Thanks, this was very informative. I'm not a fan of AMP at all, but this helps me understand the reasoning a little bit better and why Google hosting the AMP cache is necessary for preserving privacy.
At its root, I think my objections to AMP boil down to a few things:
On a technical level:
1. It's buggy and weird on iOS.
2. I'm not convinced I care about a few seconds of loading time enough to justify the added complexity of making this kind of prefetching possible. Additionally, this seems like a stop-gap that will be rendered unnecessary by increasingly wide pipes for data.
On a philosophical level:
3. It gives Google way too much power over content.
4. I want the option to turn it off completely because of points [1] and [3], and because I fundamentally want to feel in control of my internet experience.
Edit: The point about SXG making AMP URLs less likely to get copy/pasted to other mediums is a key benefit I hadn't considered and will likely make avoiding AMP outside of Google search easier.
2. How many URL's do you load in a day? My browsing history over the last 10 years averages to 417 pages per day. 2 seconds per URL is 35 days of my life...
Bandwidth increases do not fix latency. If a document has to round trip from the other side of the planet, that adds about 200 milliseconds until we break the speed of light. If that same document must make several round trips to be able to initially load (very common!) this adds up rather quickly. The only solutions are localized caching and prefetching.
At its root, I think my objections to AMP boil down to a few things:
On a technical level:
1. It's buggy and weird on iOS.
2. I'm not convinced I care about a few seconds of loading time enough to justify the added complexity of making this kind of prefetching possible. Additionally, this seems like a stop-gap that will be rendered unnecessary by increasingly wide pipes for data.
On a philosophical level:
3. It gives Google way too much power over content.
4. I want the option to turn it off completely because of points [1] and [3], and because I fundamentally want to feel in control of my internet experience.
Edit: The point about SXG making AMP URLs less likely to get copy/pasted to other mediums is a key benefit I hadn't considered and will likely make avoiding AMP outside of Google search easier.