Vox Media, Complex Networks, and BDG are considering ditching Google's AMP for their own mobile-optimized articles; The Washington Post dropped AMP last summer
Alexandra Bruell / Wall Street Journal :
Context & Ripple Effects
AMP launched in 2016 as a Google-led speed standard that publishers like the Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, and the Washington Post signed onto at launch, trading restrictions on JavaScript and HTML tags for faster mobile pages — notably without requiring a business relationship with Google, unlike Facebook's and Apple's news initiatives.
The exit path is now well trodden: The Washington Post dropped AMP last summer, and Tribune Publishing reported that disabling it caused very little impact on mobile search referrals, with year-long drops tracking broader search trends. That evidence is what makes Vox Media, Complex Networks, and BDG's deliberation a real decision rather than a risky bet.
First-order effects
- If Vox Media, Complex Networks, and BDG follow through, they regain control of their mobile article pages — ads, analytics, and rendering — instead of serving Google-cached AMP versions, joining The Washington Post among major publishers off the format.
- Google loses marquee news-brand participation in AMP, weakening the standard's claim to be the default fast-mobile option for publishers.
Second-order effects
- Tribune Publishing's finding that dropping AMP barely moved search referrals removes the main deterrent for other publishers still hosting AMP pages, making exit cheaper across the industry.
- Publishers exiting AMP shift traffic back to their own domains, where they control ad inventory and first-party data — pressure that lands on ad-tech partners and on Google's distribution leverage over news.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, AMP becomes a cautionary case in platform-publisher relations: speed standards imposed by a dominant distributor erode trust when publishers conclude the trade-off no longer pays, as The Verge's later retrospective on how AMP damaged publishers' trust in Google frames it.
- The longer-term structure points toward publishers treating mobile performance as an owned capability rather than a concession to a platform — standards adoption becoming contingent on demonstrated referral value, not distributor preference.
The trend: News publishers are unwinding their adoption of Google-controlled page formats as evidence accumulates that AMP's search-referral benefit doesn't justify ceding control of their mobile experience.