Google Takes AMP with the "Stories" Format

Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project, launched in October 2016 to bring faster mobile internet, is now bringing a new version of itself out to the market — an AMP in story format.

The booming fast-paced image or video format, first employed by Snapchat, then by Instagram, and then finally by Facebook, allows Google to feature less text-heavy content and more image-driven articles. This is to immediately catch the attention of users and keep them interested in the articles featured by Google.

"It's a mobile-focused format for creating visually rich stories. It swings the doors open to create visually interesting stories," Rudy Galfi, Google's product manager for AMP, told Techcrunch.

The AMP Project Website claims that the project would be immersive, fast and open. Little else has been disclosed on the website, but a few examples of AMP stories are already featured.

Google has partnered with several media outlets such as CNN, Conde Nast, Hearst, Mashable, Meredith, Mic, Vox Media, and The Washington Post. Content as AMP stories from these sites are already available online.

It is seen through these posts how the articles are mostly led by images and videos, and one can easily swipe from one article to another.

"Recently, as with many new or experimental features within AMP, contributors from multiple companies — in this case, Google and a group of publishers — came together to work toward building a story-focused format in AMP. The collective desire was that this format offer new, creative and visually rich ways of storytelling specifically designed for mobile," Google stated in its blog post on Feb. 13.

But, the development of AMP stories will have to be over time. For example, Google aims to open AMP stories to all other publishers, but there are no tools developed for that yet. The online traffic is yet another issue to be overcome by Google.

For now, Google is still observing how this new format would perform for its users.