Someone else out there is asking the same question I've been asking for a couple of weeks since I started using AMP on Satisfamily: is AMP worth all this time? It's certainly not worth the time if Google drops the project like Google Sites or half-asses it like Google Classroom or Google+. However, what if AMP is the next Google Images and creating your pages correctly now will save you hours of heartache later? What if really fast, really boring website pages are the future? Anyhow, I decided to come up with some reasons why this website is now at least partially AMPed.

1. Faster / My host sucks. Some of you are in the same boat, having paid for "basic" hosting for the next five years to a company that is awful. You have limits on your unlimited plan, you have no speed, and you have to be vigilant against hackers. You're host-poor. Satisfamily is like that, mainly because it's my personal website, so I would rather use up my cheap webhosting on my own website. However, that does not mean it's a bad website or that I don't care about it. In fact, this just makes it a great testing ground. I am always trying to see what I can do with a website with so many disadvantages. AMP might be your chance to do the same thing. If all the caching and gzipping and other tricks only get you so far, AMP might be a solution.

2. Searches. AMP probably isn't about all searches, but it certainly is about Google. Again, it could be as awesome as Google Images or as unawesome as Google+. Google has an incentive to make it good, I think, since the AMP websites are hosted with them, and anything that makes everything go through Google is good for Google. If I get a boost in searches because I am using AMP, it might help me get noticed. However, AMP does not allow the extra ads and newletter sign-up and other crap on the popular email marketing websites. If that's your formula, then I don't think I'd bother with AMP. However, if you've been frustrated because everyone else is on a website like that and somehow getting hits with useless content, this might be your chance to break into the Google algorithm. And if all you need to do in order to accomplish Google Search Nirvana is to add a plugin and one image per article, it might be worth your time.

3. Being Immortal. I do not know the best way to achieve website immortality, but AMP is one more possibilty, like The Wayback Machine or Google Cache. If you are a writer, this is as important as getting more hits today. I've heard people say that it's nearly impossible to erase anything on the internet, but I really believe the opposite is true: two decades after I first heard that statement, I see entire pages filled with broken links to defunct websites. Eventaully, data will be purged or archived offline. In 100 years, maybe AMP will still be around because it's simple and hosted remotely, and that's enough of an incentive for me to try. I am not sure where it will be saved once Google and/or Satisfamily no longer exist, but there's a chance you will be able to read this article in the year 2222, assuming anyone will need to read at all by then.

There are probably other arguments, but these three are more than enough to get me using AMP. If you want to try it out but have no idea how, contact me at Passive Ninja, Luthernet, or Brave New Church. Unless you are reading this in the year 2222, in which case I am dead. Literally.