AMP isn't bad in the sense that it makes websites faster. AMP is bad because it (usually, in common practice) switches the domain, so you lose control of a huge number of things and you essentially cede control to a third party, so instead of this:
Now ironically, this is actually safer for a number of websites because it has the side effect of making normal HTTP content HTTPS, but the idea of Google taking over control over the content, the advertising, what methods are used for analytics tracking, and what possible pieces of content can be embedded destroys the whole "the web should be free" concept.
It's not something dramatically new, Facebook started doing it years ago and even Google news was a (more limited) form of it, but just because some things are possible doesn't mean they should be done. For example I can make a website, example.com, where every link gets turned into
example.com/v/yourwebsite.com
And then proxy all the content through my server replacing links like yourwebsite.com/login to example.com/v/yourwebsite.com/login and the majority of users will not notice that the website hasn't changed. And really the only thing that stops people from doing this is copyright law and a shared societal understanding that corporations should be able to control their content, not technical countermeasures.
Theoretically you could of course host your own AMP server, but of course if you're going to have your, say, mobile subdomain you can just as easily make things fast by just sticking to plain old HTML and simple CSS. In reality what happens is that companies trade control for speed on mobile.
I'm so scared of relying on one company for everything.
I personally run my own mail server and use Mail to move all messages to Google Inbox, so that I can use Google's excellent spam filter and email grouping while still keeping control over my email.
I use both Google Photos and iCloud Photos.
If I had to have Google proxy my website, I would at least give my visitors a CNAME instead of Google's URL, to avoid getting locked in into the technology.
I know a lot of people that would be totally screwed if Google closed their account for some reason: no more email, contacts, photos, etc. etc.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/us/politics/hillary-cl...
You get this:
https://amp.gstatic.com/v/mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/us/p...
Now ironically, this is actually safer for a number of websites because it has the side effect of making normal HTTP content HTTPS, but the idea of Google taking over control over the content, the advertising, what methods are used for analytics tracking, and what possible pieces of content can be embedded destroys the whole "the web should be free" concept.
It's not something dramatically new, Facebook started doing it years ago and even Google news was a (more limited) form of it, but just because some things are possible doesn't mean they should be done. For example I can make a website, example.com, where every link gets turned into
example.com/v/yourwebsite.com
And then proxy all the content through my server replacing links like yourwebsite.com/login to example.com/v/yourwebsite.com/login and the majority of users will not notice that the website hasn't changed. And really the only thing that stops people from doing this is copyright law and a shared societal understanding that corporations should be able to control their content, not technical countermeasures.