The mobile web: ready, steady, go!

Google’s announcement of the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP) highlights an oft-forgotten reality: although mobile devices and smartphones seem to have been with us since the dawn of time, they still use protocols and standards established by computer screens from an even earlier age, albeit adapted to a smaller surface area. Content creators have, until now, simply used less elements?—?a responsive design?—?based on a user agent that identified some characteristics of the system.

In most cases, the result was pages that didn’t offer optimal visualization on mobile devices: it was clear what everybody was trying to do, but the “tool box” was basically the same as before.

But Snapchat Discover, Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News, and now Google AMP have created a new collection of tools, developing new procedures that are designed exclusively for mobile devices.

In simple terms, AMP is a collection of restrictions on the functions that can be used in HTML, CSS, and Javascript, giving significantly better performance. The idea is to keep the elements that can be uploaded quickly on a page and to do without those that take longer: no script created by the user or third parties, no multimedia elements other than those specifically designed for it, and nothing whose consumption of resources we cannot control with an iron hand. The functions that we used to carry out with these resources that are now “proscribed” will be done with specially created elements.

If to this we add extremely efficient caching procedures, we can come up with pages that load almost immediately, giving users a notably better experience.

Google’s AMP is a response to those who still don’t like the company: it has been forced to do so because if it doesn’t, it’s going to be left behind. As a content creator, the decision to take part in Facebook’s Instant Articles, this allows you to incease your advertising income by potentially allowing more people access to your content (more Facebook users and because the recommendation algorithms are so powerful) and that even allows yo the possibility of extra income through advertising on the internet (following the classic 70%-30% commission). This is what Al Pacino would call “an offer you can’t refuse”. The idea that Facebook “is taking over the internet” and become the place where its 1.5 billion users get their news is awe inspiring, even if a large part of that content will come with Google-embedded advertising.

Needless to say, Google doesn’t like the idea that Facebook, Apple, or even Snapchat?—?in the younger segment?—?become important suppliers of news and information. Which is why its counterattack is not being sold as a purely Google product, but an open-code solution using a business-friendly Apache license, available on Github.

How should users respond this? Simply by enjoying the experience: they will find that a growing number of pages will be loading at what will at first seem surprising fast, but that they will soon get used to. For content creators, there aren’t many options: carrying on as before means being that page that takes forever to upload.

The only way to confront a situation whereby tech companies have learned from users is to try to be part of it, to take the maximum advantage. Those who stall will lose out to channels that promise to be very important in terms of providing pages that could provide revenue, as well as losing much more if Google’s algorithms, which punish slow-loading pages, push them down the search results list.

If content is your business, then you need to start dedicating resources, people, and effort to working with these new formats, because if you don’t you’re going to lose money. In this world, if you lose relevance on the search engines that bring that all-important traffic, you’ll be relegated to the margins of the recommendation algorithms that work on the same basis, as well as offering your readers a notably worse experiences. In short, you’ll be toast in short order.

You might still have doubts about the wisdom of committing wholesale to a platform where everything seems controlled by huge tech firms, as opposed to one that is run according to open standards… but the reality is that you simply don’t have any choice. In the race to reinvent the mobile web, which is the future, the starting pistol has just been fired.

(En espa?ol, aquí)