Google partners with Postmedia/major publishers

source: business.financialpost.com

Postmedia Network Inc. and Google Inc. are teaming up to make reading the news on a Canadian smartphone up to 60 per cent faster, while using 10 times less data.

Accelerated mobile pages (AMP) is Google’s open-source project, already used by publishers around the world, that aims to bring mobile web page load times closer to instantaneous. Starting Thursday, Postmedia — Canada’s largest newspaper company — will begin using the technology on publications in most of the markets in which it operates.

AMP uses lightweight HTML code and more effective use of cloud-base storage to handle content such as images, animations and videos.

“It satisfies both the publishers and the readers,” said Josh Merchant, vice president of product at Postmedia. “In testing, we’ve seen about a 15 per cent drop in bounce rates (users leaving after just one page) as well as a 60 per cent reduction in page load times.”

The AMP project began about a year ago, after discussions between technology companies and publishers about the growing problem of slow mobile web speeds that cause readers to give up on a page before it even loads.