It’s not a vague promise, it’s an extremely explicit one. Search results for news contain a “top carousel”, a horizontally scrolling box that shows cards for different articles. On most phones it takes up most of the screen. If you want to be in the carousel (i.e. if you want your site to be visible near the top of search results) you must use AMP. No ifs and buts about it.
If NYTimes and every other news organisation refused to participate then yes, Google would be in trouble. But they can rely on good old divide and conquer: these news organisations all compete with each other. All it would take is for one to starting producing AMP content again and they’d vacuum up all the search traffic, and all the other sites would follow them immediately.
If NYTimes and every other news organisation refused to participate then yes, Google would be in trouble. But they can rely on good old divide and conquer: these news organisations all compete with each other. All it would take is for one to starting producing AMP content again and they’d vacuum up all the search traffic, and all the other sites would follow them immediately.