Google India launches AMP for faster web access on mobiles

New Delhi: Technology giant Google has rolled out a new open source initiative, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) that will allow web pages on mobile phones to load four times faster using ten times less data.

The initiative is supported by publishing houses like Network18, NDTV, India Today, Hindustan Times and DNA among others in India, Google said in a statement.

"Access to information is at the heart of Google's mission. Unfortunately, today, the mobile web isn't living up to the expectations people have for getting the information they need, particularly when it comes to speed," Google VP Engineering Search David Besbris said.

AMP will allow publishers to deliver content to readers faster with a uniform experience.

Citing research data, Google said users abandon websites after just three seconds if the content doesn't load quickly.

AMP does away with such problems as it helps improve the mobile ecosystem for users, content providers, creators, advertisers and platforms, it added.

Launched in October last year, AMP are just like any other HTML page, but with a limited set of allowed technical functionality that is defined and governed by the open source AMP spec.

Google said mobile is influencing and in many cases, defining Indian users' first experience with the Internet.

With over 200 million mobile Internet users in India, mobile captured 60 per cent share of all shopping related queries and over 50 per cent share of all travel related queries.

Even for YouTube, over 60 per cent of views were now coming from mobile. In the classifieds space, online job listings saw revival with over 41 per cent job related searches coming from mobile phones, Google said.