Accelerated Mobile Pages
In October 2015, Google launched Accelerated Mobile Pages, a technology designed to speed up mobile browsing. The findings are unequivocal: 53% of internet users abandon a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. Faced with this problem, Google sought a radical solution.
The project emerged from discussions between Google and European publishers as part of the Digital News Initiative. The initial idea targeted news sites, the first to be affected by reader frustration on smartphones. The technical solution rests on three pillars: a streamlined version of HTML, a JavaScript library that optimizes resource loading, and a caching system to store content. But this architecture imposes severe constraints. Style sheets cannot exceed 50 KB, custom JavaScript is prohibited, and images must use specific tags such as <amp-img> or <amp-video>.
The initial results exceeded expectations. The Washington Post recorded 23% more users returning within a week of their first visit. In Europe, the Plista platform observed an average 220% increase in click-through rates on AMP content, with peaks of 600% for certain publishers. These figures attracted attention. Pinterest, Reddit, Bing, and eBay adopted the technology. Google integrated it into its News section in February 2016, then extended it to all mobile results six months later. A small lightning bolt then appeared to indicate AMP pages in search results.
On the technical front, the performance was spectacular. Pages loaded in under one second and consumed ten times less data than their conventional equivalents. The AMP cache automatically verified page compliance and adapted images to mobile screens. This infrastructure achieved speed levels unattainable by traditional websites.
AMP usage quickly expanded beyond media. In 2018, the technology moved into e-commerce, interactive emails, and narrative content creation with AMP Stories. WordPress, which powers more than a third of the web, offered an official extension to simplify its deployment.
But AMP’s success came with sharp criticism. Despite its open-source code, many criticized Google for tightly controlling this technology. The fact that AMP pages were served from Google’s servers raised questions: who really owns the content? The preference given to AMP pages in search results fueled accusations of anti-competitive practices. These criticisms led Google to announce, in 2018, the standardization of AMP principles through the Web Platform Incubator Community Group. The objective was to allow any site to achieve instant loading without going through AMP, by simply meeting certain performance criteria with more open standards such as Web Packaging and Feature Policy.
In 2020, Google continued developing AMP while gradually opening up the format. AMP E-mail brought interactivity to electronic messages, while AMP Stories created immersive visual content. The project now includes more than 600 million pages across 232 countries and 104 languages.
The technology has undeniably accelerated smartphone browsing, but it has also reinforced centralization around major platforms. Its evolution toward more open standards reflects the search for a balance between performance and decentralization. Beyond technical aspects, with AMP, speed has become a determining factor in the mobile experience.