Google Kicks Off Accelerated Mobile Pages Project to Speed Up Web Page Loading on Phones

[dgstorm]

It looks like Google's genius engineers are doing their best to improve our mobile experience. Their latest idea is called the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, and it's basically an open source initiative focused on speeding up the loading of web pages on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

The new code is called AMP HTML, and it's basically a new framework built out of existing technologies. It will likely make its way to Google News and other Google products very soon. Not only that, but 30+ other companies are on board with the initiative including: Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Wordpress and more. Here's a quote from Google's blog with more details,

In the coming months we’ll work with other participants in the project to build more features and functionality focused on some key areas:

• 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.

What a great idea! Who doesn't want super-fast page loading on their smartphone?

Source: Google Blog

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Hope this really takes off. There's an android related site who's name I won't mention that loads so poorly on my phone. I've always found that funny, that an Android site doesn't load well & is janky once it does load on my Android phone.

 

[wicked]

^

 

[thunderbolt_nick]

Man...I was just about to post this too as I posted it on G+. I really do hope this kicks off. I can already tell not a lot of ad companies aren't going to like it though. As I was reading and from what I understand, it blocks and/or slows down Javascript tracking of user preferences which is obviously what can slow down a lot of websites with ads. Seeing as it is open source, I have a feeling from the contributors that are on board that there will be a solution for that so everyone is happy.

 

[SquireSCA]

Agreed. Going to the XDA forum is horrendous on my phone... takes forever, page keeps refreshing and moving around as it tries to cram all the ads and content onto the screen. Takes like 12-15 seconds for it to finally all load and settle in... Very annoying.

 

[Mustang02]

Chrome was supposed to be the internet browser to end all browsers. It's a complete memory hog.