". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 18, 2018.
  37. ^ Medina, Alberto. "The Official AMP Plugin for WordPress – AMP". www.ampproject.org. AMP Project. Retrieved December 7, 2018.
  38. ^ "Publishers are pleasantly surprised by Google AMP traffic - Digiday". Digiday. October 14, 2016. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  39. ^ "Publishers are struggling with AMP page monetization | Search Engine Watch". Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  40. ^ Marshall, Jack (October 28, 2016). "Google AMP Gets Mixed Reviews From Publishers". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  41. ^ "AMP Ads – AMP". www.ampproject.org. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  42. ^ "Growing the AMP Ads Initiative – AMP". www.ampproject.org. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  43. ^ a b "Russian hackers exploited a Google flaw — and Google won't fix it". Salon. September 24, 2017. Retrieved November 20, 2017.
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