- Key Takeaway #1: Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) framework has fallen from favor despite initially promising faster load times and better SEO rankings.
- Key Takeaway #2: Major publishers and websites have abandoned AMP due to its technical limitations, development complexity, and Google’s removal of preferential treatment.
- Key Takeaway #3: Modern web technologies and hosting solutions now achieve comparable speed without AMP’s restrictions, making the framework increasingly obsolete.
When I first heard about Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) back in 2015, it seemed like the perfect solution for website owners. Who wouldn’t want lightning-fast loading speeds, better search rankings, and potentially reduced server costs? The promise was enticing – implement AMP and watch your mobile pages load in less than a second, delighting users and search engines alike. For several years, AMP was touted as essential technology for any serious website owner.
Fast forward to 2025, and the landscape has dramatically changed. Major publishers and brands have abandoned AMP, developers actively avoid it, and what was once considered indispensable technology is now widely regarded as unnecessary baggage. So what happened? Why has this Google-backed framework fallen so dramatically from grace?
The Rise of AMP: Google’s Mobile Speed Solution
AMP emerged as Google’s answer to Facebook Instant Articles in 2015. If you were using Facebook during that period, you might remember clicking on news articles and staying within the Facebook app rather than being redirected to a browser. This approach benefited both Facebook and publishers – Facebook kept users on their platform longer to collect data and show ads, while publishers enjoyed faster loading times and potentially larger audiences.
Google, not wanting to be left behind, launched the AMP project as an open-source framework. The timing couldn’t have been better. In late 2015, many websites were still primarily designed for desktop, resulting in poor mobile experiences. Websites were unresponsive, resource-intensive, and painfully slow on mobile devices. Google positioned AMP as the solution to these problems.
To encourage adoption, Google added special badges in search results indicating AMP-enabled pages and gave preferential treatment to AMP content in features like Top Stories and News carousels. While Google claimed AMP wouldn’t directly affect SEO rankings, the speed improvements and prominent placement in search results made it an attractive proposition for publishers and businesses.
As a result, major news outlets and content publishers rushed to implement AMP. I remember attending web conferences during this period where Google representatives were constantly evangelizing AMP’s benefits. The message was clear: if you weren’t using AMP, you were missing out on traffic and revenue.
Why AMP Initially Seemed Like a Good Idea
For website owners, AMP offered several compelling advantages:
- Near-instant loading: AMP pages typically loaded in less than one second, significantly faster than traditional mobile pages
- Improved user experience: Faster loading meant less abandonment and potentially higher engagement
- SEO benefits: While not a direct ranking factor, the speed improvements and special treatment in search results could boost visibility
- Reduced server costs: AMP’s lightweight nature potentially decreased bandwidth usage and server load
I personally implemented AMP on several websites during its heyday. It seemed like a shortcut to better performance without investing in premium hosting or complex optimization techniques. For content-focused sites, particularly news and blog platforms, AMP appeared to be a win-win solution.
The Hidden Compromises and Limitations
However, as with many shortcuts, AMP came with significant compromises that became increasingly apparent over time. The framework’s ability to load pages almost instantly wasn’t magic – it was achieved through strict limitations on what could be included on a page.
AMP imposed rigid rules and guidelines that developers had to follow, severely restricting functionality compared to traditional web pages. While simple content pages worked well, anything more complex became problematic. Features we take for granted on normal websites – like interactive elements, shopping carts, or custom JavaScript – were either impossible or extremely difficult to implement within AMP’s constraints.
For example, creating a shopping cart experience in AMP was technically possible but so challenging that most sites didn’t bother. Even if they did, users would ultimately need to be redirected to the traditional website to complete their purchase, creating a disjointed user experience. As I discovered when working with e-commerce clients, this made AMP practically useless for transaction-oriented websites.
Beyond functionality limitations, AMP created significant development overhead. Website owners now needed to maintain multiple versions of their content – a desktop version, a mobile-responsive version, and an AMP version. Each required separate maintenance and troubleshooting, increasing complexity rather than reducing it.
Google’s Controversial Practices and Legal Challenges
In 2020, AMP faced serious scrutiny when the U.S. Justice Department accused Google of anti-competitive behavior related to the framework. The allegations suggested that Google intentionally slowed down ad loading on non-AMP pages to force publishers to adopt AMP if they didn’t want to lose revenue. Google denied these claims, but the damage to AMP’s reputation was done.
