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Why you should stop using AMP

AMP_logo_-_Brand-Blue.png

This is an article on why you should stop using the Google AMP platform. The platform has many problems, and is a major problem. It is an attempt by Google to have more control over the Internet, and is highly anti-competitive. Due to Google Chrome hiding parts of the URL by default as of Chrome 69 (need check for correct version) you may have sent some AMP links without knowing it.

For inexperienced tech users, you should know that the Google search engine doesn't contain all of the Internets content, it is just a way of accessing it. All sites on the Google search engine can still be accessed with other search engines, sometimes with better performance. Google search also has a problem, where searches redirect you to Google AMP which you should avoid as well


Index

01.0 - Overview

02.0 - Privacy

03.0 - Alternative solutions

04.0 - Anti-competitive behavior

05.0 - Decrease of revenue

06.0 - Other things to check out

07.0 - Article info

07.0.1 - Software status

08.0 - File history

09.0 - Footer


Overview

Like other Google products, AMP has a history of privacy and performance issues. AMP (Originally: Accelerated Mobile Pages) was created with the claim that it would help webpages load faster. However, it is mainly another attempt at controlling web content. 3 other attempts were done before this with the exact same goal. Google constantly claims that they don't like it being called a Google product, and that since it is open source, it is good. This is not the case for Google products. AMP has been criticized for trying to give Google further control over the Internet by having control over websites they shouldn't own.

General description from Wikipedia: AMP - Data from Februry 18th 2021 at 5:57:58 pm (PT: Pacific Time)

AMP (originally an acronym for Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an open source HTML framework developed by the AMP Open Source Project. It was originally created by Google as a competitor to Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. AMP is optimized for mobile web browsing and intended to help webpages load faster. AMP pages may be cached by a CDN, such as Microsoft Bing or Cloudflare's AMP caches, which allows pages to be served more quickly.

AMP was first announced on October 7, 2015. After a technical preview period, AMP pages began appearing in Google mobile search results in February 2016. AMP has been criticized for potentially giving further control over the web to Google and other concerns. The AMP Project announced it would move to an open governance model on September 18, 2018.


Privacy

Google has a very very bad record when it comes to user privacy. (I could go on and on with evidence of this, but it took a long time to find and go through all these articles)

Privacy on Google products is always bad, due to all Google products containing spyware.

No matter what you do, when you are using Google, all of your sensitive personal data is being sent to Google and others. Google has also been spotted going through open programs. For example, from personal experience (on Firefox) with a YouTube tab open that I didn't visit, I watched several videos offline (VLC Media Player) Later when I went to check the recommendations, it was nearly everything that I had watched. There is no doubt they are spying on other programs too.

In Chrome (and many other browsers) an incognito mode is present. In Chrome, this mode is pointless, as Google will still mine your data. Even if you turn data mining/tracking off, and enable the "do not track" signal, surprise suprise, Google is still mining your data.

If you think you have nothing to hide, you are absolutely wrong. This argument has been debunked many times over:

Via Wikipedia

  1. Edward Snowden remarked "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. "When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights."

  2. Daniel J. Solove stated in an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education that he opposes the argument; he stated that a government can leak information about a person and cause damage to that person, or use information about a person to deny access to services even if a person did not actually engage in wrongdoing, and that a government can cause damage to one's personal life through making errors. Solove wrote "When engaged directly, the nothing-to-hide argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to focus on its narrow understanding of privacy. But when confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond surveillance and disclosure, the nothing-to-hide argument, in the end, has nothing to say."

  3. Adam D. Moore, author of Privacy Rights: Moral and Legal Foundations, argued, "it is the view that rights are resistant to cost/benefit or consequentialist sort of arguments. Here we are rejecting the view that privacy interests are the sorts of things that can be traded for security." He also stated that surveillance can disproportionately affect certain groups in society based on appearance, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion.

  4. Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert and cryptographer, expressed opposition, citing Cardinal Richelieu's statement "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged", referring to how a state government can find aspects in a person's life in order to prosecute or blackmail that individual. Schneier also argued "Too many wrongly characterize the debate as 'security versus privacy.' The real choice is liberty versus control."

  5. Harvey A. Silverglate estimated that the common person, on average, unknowingly commits three felonies a day in the US.

  6. Emilio Mordini, philosopher and psychoanalyst, argued that the "nothing to hide" argument is inherently paradoxical. People do not need to have "something to hide" in order to hide "something". What is hidden is not necessarily relevant, claims Mordini. Instead, he argues an intimate area which can be both hidden and access-restricted is necessary since, psychologically speaking, we become individuals through the discovery that we could hide something to others.

  7. Julian Assange stated "There is no killer answer yet. Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) has a clever response, asking people who say this to then hand him their phone unlocked and pull down their pants. My version of that is to say, 'well, if you're so boring then we shouldn't be talking to you, and neither should anyone else', but philosophically, the real answer is this: Mass surveillance is a mass structural change. When society goes bad, it's going to take you with it, even if you are the blandest person on earth."

  8. Ignacio Cofone, law professor, argues that the argument is mistaken in its own terms because, whenever people disclose relevant information to others, they also disclose irrelevant information. This irrelevant information has privacy costs and can lead to other harms, such as discrimination.

Google AMP is the same as all other Google products, it contains spyware, as Google is not just a search company, they are a user data company, and you are the product. To Google, you are only worth about $700.00 (unless you are making them ad revenue)


Alternative solutions

Google AMP is not needed. Web pages need to be built better. AMP will just become cluttered and slow. Propert web pages used to be able to load quickly back before 2010, even with all the skeumorphism. However, as programs became more sloppy and inefficient over time, the skeumorphism was removed between 2010 and 2014 in favor of flat design "to make pages load faster" and less than 5 years later, this still didn't do anything, as pages continued to be written even more inefficiently. AMP claims to fix this, but in reality, it is still very clunky due to the embedded spyware and poorly optimized code. This is a result of Wirth's law : Wirth's law is an adage on computer performance which states that software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster. Paired with Moore's law which is currently predicted to reach an end in 2025, this will cause catastropic problems.


Anti-competitive behavior

The AMP project contains the default page code for a web page, but then applies Googles formatting to the page, making every page look the same, and making it harder to distinguish between sites. It has been criticized as a method of Google destroying the open web and restricting the web further.


Decrease of revenue

Due to the formatting of AMP pages, and the way ads are served, site owners earn far less revenue with AMP than on their own page.


Other things to check out

The Google Graveyard (killedbygoogle.com) - a sorted list of the 224+ products Google has killed

GitHub link

Alphabet worker union - The new workers union at Google with over 800 members

Don't want to part with the dinosaur easter egg? This website has you covered

There are other alternates, just search for them.


Some fact checking is needed for this article


Article info

File type: Markdown (*.md)

File version: 1 (Thursday, February 18th 2021 at 6:03 pm)

Line count (including blank lines and compiler line): 197

Software status

All of my works are free from restrictions. DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) is not present in any of my works. This project does not contain any DRM

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This sticker is supported by the Free Software Foundation. I never intend to include DRM in my works.

File history

Version 1 (Thursday, February 18th 2021 at 6:03 pm)

Changes:

  • Started the file/article
  • Added the title section
  • Referenced the Google AMP icon
  • Added a section about privacy
  • Added a section about the overview
  • Added the article info section
  • Referenced the DRM Free icon
  • Added the file history section
  • Added the alternative solutions section
  • Added the Anti-competitive behavior section
  • Added the decrease of revenue section
  • Added the other things to check out section
  • Added the index
  • Added the footer
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Version 2 (Coming soon)

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Footer

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