[Brando]

You are 100% correct on both counts. Google is now one of the largest hosts for JS libraries online, and they are trying to be the gatekeeper of information access. This doesn't apply to their hosting of libraries though.

Also. AMP was utter trash but had a purpose when it was made available to developers. Websites were not mobile friendly and rebuilding a site to be adaptive (completely different mobile site) or responsive (layout shifting based on screen size) were expensive endeavors. Easy/inexpensive solution? Use AMP. So publishers did it and watched their ad revenue die. Publishers that used non-google ad stacks saw impressions go to the toilet, lost site functions, and effectively Google was keeping users on their ecosystem. Then you had every consultant claiming to be a UI/UX expert in the digital marketing realm saying AMP was the end-all be-all. What a load of $h1t. And here we are with almost every site now responsive and AMP is where it belongs: In the dumpster fire of dead or dying google products.

Originally Posted by widebody911

It's part of Google's long game to become the internet gatekeeper; these essentially become hooks to either extract user information or insert ads - or both.

The other spreading scourge is AMP pages https://medium.com/@danbuben/why-amp-is-bad-for-your-site-and-for-the-web-e4d060a4ff31