Perhaps more significantly, Google had made AMP virtually mandatory for publishers who wanted to appear in high-visibility features like Top Stories and News carousels. This preferential treatment raised concerns about Google’s control over web standards and publisher content.
Facing mounting legal pressure, Google announced in 2021 that it would drop the AMP requirement for these premium content positions, stating that AMP and non-AMP content would rank equally. This change effectively removed the primary incentive for publishers to use AMP.
The Mass Exodus from AMP
Once Google removed the preferential treatment for AMP content, major publishers wasted no time abandoning the framework. The Washington Post, Fox Media, BuzzFeed, and Twitter were among the first to move away from AMP, focusing instead on optimizing their standard mobile experiences.
The exodus wasn’t limited to publishers. Brave browser and DuckDuckGo began automatically bypassing AMP pages, redirecting users to regular versions instead. Even blogging platforms like Ghost removed AMP support entirely in 2023.
Discussions across developer forums and social media revealed widespread frustration with AMP. As one Reddit comment succinctly put it: “It was absolute dog***. It required the markup to be perfect for it to validate and become indexed.” Many developers reported receiving weekly error messages about their AMP pages even when they hadn’t made any changes, with errors sometimes resolving themselves mysteriously.
Why Modern Websites Don’t Need AMP
Perhaps the most significant factor in AMP’s decline is that the problems it was designed to solve are increasingly being addressed through other means. Web technologies have advanced dramatically since 2015, making sub-second load times achievable without AMP’s restrictions.
Content management systems like WordPress, Ghost, and Wix have become much faster by default. Responsive design is now standard practice rather than an afterthought. Affordable high-performance hosting is widely available, and there are numerous tools for optimizing images, scripts, and other content without sacrificing functionality.
In retrospect, AMP feels like an unnecessary detour in web development – adding complexity to solve a problem that could have been addressed through better standard practices. As one developer described it, AMP was like “adding a rocket to an old car” instead of simply upgrading the engine or improving aerodynamics.
The results speak for themselves. Many brands that abandoned AMP reported no negative impact on traffic or revenue – in fact, many saw improvements. For example:
- A German recipe site shut down over 600,000 AMP URLs and experienced a 30% increase in website traffic
- Search Engine Land reported better control over website data and engagement metrics after ditching AMP
- Multiple publishers found that their optimized responsive sites now loaded just as quickly as AMP versions without the limitations
Is AMP Dead in 2025?
While AMP isn’t completely dead, it’s clearly on life support. Google still maintains the infrastructure, and the official WordPress plugin still sees about 2,000 installations daily, indicating some ongoing demand. However, all signs point to a technology in terminal decline:
- The official AMP YouTube channel hasn’t uploaded a video in over three years
- The AMP website’s “success stories” section still features The Washington Post, which abandoned AMP years ago
- These success stories are based on data from 2016-2018, making them increasingly irrelevant
- Google has shifted focus to Core Web Vitals as a more holistic approach to measuring page experience
For most website owners in 2025, implementing AMP offers minimal benefits while imposing significant limitations. The framework solved a problem that largely no longer exists, as standard web technologies have caught up to provide comparable speed without the restrictions.
Should You Still Use AMP in 2025?
Based on current trends and technology, I can’t recommend implementing AMP for most websites in 2025. The benefits no longer outweigh the drawbacks, especially since:
- Google no longer gives preferential treatment to AMP content
- Modern web development practices can achieve comparable speed
- The development overhead and limitations remain significant
- Many tools and browsers are actively bypassing AMP pages
Instead, focus on optimizing your standard responsive website through better hosting, efficient code, and proper image optimization. Pay attention to Core Web Vitals and use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify specific improvements.
If you’re currently using AMP, consider running tests to compare performance and engagement metrics with and without it. Many sites find that removing AMP dependency actually improves their overall metrics while simplifying their development process.
The rise and fall of AMP serves as a reminder that web technologies evolve rapidly, and what seems essential today may become obsolete tomorrow. Rather than chasing specific frameworks, focus on fundamental principles of good web design: speed, accessibility, and user experience. These never go out of style, regardless of what Google or any other company promotes as the next big thing.
