Google recently took the wraps off its Accelerated Mobile Pages initiative, which is designed to make Web pages load more quickly on mobile devices. The project comes soon after the release of similar projects like Facebook's Instant Articles, although it has stayed in technical preview since its announcement.
According to Google, Accelerated Mobile Pages, also called AMP, will be released to the public "early next year," with around 4,500 developers currently following the project on GitHub and around 250 code contributions having been made so far.
"Speed and user experience. This is the mantra of the AMP Project as we seek to make the Web fast and compelling," states a post on the project's blog. "Speed is also the byword in the project's growth and progress. In the six weeks since the Oct. 7 announcement, there has been a whirlwind of activity from publishers, technology providers and developers."
Pages made with Google's AMP framework will load much faster than other Web pages, which means that they will also probably feature higher on Google's search results. AMP articles will be hosted on Google's own servers and will be very lightweight.
It will be interesting to see how Google approaches AMP pages considering the fact that the company makes the bulk of its money through advertising. Google will, of course, keep advertising in mind with the rollout of AMP, but ads will need to be more lightweight and fast-loading than they currently are. Several advertisers are working within the open source AMP project to develop ads that will load quickly, including Outbrain, AOL, OpenX, DoubleClick and AdSense.
In addition, a number of publishers have already expressed interest in the initiative, including the likes of The Guardian, BuzzFeed and The Washington Post. You can check out an example of what AMP will look by clicking on this link on a mobile device.
