Global News has teamed up with Google to help provide Canadians with faster access to breaking news online, while saving you smartphone data.
Starting Wednesday, Global News will begin rolling out webpages built using a Google open source project called “Accelerated Mobile Pages” (AMP) in an effort to eliminate slow loading and poorly displayed webpages.
So what does that mean for you? Well, webpages built with AMP load an average of four times faster, but use 10 per cent of the data that other webpages do.
“Globalnews.ca is already a leader in creating superior mobile user experiences. We know how quickly mobile users get frustrated when news content loads slowly or not at all,” said Ron Waksman, vice-president of Digital, Global News and Corus Radio.
“Our participation in Google’s visionary Accelerated Mobile Pages project goes a long way to solve the problem. Our audience will be blown away by mobile news content that loads instantly.”
According to Google, research suggests that readers will abandon a mobile website if it doesn’t load within three seconds.
“Until AMP, time had the occasional habit of slowing down on the mobile web. A slow mobile web is a bad experience for users seeking information online, and it’s bad for publishers who want readers to quickly access and enjoy the content they’ve created,” said Richard Gingras, head of Google News.
How does it work?
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Google AMP is based on its own open-source HTML that allows websites to build simple versions of their webpages to feature things like videos, pictures and graphics without causing long load times for readers.
AMP uses the same code across multiple platforms, which means it doesn’t matter what kind of smartphone you are using – you will still experience fast load times.
What does this mean for readers?
When you search for a story or topic on Google using your smartphone, webpages that use AMP will appear in the “Top Stories” section on the results page.
You will also notice a lightning bolt symbol beside every Google AMP story.
Don’t worry; our website won’t look any different when you open an AMP story – but you will notice a faster load time and faster scrolling throughout the article.
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