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Google's new Accelerated Mobile Pages initiative aims to make the mobile web much faster

Google today announced a new initiative called Accelerated Mobile Pages, which aims to drastically improve the performance of the mobile web.
By
October 7, 2015
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Google is well aware that browsing through the mobile web can be quite the hassle, especially when your favorite websites don’t load as fast as you’d like them to. This is why Google today announced a new initiative called Accelerated Mobile Pages, which aims to drastically improve the performance of the mobile web. If all goes well with the project, Google says webpages will be able to load rich content like video, animations and graphics alongside smart advertisements without a hitch.

And in a perfect world, the same code will be able to work across multiple platforms and devices so content will be able to appear everywhere in an instant. The project relies on AMP HTML, which is a new open framework built out of existing web technologies. This new framework will allow websites to build light-weight webpages.

Part of what makes this new project so big is all of the partners that are already on-board, including Twitter, Pinterest, WordPress, Chartbeat, Parse.ly, Adobe Analytics and LinkedIn, as well as about 20 others. These partners are already planning to integrate AMP HTML pages into their websites. Google says that it will work with these partners to bring more features and functionality to the project in a few key areas. Currently, those areas include:

  • Content: Publishers increasingly rely on rich content like image carousels, maps, social plug-ins, data visualizations, and videos to make their stories more interactive and stand out. They also need to implement ads and analytics in order to monetize the content and to understand what their readers like and dislike. The Accelerated Mobile Pages Project provides an open source approach, allowing publishers to focus on producing great content, while relying on the shared components for high performance and great user experience. The initial technical specification—developed with input and code from our partners in the publishing and technology sectors—is being released today on GitHub.
  • Distribution: Publishers want people to enjoy the great journalism they create anywhere and everywhere, so stories or content produced in Spain can be served in an instant across the globe in, say, Chile. That means distribution across all kinds of devices and platforms is crucial. So, as part of this effort, we’ve designed a new approach to caching that allows the publisher to continue to host their content while allowing for efficient distribution through Google’s high performance global cache. We intend to open our cache servers to be used by anyone free of charge.
  • Advertising: Ads help fund free services and content on the web. With Accelerated Mobile Pages, we want to support a comprehensive range of ad formats, ad networks and technologies. Any sites using AMP HTML will retain their choice of ad networks, as well as any formats that don’t detract from the user experience. It’s also a core goal of the project to support subscriptions and paywalls. We’ll work with publishers and those in the industry to help define the parameters of an ad experience that still provides the speed we’re striving for with AMP.

Google hopes that the open nature of the project will help protect the free flow of information by ensuring the mobile web will work faster for everyone, no matter which platform or device they’re using. For more information on this big initiative, head to the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project website.