Adaptive Media Assessment — Part 2
Google AMP
Since its release in February 2016, Google AMP has been a part of many consumers’ lives, without them knowing it. The articles appear in Google’s search results, often at the top of the page, and even if you don’t see the little lightning bolt, those articles are usually the first thing we tap on. However, AMP pages are much more than links to online articles. In fact, the term AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. As implied by the name, the goal of this platform is to provide searchers with pages that will load as quickly as possible, especially on mobile devices, but that is only one aspect of AMP pages. In order to achieve their goal, Google had to consider the authoring system of these articles, how they would be shared by readers, what determined how they would be prioritized in search results, and how ads were incorporated so publishers can make money.
“Google AMP has been a part of many consumers’ lives, without them knowing it.”
Authoring
Authoring for the AMP platform is not as simple as Medium or Apple News, because while it is open source, publishers must have a specific resources to hand-code and host AMP pages. Because the goal of AMP is to optimize how fast these articles load, Google has created their own extension and guidelines of HTML, known as AMP HTML. Using this language, publishers can build their articles using tags such as <amp-img>, <amp-video>, <amp-audio>, and <amp-iframe> and host them on their own servers. These tags allow publishers to create media-rich articles, while limiting how much “junk” is included in the code to make AMP pages faster and more efficient. In addition to these special tags, Google has restricted and/or limited the use and prioritization of standard HTML elements such as the script tag, in addition to requiring inline CSS to minimize HTTP requests and lagging content. After these special pages have been created, they are cached on Google’s servers, to further speed the loading time. While this method helps Google accomplish their goal, it brings a lack of flexibility to update content, because updates are not as easy to publish. For this reason, it is important that publishers realize their information needs to be more concrete and final than normal, because they are relying on Google’s cache to update information, which takes longer for readers to see.
Sharing
Because AMP’s authoring system makes everything customizable, social sharing from article to article is inconsistent, and dependent on the developers, and corporations that are publishing the content. There are both positive and negative aspects about this concept, including the ability to target social sharing publication’s target audience. However, because AMP articles are displayed for everyone to view as part of mobile and tablet Google search engine results, publishers cannot target their audience as easily or specifically as a typical website and/or app. While AMP sharing capabilities are inconsistent, the platform offers some social sharing abilities. However, after some research and experimentation, I found that this simply shares a URL to the article that can be sent out on different platforms. The problems with AMP’s sharing methods however is the inconsistency between platforms. Recently, Google provided a way for consumers to share the original article URL with others. On Android however, the only URL that can be shared is the AMP page. When this AMPURL is used on a desktop, readers are redirected to the publisher’s original web article. However, if this URL is accessed on a mobile device, they are taken to the URL, but the load time is longer than when it is being loaded from the search results. With this being said, AMP’s overall social sharing could and needs to be improved so articles load fast no matter how it is being accessed or what platform it is being shared on. Additionally, with the custom tags that AMP pages require, it would be wise to standardize sharing methods for publishers to pick and choose from both to make them consistent throughout the platform, and to minimize conflict with browser sharing features.
Favorites
Unlike news publishing platforms such as Flipboard, Apple News, and Medium, AMP is based on Google algorithms and SEO so the results and articles are dependant on mobile browsers and individual searches. This means that there really is no need for consumers to prioritize the the topics of articles. While this is a good start however, it would be beneficial for Google to track and prioritize preferred publishers about certain topics, based on AMP articles and website that a “searcher” views frequently. Taking this a step further, Google could reevaluate how much people are viewing AMP pages, by displaying topics or publishers of interest after detecting habits, within their Google cards for Android systems. This would not only be another way to promote articles, but also give readers a way to access information from their preferred publishers more quickly.
Advertising
Because Google AMP pages are much like typical news websites, publishers can sell and build ads into the HTML. It is important to note that Google has set restrictions about the size and type of these ads to accommodate the loading time, as well as prioritized when they load using the <amp-ad> tag, but there is nothing restricting how they look and/or the content of them. With this being said, advertising on the Google AMP platform tends to be modeled after those on typical news sites, which can be intrusive and are typically designed to to draw attention to themselves rather than let readers focus on the content, because of organizations’ tendency to be business-oriented rather than people-oriented. The loading time may be fast, but in order to compete with platforms such as Apple News, it would be nice for the readers of these articles if Google set additional limits on advertisements, because it would not only further improve load times, but also help their “searchers” accomplish their goal of reading and understanding content easily and efficiently.
Conclusion
While AMP pages still have improvements that can be made, they have the potential to be a powerful platform, especially for larger publishers. Some may argue that Google is at a disadvantage by limiting themselves to mobile devices and only within their own search engine. I disagree. Aside from Google being the most popular search engine in the world, AMP pages have the advantage of being accessible without a dedicated app on both Android and iOS devices. When considering the goal of Google AMP, it is also not necessary to be developing for desktop browsers since they typically have more stable internet connections. While the authoring system and SEO components limit the platform to more established corporations, once we begin to see improvements in social sharing with platforms such as Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, as rumored, Google AMP will become even more destructive in the online news industry, because it is used whether people realize they are using it or not.
