Google brings fast-loading articles to your phone
Expect stories from some of your favorite websites to load a lot quicker.
If you perform a Google search on a mobile device today, you might notice some pages are a little snappier than they used to be. That's because the search giant today switched on its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project, allowing you to load news stories and other web pages up to four times faster than before.
The launch comes after four months of testing, which saw hundreds of publishers including Engadget's parent company, AOL, implement the platform on their websites. The technology promises to use up to 10 times less data than normal web pages, even if they contain video, animations, slideshows and other assets that normally require a fair amount of bandwidth.
If you perform a search for a relevant keyword, Google will now display a new row of AMP-powered articles that sport a green icon with a white lightning bolt running through it. If you see this icon, you'll know that the page will load quickly and let you swipe between relevant stories from other publishers.
As web pages become more bloated, tech companies are doing all they can to encourage speedier load times. Google's AMP isn't the first to promote this -- you may have clicked on a Facebook Instant article or used Apple's News app -- but you'll likely encounter it more regularly than the others.
