Google this week announced a new open source initiative, the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, to facilitate instantaneous loading of mobile web pages, even those including rich content like videos and animations.
The project is built on the open AMP HTML framework and will go forward with content and tech collaborators including Twitter, Pinterest, WordPress, Chartbeat, Adobe and more.
From a post to the Google corporate blog by David Besbris, vice president engineering, search: “Publishers around the world use the mobile web to reach these readers, but the experience can often leave a lot to be desired. Every time a webpage takes too long to load, they lose a reader—and the opportunity to earn revenue through advertising or subscriptions. That’s because advertisers on these websites have a hard time getting consumers to pay attention to their ads when the pages load so slowly that people abandon them entirely.”
AMP HTML can help change that. “We also want the same code to work across multiple platforms and devices so that content can appear everywhere in an instant—no matter what type of phone, tablet or mobile device you’re using,” Besbris wrote.
AMP will focus on content, distribution and advertising.
For content, AMP will use an open source approach to ensure rich content like image carousels, maps, social plug-ins, data visualizations and videos, as well as ads and analytics, load quickly.
Distribution work will focus on delivering content across all kinds of devices and platforms; part of this effort includes “a new approach to caching that allows the publisher to continue to host their content while allowing for efficient distribution through Goolge’s high performance global cache.
AMP is geared toward supporting all types of ad formats, networks and technologies; “It’s also a core goal of the project to support subscriptions and paywalls.”
“We hope the open nature of Accelerated Mobile Pages will protect the free flow of information by ensuring the mobile web works better and faster for everyone, everywhere,” Besbris wrote.
