The Web Obesity Crisis

To repeat a suggestion I made on Twitter, I contend that text-based websites should not exceed in size the major works of Russian literature.

This is a generous yardstick. I could have picked French literature, full of slim little books, but I intentionally went with Russian novels and their reputation for ponderousness.

In Goncharov's Oblomov, for example, the title character spends the first hundred pages just getting out of bed.

The tech lead for Google's AMP project was nice enough to engage us on Twitter. He acknowledged the bloat, but explained that Google was "resource constrained" and had had to outsource this project.

This admission moved me deeply, because I had no idea Google was in a tight spot. So I spent a couple of hours of my own time making a static version of the AMP website.

I began by replacing the image carousels with pictures of William Howard Taft, America's greatest president by volume.

I think this made a marked improvement from the gratuitous animations on the original page.