Google speeds up news article downloads on mobile devices

Dozens of leading news organisations, including the BBC, are taking part in a scheme that will allow their web-based articles to load more quickly on smartphones and tablets.

Leaders of the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) initiative promise that the stripped-back versions of the pages will be "lightning fast" to load.

The move has been led by Google, which is providing use of its servers.

Participants believe it may discourage the use of ad-blocking plug-ins.

AMP works by simplifying the technical underpinnings of the pages involved.

Much of the Javascript code used on normal webpages is absent, meaning articles should not only appear faster but use less battery power.

Publishers can continue to tap into the same ad networks as before, but they will not be able to display some types of adverts including pop-ups and "sticky" images that move as users scroll down a page.

Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Wordpress have said they also intend to make use of the technology.

Facebook is a notable exception. The social network recently launched an alternative programme called Instant Articles, which speeds up the delivery of third-party content by hosting it on its own platform.

Cache and serve

News sites will automatically create AMP versions of their stories at the same time as they publish and update the originals.

View an AMP edition of this article

Google intends to scrape these from the web, store them on its cache servers and then serve them to users via its Search and News tools.

Likewise, the social networks involved are also expected to cache and direct users to the AMP articles rather than the originals if users click on relevant links in their apps.

"Today, roughly 40% of users abandon an article if it doesn't load after six seconds," Danny Bernstein, Google's director of product partnerships, told the BBC.

"To be able to pull down an article instantly from Twitter, from Pinterest is a remarkable thing.

"We'll support accelerated mobile pages in search in 2016, but the code is public, so publishers can launch them today, and we expect some smaller apps to be able to render AMP files immediately."