Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Web pages using AMP will now load 'twice as fast' as before, Google says

Kyle Wiggers
By
Sundar Pichai stands in front of a Google logo at Google I/O 2021.
This story is part of our complete Google I/O coverage

google amp removing url
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Google’s making a bigger push for a faster mobile web. During a developer session at its 2017 Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View, California on Wednesday, the search giant gave an update on Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), an internet platform designed to speed up web pages.

Google said that AMP-enabled pages accessed from Google Search now load “twice as fast” as they did before, thanks to key optimizations made on the service’s back end. The AMP cache, which stores slimmed-down web pages on Google’s servers, now uses Google’s Brotli compression algorithm to reduce document size by 10 percent in supported web browsers, and compresses images 50 percent more efficiently without affecting quality.

Recommended Videos

Google also announced new AMP partners. Starting later this year, Tencent Qzone, China’s largest social network, and Weibo, the country’s third-largest website, will adopt AMP pages. Twitter said it would begin linking to AMP pages from the Twitter app for Android and iOS and Twitter Lite, its new, lightweight web app designed for low-end phones on unreliable connections. Tumblr said it would publish its 340 million blog pages across 500,000 domains in AMP. And E-Commerce giants eBay and Zalando pledged to implement AMP in the coming months.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

They join recent adopters like Squarespace, Reddit, Flipkart, TripAdvisor, Disney, Drugs.com, the NFL, The New York Times, BuzzFeed, Food Network, Parse, Vox Media, Conde Nast, CBS Interactive, Tumblr, Bing, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and hundreds of others.

Related

Google said that as of August 2016, AMP-enabled sites have created more than 150 million AMP documents across 232 locales and 104 languages.

The I/O announcements build on AMP’s growing momentum. At Google’s 2017 AMP Conference in New York City last week, the company announced that Baidu, China’s largest search engine; and Sogou, another Chinese search engine; and Yahoo Japan would implement accelerated pages. Google said that as of last year, AMP-enabled websites have created hundreds of millions of AMP documents across 232 locales and 104 languages.

And they follow on the heels of new features. AMP Lite, an optimized version of AMP that kicks in over slower internet connections and on low-end smartphones, results in a 40 percent reduction in data transfer. Another, AMP Bind, allows internet retailers like Gap.com to build product pages with interactive elements like color and size selectors.

“We’re taking advantage of AMP to upgrade experiences,” AMP product manager Rudy Galifi told Digital Trends. “We’re very transparent, and we’re continuously collaborating with AMP partners. The community is going to weigh in.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Kyle Wiggers
Kyle Wiggers
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kyle Wiggers is a writer, Web designer, and podcaster with an acute interest in all things tech. When not reviewing gadgets…
You can now use an Android phone to log in to Google on an iOS device
google android phone physical security key account

Google is making it a little easier to sign into your Google apps and services on an iOS device. The company is taking advantage of the new security key feature in Android to allow people to use their Android phone to log in to Google services on iOS.

The new feature works through Google's Smart Lock app, which you need to have installed on your iPad or iPhone to make the Android security key feature work. You also need two-step verification enabled, and if both of those criteria are met, you will be able to hold down the volume key on your phone to sign in to your services.

Read more
Cell phone carriers now have the power to stop robocalls. When will they use it?
cell phone companies stop robocalls after fcc vote robo calls feat

The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to allow cell phone companies to block robocalls by default, but the nation's major carriers would not give specifics on if or when they would use the newfound power to protect their customers from what's become a daily annoyance.

After Thursday's vote, carriers can now block non-pre-approved numbers by default in order to protect elderly and other vulnerable individuals and to preserve the sanity of the rest of us. Calls from foreign countries in the middle of the night, deceptive caller IDs, and spoofing, where callers falsify area code information are not only disruptive, they encourage online telemarketing and scamming and are generally considered a dangerous waste of time.

Read more
Google I/O: There are big changes coming to Play Store reviews
Google Play store on a smartphone in someone's hand.

Google Play Store customers -- some 2.5 billion souls in more than 190 countries -- have a new app and game review calibration to look forward to in August, according to Kobi Glick, product lead of Google Play. Speaking at a deep-dive session at Google’s annual I/O developer conference, the Play team departed from the usual code-speak to reveal an updated approach to app reviews designed to focus on more recent, and thus more relevant, reviews that app and game developers believe will better serve the public and provide a more accurate reflection of their apps.

“Many of you told us that you want a rating that reflects a more current version of your app, not what it was years ago -- and we agree,” Glick said. “So instead of a lifetime cumulative value, your Google Play Store rating will be recalculated to give more weight to your most recent ratings.” Users won’t see the updated rating in the Google Play Store until August, Glick said.

Read more