Mobile devices have revolutionized the way people access information. As they're getting better in doing things we want, people can't just get enough of them.
Because no one wants a slow loading page, and publishers around the world want their contents to reach readers as fast as possible, back in 2015, Google introduced AMP, short for Accelerated Mobile Pages.
With it, the search giant Google wants to make it a little bit faster for people to browser the web on their mobile devices.
The open-source project is essentially an open source HTML framework that allows web pages to be cached by a CDN, which allows pages to be served more quickly.
In short, AMP is meant to simplify web pages, and prioritizes speed.
While AMP does have the advantages, not everyone likes it.
Google had said that an open-source group is in control of the standard, but AMP was actually touted as the standard to compete against Facebook’s Instant Articles and Apple News.
In other words, the project is something Google can use to tighten its dominance over the web, in order to better compete with others, and earn money.
Over the years, AMP has faced a lot of criticism, including concerns over Google's ability in reducing ad revenue for the original publisher as AMP doesn't allow customized ad units, sponsorships, or pop-up ads.
In 2021, Twitter stopped sending users to AMP pages when they clicked on links on the platform, instead redirecting them to the native or mobile versions of those pages.
This time Brave and DuckDuckGo are making their move.
Brave is a privacy-concerned browser, and DuckDuckGo is an anti-Google, privacy-first search engine.
The two have been trying to preserve users' privacy by methods like blocking trackers and opting to never profile their users for advertising purposes.
And this time, the two have announced features that actively block or bypass web pages hosted on Google’s AMP protocol.
Brave has published a blog post saying that it has released a feature called 'De-AMP; that will redirect users clicking on an AMP link to the publisher’s original page, instead of the AMP page.
The feature is initially made available in Nightly and Beta versions of the browser, and is planed to be enabled by default in the upcoming 1.38 version of Brave on both desktop and Android.
Brave also said that it's working on porting these functions to its iOS browser.
Brave said that it is against AMP, describing it as harmful to user privacy and bad for security. It also emphasized that the framework is designed to push Google’s control over the web:
"AMP encourages more of the Web to be served from Google’s servers, under Google’s control and arbitrary non-standards. It also allows Google to require pages to be built in ways that benefit Google’s advertising systems."
As for DuckDuckGo, it made an announcement a day later, saying on Twitter that its apps and extensions will redirect users to publishers’ non-AMP pages when they click on links in search results.
NEW: our apps & extensions now protect against Google AMP tracking. When you load or share a Google AMP page anywhere from DuckDuckGo apps (iOS/Android/Mac) or extensions (Firefox/Chrome), the original publisher's webpage will be used in place of the Google AMP version.
— DuckDuckGo (@DuckDuckGo) April 19, 2022
DuckDuckGo's reasoning is similar to Brave's, adding that AMP helps the search giant “further entrench its monopoly.”
In response, Google public search liaison, Danny Sullivan, said that AMP is not required for pages to rank better in search results.
As we've explained many times before, AMP didn't and doesn't cause pages to rank better in Search. Good page experience, however that's done (and doesn't require AMP, can help. More here: https://t.co/zt2Ke1kZFf
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) April 19, 2022
"These allegations are misleading, conflate a number of different web projects and standards, and repeat a number of false claims," added a Google spokesperson.
"AMP is an open source framework that was collaboratively developed with publishers, tech companies, and Google as a way to help web content load faster– at the time it was created, it took 19 seconds on average to load a mobile webpage on a 3G connection."
"Today, AMP continues to be a helpful way for websites and publishers – especially those without large development teams – to easily create great web experiences."
While the three companies have their own opinions, regardless, Brave and DuckDuckGo are making bold moves.
The two are representing a growing minority of users who began to understand how invasive Google can be when tracking people.
While AMP has good intentions, it does not bode well with the fact that some people just don't want Google to track them wherever they go on the web.