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Google AMPs up mobile browsing

Search giant Google has introduce AMP – Accelerated Mobile Pages – in order to make browsing news on mobile phones a slicker experience.

Previewed on 7th October, AMP is designed to load articles instantly into a phone’s browser. The technology consists of standard webpages that include the techniques Google uses to slash loading times.

These include no loading a video or picture until the user scrolls to the part of the page where it’s featured, and enabling browsers to load up the top of the webpage much more quickly than the middle or bottom.

Webpages will also be cached on Google’s major servers, which are designed to handle in excess of six million enquiries every second, meaning that the time taken to retrieve articles is drastically cut down.

Although AMP is compatible with any form of content, Google has restricted it to current events for the moment. Head of News for the company, Richard Gingras, said:

“The web today, particularly in a mobile environment, is not really fully satisfying users’ expectations.

“It’s not as fast as it should be. Pages load slowly, sometime erratically. It’s not ideal.”

The result is that users are able to swipe through articles on their news feeds without any delay between pages.

Given that a large part of Google’s revenue comes from mobile advertising, it makes sense that the company is focused on improving the mobile experience. However, it faces stiff competition from Facebook, which has unveiled its own version of AMP. According to eMarketer, Google’s share of the market for mobile advertising sales has fallen to 33%, while Facebook’s has risen to 19%.

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