This "hide the url from the user" is exactly what America Online did back in the day to try and keep everyone from leaving their garden. I remember being offended by it and trying to explain to people what that meant and that they should cancel their AOL accounts over it, with little success.
How did Google get this bad? Why are we letting the internet devolve back to the early 90s?
Google is panicking over user behavior changes. Fewer people using the traditional search, more people using voice search, more people using a mobile web browser which they can't control. Someone is plotting the use of paid search ads in 2028 and it doesn't look pretty.
If Google doesn't aggressively pursue things which jack up their revenue, they switch from a growth company to a non-growth company sooner rather than later. Instead of a P/E of 52, maybe thats a P/E of 10 or 20. If that happens too soon, then their ability to attract and pay talent diminishes significantly. Thus, "don't be evil" is replaced with the ends justifying the means.
The only big reprieve we have here is that if Google comes up with some wacky new idea which breaks w3c standards and Apple doesn't go along with it, it probably doesn't get adapted.
To be honest I think that's jumping to conclusions based on an article that's absolutely leaping to conclusions. It's highly unlikely Google's web crawling team conspired with AMP to force the web to convert to AMP
Yep. For those not familiar with the heyday of AOL: "Type in AOL keyword XYZ to buy an XYZ"...where AOL sold the keyword to the highest bidder. They weren't selling the top spot in a list, it was exclusive placement.
How did Google get this bad? Why are we letting the internet devolve back to the early 90s?