16 votes

“Core Web Vitals” replaces AMP as requirement for Top Stories module

5 comments

  1. smores
    Link
    There’s potentially a lot to discuss about Google’s new “Core Web Vitals” system, a set of metrics (largest contentful paint, first input delay, and cumulative layout shift) that Google is...

    There’s potentially a lot to discuss about Google’s new “Core Web Vitals” system, a set of metrics (largest contentful paint, first input delay, and cumulative layout shift) that Google is promoting as their new evaluation system for measuring website performance. The thing that was most surprising (and exciting!) to me, though, was the follow up announcement that good CWV metrics would replace AMP (Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages initiative) as the requirement for being included in the Search page’s Top Stories module.

    This requirement has, in the past, been a huge reason that developers have been supporting AMP, despite frustrations that a new standard, completely defined by Google, was... concerning for a democratized and open web, and even worse that AMP sites were all hosted by and served from Google servers and Google domains. This announcement seems to mark a first step away from AMP, which I think is a huge win!

    18 votes
  2. [4]
    nothis
    Link
    Interesting. So they are afraid of getting sued.

    Interesting. So they are afraid of getting sued.

    7 votes
    1. [3]
      skybrian
      Link Parent
      I'm not seeing the connection to getting sued.

      I'm not seeing the connection to getting sued.

      3 votes
      1. [2]
        nothis
        Link Parent
        Resistance to AMP has been growing in tech circles and there's been murmur that it's overstepping certain lines that would open them up for lawsuits. A recent example for how tightly integrated it...

        Resistance to AMP has been growing in tech circles and there's been murmur that it's overstepping certain lines that would open them up for lawsuits. A recent example for how tightly integrated it is with their products is them no longer offering non-AMP options for image search results, they're all-in with routing as much of traffic through their servers as possible.

        They wouldn't drop AMP's ranking incentives unless they had a good reason. I don't see many internal incentives providing an answer so that makes fear of external pressure a likely candidate.

        11 votes
        1. skybrian
          Link Parent
          I can think of other possible reasons. Maybe they found that requiring top stories to be AMP was limiting from a product point of view? It's a sort of strategy tax. They figured out another way to...

          I can think of other possible reasons. Maybe they found that requiring top stories to be AMP was limiting from a product point of view? It's a sort of strategy tax. They figured out another way to limit "top stories" to websites that work well on mobile and maybe that will improve Google News.

          Also, Google is well-known for eventually winding down projects that don't seem to be working out as well as they hoped.

          Generally speaking, I think that intent is not as easy to figure out as we sometimes pretend. We can guess but they're just guesses.

          4 votes