Google has released an important update to the Google News & Weather app for Android that brings support for AMP pages. Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP, are pages designed in a more lightweight fashion that provide you the content of a web page much faster than traditional HTML. It is a project that Google has been working on for months and the adoption and integration of AMP has been progressing steadily over that time. For the record, ClintonFitch.com is 100% AMP compliant.
In the update to Google News & Weather, users will now see an AMP carousel at the top of the page that highlights AMP pages. You can tell if a page is AMP by the lightening bolt icon in the
AMP Pages in Google News & Weather
corner of the article. Tapping on it will almost instantly load the page so you wait time is cut down significantly. According to the announcement, AMP pages use 10-times less data and load up to 4-times faster for most users. On mobile devices, especially those on not-so-great data signals, this can be a huge time saver.
AMP continues to gain support with thousands of sites and news sources already adopting it. Google is adding incentive for everyone to do it as mobile speed, something that is key for AMP, is a measurement for showing up higher in search results.
The update has been pushed out to the Google Play Store and for those who have the app installed on their devices, you should see the OTA come to you over the course of the next few days.
You can read the announcement from Google on the Google News Blog
