Google Launches AMP Lite

AMPGoogle has launched a faster-loading version of its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) solution called AMP Lite, for slower networks and devices with limited memory.

By optimising images and external fonts, AMP Lite reduces page size by 45 per cent. In a blog post, Google said AMP Lite is designed for bandwidth-constrained users in countries such as Vietnam and Malaysia, and for holders of low-RAM devices globally.

Images are optimised by rendering them at a slightly lower quality. While a typical image looks “essentially the same” in AMP Lite, according to Google, it uses 89 per cent less bytes.

External fonts are optimised using the amp-font tag. The font loading timeout is set to zero seconds so that pages can be displayed immediately, regardless of whether the external font was previously cached or not.

AMP was launched by Google in July, initially for ads. AMP pages are displayed prominently in Google mobile search results and flagged as such so that users know that clicking on an AMP link will take them to a page that will load much faster than a regular web page.