AMP: Brave and DuckDuckGo stand up to Google technology

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) It is a Google technology that you have most likely come across without realizing it, and it is that as happens with so many others created by the Internet giant, its rejection by websites can mean bad treatment by search engine optimization algorithms. Consequently, not every site dares to do without a technology that, on the other hand, is perfectly integrated into content managers like WordPress and that also has its advantages.

In fact, AMP is strictly a framework open source created to speed up the loading of web pages on mobile devices, since search engines like Google or Bing, but also platforms like Cloudflare usually store them in their cache to serve them faster. For the user, AMP pages are displayed in a similar way to the ‘read mode’ of modern web browsers, with which you can read for example this article in a clean view and without the distractions of the site’s own design. However, not everything is good, as you may already be imagining.

And it is that rarely is the time that Google does something that is not for its own benefit, which usually means in the vast majority of cases, data. Come on, Google uses AMP for good, but also for evil, to spy a little more on its long-suffering users. This is how Brave Software, responsible for the Brave browser, denounces it, which among other things accuses AMP of being a technology pernicious for privacy, with a poor design in terms of security, of being one more tool with which to cement Google’s monopoly…

Even if it is a poor alternative for performance and usability, two of the a priori main values ​​of AMP, point out from Brave, to then announce a new protection that is added to the existing ones and for which the users of their browser will have the possibility of block the use of AMP pages and blind the Internet giant some more. This ‘block’ will be activated by default from the next version of Brave, although those who wish to continue using AMP normally can deactivate it from the browser’s privacy preferences.

AMP technology is bad for privacy because it enables Google to track users even more (which is already a ton).

And, Google uses AMP to further entrench its monopoly, forcing the technology on publishers by prioritizing AMP links in search and favoring Google ads on AMP pages.

— DuckDuckGo (@DuckDuckGo) April 19, 2022

But not only Brave is against AMP. DuckDuckGo is on the same page and there’s no need to digress with what they’re going to do, both from their browser and from their mobile and PC web browsers, the latter still under development and only with the Mac version available for testing. “AMP technology is bad for privacy because it allows Google to track users further (which is already a ton). And Google uses AMP to further entrench its monopoly, forcing technology on publishers by prioritizing AMP links in search and favoring Google ads on AMP pages«, They published a few days ago on their official Twitter account.

Indeed, it is not only that AMP is harmful to users because of the privacy risk it poses: sites are also affected because rejecting certain practices imposed by Google results in “mistreatment by it; a mistreatment that can cost a lot of traffic to any website. And what is the underlying problem? That Brave and DuckDuckGo are a speck of dust compared to Chrome, so any measure applied by them lacks a real impact beyond that generated for their users. That is, they have little muscle to make things change for everyone.

The good news is that AMP has run out of steam considerably thanks to the advancement of web development technologies, responsive design, and more. Almost any current WordPress template, the most popular content management system on the market, adapts to the mobile paradigm without overloading the experience and, therefore, the rise of AMP pages has been decreasing in recent times… But like Google he is interested in losing an iota of ground, AMP 2.0 is underway and, as reported by Brave, it will be even worse what is there now.

This being the case, together with the alternatives based on authentic open standards, the end of AMP means that more browsers join the rudeness: Vivaldi will almost certainly do it, Opera also has the possibility… However, it is necessary that the big fish get involved, see Microsoft Edge and Safari, because of Firefox, which may also end up joining the opposition, little is expected, given its dependence on Google to survive… and its fall to the bottom of the abysses in what to market share is concerned.