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Google pledges to send mobile users accelerated Web pages next year

The AMP project is set to debut soon, giving users rapid-speed access to mobile Web pages -- without irritating, battery-draining ads.
Written by Charlie Osborne, Contributing Writer

Google has announced the upcoming debut of the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project, aimed at delivering fast-loading Web pages to mobile device users next year.

The AMP project is an open-source initiative designed to increase the speed of Internet domain access. As more consumers shift from traditional PCs to mobile devices, content consumption is on the increase -- and mobile data networks cannot always catch up.

However, AMP intends to change that. By introducing lightweight pages which work with smart caching offered by Google and a flexible structure which displays both ads and content in a way which will appeal to consumers, fewer people will become frustrated through poorly-loaded ads and chunky pages which drain battery life in the process.

On Tuesday, David Besbris, Vice President of Engineering at Google Search and Richard Gingras, Head of News at Google said in a blog post that since the project's inception on GitHub, thousands of publishers have expressed interest in the scheme, including the BBC, New York Times, CBS Interactive (disclosure: ZDNet is a domain belonging to CBSi) and the Local Media Consortium (LMC).

Not only could the project deliver rapid content to devices relying on mobile networks to access the Internet and boost eyeball rates on Internet pages, but consumers could benefit through access which doesn't hog so much bandwidth -- especially as a number of ad partners are also interested in the specifications provided by AMP.

Delivering ads to mobile pages can significantly contribute to bandwidth usage, as well as drain battery life. In turn, high rates may prompt users to adopt ad blockers -- and so if this process can be made more efficient and less battery and data consuming, users might not be pushed into the arms of software which stops this revenue generation avenue from profiting when a visitor accesses a Web page through a smartphone or tablet.

"The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project is an initiative to improve the mobile web and enhance the distribution ecosystem. If content is fast, flexible and beautiful, including compelling and effective ads, we can preserve the open web publishing model as well as the revenue streams so important to the sustainability of quality publishing," the AMP team says.

Since an announcement made six weeks ago formally launching AMP, over 4,500 publishers have signed up. Ad networks Outbrain, AOL, OpenX, DoubleClick and AdSense are all currently working within the framework to take advantage of the scheme, joining traffic counters including comScore, Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics to make sure advertisers are able to correctly log traffic going to AMP articles.

Google says that AMP pages will be launched on behalf of publishers in Google Search early next year.

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