Platform features and timeless ideas

Back in late 2017, AMP still felt like the obvious move. Google’s mobile search visibly rewarded it, news carousels were full of lightning-bolt icons, and for a content-heavy static site, an AMP version felt like the responsible way to be “fast” and “mobile friendly.” The funny part in hindsight is that most of AMP’s promise never really needed AMP. What we wanted was fast pages, simple markup, and predictable layouts. Over time we got there with Core Web Vitals, better browser APIs, static-first frameworks, and performance budgets. We kept the constraints and quietly removed the proprietary wrapper. The bigger lesson for me is about chasing platform features. When something feels mandatory, it often encodes timeless ideas you can adopt without buying into the whole ecosystem. Performance, accessibility, and simplicity stick around. Formats and badges come and go. Here’s the original note from 2017 on which this is based: https://github.com/AnandChowdhary/notes/blob/main/notes/2017/mwlii-add-amp.md