This. What is the process to be added? Does Google have sole control to approve and revoke access to that list? Does it place an unreasonable burden on ad tech startups that might one day be viable competitors to Google's own offering? How much will it hinder FB and their attempts at rolling out a GDN competitor?
1. Sign a Contributor License Agreement granting relevant copyright and patent licenses to Google so they can redistribute your contributions to AMP. You also give Google an unrestricted right to use those patents and copyrights in any of its projects, not just AMP.
2. For ad networks, submit a pull request according to /ads/README.md
3. For analytics providers, submit a pull request according to /extensions/amp-analytics/integrating-analytics.md
> Does Google have sole control to approve and revoke access to that list?
> Does it place an unreasonable burden on ad tech startups that might one day be viable competitors to Google's own offering?
The work of the pull request does not seem particularly burdensome, however, if AMP successfully replaces the Web, then it may be prohibitively difficult for new startups to gain enough traction to merit inclusion in AMP's whitelist.
> How much will it hinder FB and their attempts at rolling out a GDN competitor?
AMP's legal and design constraints may limit Facebook's ability to innovate in that space, however, I'd be shocked if Google excluded Facebook from the amp-ad whitelist. The AMP project has been very willing to accept pull requests from established ad networks. They also provide a bespoke amp-facebook tag for embedding Facebook content within AMP documents, so there's some indication of cooperation.
Do I recall correctly that you are a Googler working on AMP? Or am I mistaken?
Regardless, the questions were hardly rhetorical--I'd really like to know, and the other responder answered some of the questions with answers that confirmed some of my concerns.
Don't get me wrong...I think parts of what Google is doing here are solid and admirable. Publishers screwed the pooch and something had to give. But that doesn't mean Google gets a free pass on the strategic pieces of this they are clearly trying to set up and what they've done to date. The questions are valid and if you feel they are unwarranted concerns, I'd love to learn why you think the concerns are overrated.
