Google's top search result is Google

Interesting look at how Google's search results page has morphed from one directs you to the best result(s) into one that shows you the result then and there.

It is a great feature but from the perspective of a publisher it does feel very shady. If Google can scrape the answers and publish it to the user, you can't really make the experience any faster but the publisher has no knowledge of how helpful their content was.

Scroll down about half way to the How Far Down Are the Traditional Search Results? section and you get an annotated journey of how far you have to scroll until you get to the results. In the example given, it's 36%. I tried the same search on google.co.uk and it was far quicker. For me, google.com showed no 'knowledge panels' but it was still quite a scroll to get through all of the ads.

AMP is another feature Google offer. As I understand it, the publisher can at least be aware of their content being viewed with AMP so it has an ethical advantage over the other techniques Google uses... Although I don't understand why Google doesn't use their position to enforce better standards for speed and weight of a website. AMP addresses it, but does nothing to encourage developers to do better.