AMP Overview

The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project is an open source initiative that came out of discussions between publishers and technology companies about the need to improve the entire mobile content ecosystem for everyone -- publishers, consumer platforms, advertisers, creators, and users.

Today, the expectation is that content should load super fast and be easy to explore. The reality is that content can take several seconds to load, or, because the user abandons the slow page, never fully loads at all. Accelerated Mobile Pages are web pages designed to load near instantaneously -- they are a step towards a better mobile web for all.

Speed matters and instant is the ideal. Research has shown higher bounce rates associated with slower-loading web pages. Using the AMP format will make it far more compelling for people to consume and engage with more content. But this isn’t just about speed and performance. We also want to promote enhanced distribution so that publishers and advertisers can take advantage of the open web’s potential for their content to appear everywhere quickly -- across platforms and apps -- which can lead to more revenue.

Accelerated Mobile Pages are just like any other HTML page, but with a limited set of allowed technical functionality that is defined and governed by the open source AMP spec. Just like all web pages, Accelerated Mobile Pages will load in any modern browser or app webview.

AMP files take advantage of various technical and architectural approaches that prioritize speed to provide a faster experience for users. AMP developers can use a rich and growing library of web components that offer the ability to embed rich media objects like video and social posts, display advertising, or collect analytics. The goal is not to homogenize how content looks and feels, but instead to build a more common technical core between pages that speeds up load times.

In addition, AMP files can be cached in the cloud in order to reduce the time content takes to get to a user’s mobile device. By using the AMP format, content producers are making the content in AMP files available to be cached by third parties. Under this type of framework, publishers and advertisers continue to control their content, but platforms can easily cache or mirror the content for optimal delivery speed to users. Google has provided the Google AMP Cache that can be used by anyone at no cost, and all AMPs will be cached by the Google AMP Cache. Other companies may build their own AMP cache as well.

In summary, the goal is that the combination of limited technical functionality with a distribution system built around caching will lead to better performing pages, and increased audience development.

The companies involved in the project want to make the mobile web work better for all -- not just for one platform, one set of technologies, or one set of publishers, or one set of advertisers. Making the project open source enables people to share and contribute their ideas and code for making the mobile web fast. We are just at the beginning of that journey and we look forward to other publishers, advertisers and technology companies joining along the way.

The project is open to all players in the ecosystem - publishers, consumer platforms, advertisers and creators. To get an idea who some of the companies and sites are who use AMP, head to the Who page.

By using the AMP format, content producers are making the content in AMP files available to be crawled, indexed & displayed (subject to the robots exclusion protocol) and cached by third parties.

If a publisher or advertiser collects data from users who view its AMP pages, such data collection is governed by their privacy policy. It is the publisher or advertiser’s responsibility to disclose its privacy policy, ideally by including a link to it within each of their AMP pages.

Furthermore, the laws in many jurisdictions, such as in the European Union, require a website to give visitors information about cookies and other forms of local storage used on the site (including AMP pages). In many cases, these laws also require that the website obtain consent. It is the website's responsibility to determine, based on its use of cookies, what type of notice would be appropriate. Additional information and tools for generating cookie notices can be found at www.cookiechoices.org. Note that the AMP component amp-user-notification provides a way to display a dismissable notification to the user.

If an AMP page is shown within a viewer on a third party platform, such as a Google AMP Viewer on Google Search, the viewer may be a hybrid environment in which the AMP page and the third party platform may each collect data about the user. In such a case, data collection by each party is governed by that party’s privacy policy (i.e., in a hybrid viewer environment, data collected by the AMP page is governed by its privacy policy and data collected by the third party platform is governed by the platform’s privacy policy). It is each party’s responsibility to disclose its privacy policy and comply with relevant data regulations, including European laws relating to its use of cookies.

The goal is for all content, from news stories to videos and from blogs to commerce pages and GIFs, to work using Accelerated Mobile Pages.

In short, not much. Since “AMP HTML” is built entirely out of existing web technologies, the development process mirrors the one publishers and advertisers are already using today. Publishers and advertisers can familiarize themselves with the AMP HTML specification on GitHub. For those used to the current process, we don’t expect a significant learning curve.

Publishers and Content Management System (CMS) providers can develop an integration with their CMS to generate AMP content. Automattic has already published a WordPress AMP plugin and we hope that all content management systems will add support for AMP HTML pages.

AMP was designed with responsiveness in mind, to work across all screen sizes. However, some features for third-party platforms (e.g., Google's Top Stories carousel) may only be designed for the mobile experience. Check with the third-party platform for how they use AMP. For more information about mobile and desktop AMP pages, see Paul Bakaus' blog post on About that ‘mobile’ in Accelerated Mobile Pages.