I don't think they are even hiding their motivation. It's basically why Chrome exists, as well: Google needs the open web to stay competitive with native apps, because they only earn money on the web.
There isn't really anything nefarious about that, and at the moment it has the benefit of aligning Google's incentives neatly with users'.
AMP is about moving a huge portion of web hosting from other hosts to Google.com, while trying to hide that fact from users. Look at the antics Chrome does to hide the actual URL and the originally hosting site.
There isn't really anything nefarious about that, and at the moment it has the benefit of aligning Google's incentives neatly with users'.