Is Google AMP an HTML fork? - CTO Coffee Chat
Transcript
guys Keith Townsend from the CT advisor calm with another coffee chat we're going to talk software development a little bit but don't worry it's not too much software development believe it or not I got today's topic from this week in google this week in google is a show over on the TWiT network twi t tv.com wonderful network of shows are get a couple hours of listening pleasure out of that every week however there's been a topic that leo laporte has been a little bit of thing
colorblind on the sea it's around Google's amp open source M project I think leo has some really valid business concerns when it comes to amp but from the technology perspective I think he might be a tad bit bias and a tad bit off I think let give you some background and a MP I think it stands for accelerated mobile pages ideal of amp is to accelerate the mobile experience so if you've ever been on your mobile phone and you load a link from let's say linkedin
facebook and it takes forever to load because there's heavy JavaScript from either poorly written web pages or worse yet bad at Tech amp looks to solve that by making a accelerated mobile page HTML format that streamlines the coal basically amp calls a JavaScript runtime that executes HTML like cold Leo's argument is that the experience while great is a fork of HTML this is where I have to technically disagree with Leo a fork of HTML would require new browser support so let's say Google went about and
created an HTML 6 format that or HTML more accurately what legal is arguing HTML five dash one so a fork of HTML in general which would I think would require browser support to be updated what Google is basically doing is trading custom JavaScript that looks like HTML so when you look at HTML let's take a look at it and we look at amp Cole that's on the github site looks very similar with the exception that the app code calls a amp runtime that runs the cold
through or that executes the code in a compatible browser a compatible browser is just any browser that runs java script now from a business perspective I agree with Leo that this is a land grab when we say an open source project let's take a look at a couple of open source projects that Google sponsors Cooper Nettie's is one that's I think there's starting to be a little bit more of a commitment from outside contributors for Cuban at ease and Google isn't doesn't have the stranglehold on
that but then there's the other end of the spectrum and there's Android while while Android is open source it's really not you're really not able to contribute to the main line of Android code google has that on lock down and you can create Forks of its 02 Leo's point an example of a fork would be different forks of Android what's run on amazon fire is a fork of Android you couldn't take the same Google services and just easily flap those on to what Amazon does because
it's a fork same thing in theory you couldn't take everything that runs on a fire tablet and run it on a nexus 7 tablet it will more or less work but it's not meant to work whereas with it we're not that's not the case just as long as your browser supports javascript you're good to go you can even in theory block amp content by having a plug-in that looks for the amptek and disables the execution of that JavaScript code so I understand where Leo's I think
economic concern is coming from with the issue but from just a engineering perspective and and my opinion is not a fork that's it for this CTO coffee chat catch me on Twitter I'm at CT of Iser and on the web WWE are subscribe to the podcast which is weekly you can do that in itunes or your favorite pockets just a stitcher talk to you guys next CTO chat
