Good news: as of May 2021, page speed (or core web vitals, if you must) will be a ranking factor in Google Search.
Even better news: at the same time, Google AMP will lose its unfairly privileged position in the top stories carousel. Hopefully this marks the beginning of the end for Google’s failed experiment in forcing publishers to use their tech.
More great reporting from Adrianne Jeffries at The Markup.
An engineer at a major news publication who asked not to be named because the publisher had not authorized an interview said Google’s size is what led publishers to use AMP.
I’ve been using Duck Duck Go for ages so I didn’t realise quite how much of a walled garden Google search has become.
41% of the first page of Google search results is taken up by Google products.
This is some excellent reporting. The data and methodology are entirely falsifiable so feel free to grab the code and replicate the results.
Note the fear with which publishers talk about Google (anonymously). It’s the same fear that app developers exhibit when talking about Apple (anonymously).
Ain’t centralisation something?
On AMP:
Google could have approached the “be better on mobile” problem, search optimization and revenue sharing any number of ways, obviously, but the one they’ve chosen and built out is the one that guarantees that either you let them middleman all of your traffic or they cut off your oxygen.
There’s also this observation, which is spot-on:
Google has managed to structure this surveillance-and-value-extraction machine entirely out of people who are convinced that they, personally, are doing good for the world. The stuff they’re working on isn’t that bad – we’ve got such beautiful intentions!
Reinventing the web the long way around, in a way that gives Google even more control of it. No thanks.
A small-scale conspiracy theory from the innards of Google.
Speak softly and carry a big Google stick.
“I am not a number, I am a free website!”
Thinking about the end game.
Google’s alternative facts.