Google unveils AMP news platform

Mumbai: A post put up on Google’s officials blog indicates that the multinational tech firm is now working on a project that will improve mobile browsing and the performance of mobile web. Google’s aim is it make webpages with rich content like video, animations and graphics to work alongside smart ads, that load instantaneously.

“AMP HTML is a new way to make web pages that are optimised to load instantly on users’ mobile devices”. There are now 30 publishers from around the world who are taking part in the project, and this event marks as a start of a collaboration of Google between publishers and technology companies. Now Google is throwing its hat into the ring with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

Google specifically stated Wednesday that with AMP, content will load onto the page before ads will. But, the company said, other marketing details remain to be addressed.

“Readers and users consume a lot more content when the web is faster“, said Michael Ducker, a project manager at Twitter, which is supporting the format. When you click on this link, which is now the only way to preview AMP, you can search for content and then be presented with a carousel of AMP-ified pages.

In May, Facebook lifted the curtain on Instant Articles, a native publishing platform that hosts articles directly on the social network.

The other difference between Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s AMP and Apple’s Apple News is that it is more about making pages ad-friendly. “I don’t think Google was attempting to address ad blocking here, but it’s in-line with what ad blockers are capitalizing on”, Grant Whitmore, executive vice president of digital at New York newspaper Daily News, said in a press release. Its HTML roots also means this can work with any modern browser on any device.

Thirty publishers are on board already and technology companies such as Pinterest, WordPress, Adobe and LinkedIn are also participating.

“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”. Another core goal of this project is to support subscriptions and paywalls.

If you have the time to spare, take a look at the AMP optimised demo for Google search here.