AMP (originally an acronym for Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an open source HTML framework developed by the AMP Open Source Project. It was originally created by Google as a competitor to Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. AMP is optimized for mobile web browsing and intended to help webpages load faster. AMP pages may be cached by a CDN, such as Microsoft Bing or Cloudflare's AMP caches, which allows pages to be served more quickly.
AMP was first announced on October 7, 2015. After a technical preview period, AMP pages began appearing in Google mobile search results in February 2016. AMP has been criticized for potentially giving further control over the web to Google and other concerns. The AMP Project announced it would move to an open governance model on September 18, 2018 and is part of the OpenJS Foundation as of October 10, 2019.
History
Announcement and launch
The AMP Project was announced by Google on October 7, 2015, following discussions with its partners in the Digital News Initiative (DNI), and other news publishers and technology companies around the world, about improving the performance of the mobile web. More than 30 news publishers and several technology companies (including Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and WordPress) were initially announced as collaborators in the AMP Project.
AMP pages first appeared to web users in February 2016, when Google began to show the AMP versions of webpages in mobile search results. Initially links to AMP pages were restricted to a "Top Stories" section of Google's mobile search results; by September 2016 Google started linking to AMP content in the main mobile search results area. At the time, Google search distinguished AMP links with an icon.
According to one of the co-founders of the AMP Project, Malte Ubl, AMP was originally called PCU, which stood for Portable Content Unit.
Growth and expansion
In September 2016, Microsoft announced support for AMP in the Bing apps for iOS and Android.
In February 2017, a year after the public launch of AMP, Adobe reported AMP pages accounted for 7% of all web traffic for top publishers in the United States.
In May 2017, Google reported 900,000 web domains were publishing AMP pages with more than two billion AMP pages published globally.
In June 2017, Twitter started linking to AMP pages from its iOS and Android apps.
In September 2018, Microsoft began rolling out its own Bing AMP viewer and AMP cache.
On December 7, 2018, AMP announced their official WordPress plugin, which allowed WordPress websites to include AMP-ready pages.
As announced by AMP's tech lead Malte Ubl at AMP Conf '19, AMP is now just AMP, and does not stand for Accelerated Mobile Pages anymore. AMP is designed to be mobile friendly but isn't just for mobile. It works across many device types, including desktop and tablet, and comes with helpful responsive design features.
Decline
Starting in 2021, support for AMP was discontinued in some apps. In November, Twitter updated its developer guidelines to say that "We’re in the process of discontinuing support for this feature"; the Twitter mobile apps for Android and iOS simply load the non-AMP versions of webpages. In April 2021, Google removed AMP as an SEO criterion in favor of page loading speed and other "page experience" metrics. In search results, the Top Stories list will no longer be restricted to AMP pages, and AMP pages will no longer be distinguished by an icon.
On April 20, 2022, Brave Browser rolled out new features to automatically bypass AMP pages. Also on the same day, DuckDuckGo announced that they will also automatically bypass AMP pages on their DuckDuckGo browser and on their DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials browser extension.
AMP Framework
AMP HTML
The AMP framework consists of three components: AMP HTML, which is standard HTML markup with web components; AMP JavaScript, which manages resource loading; and AMP caches, which serve and validate AMP pages.
Most AMP pages are delivered by Google's AMP cache, but other companies can support AMP caches. Internet performance and security company Cloudflare launched an AMP cache in March 2017.
Web Stories
Web Stories, known as AMP Stories until April 2020, were introduced in 2018. Web stories are a mobile-focused format for delivering news and information as tap-through stories.