Google is trying to standardise the web

• Hasn't Google already been standardising the web?
• Google AMP was released three years ago, as a way to make mobile websites load faster.
• Google AMP accounts for a big portion of mobile traffic for publishers today.

In their quest for a faster future, three of today's biggest tech companies, a few years ago, decided that the mobile web was not fast enough. In 2015, Apple and Facebook attempted to launch a few methods that allowed websites to load faster on smartphones, but neither was big enough to actually influence the "worldwide" web.

For that, we needed the original lodestar of the worldwide web - Google.

In February 2016, Google introduced its own technology on how the web should be. It was called AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), and while you may not have heard of that, you have certainly used it.

What is AMP?

AMP pages, as Google calls it, is an open source technology that allows pages to load almost instantly. It offered a sweet spot to publishers, who queued up for a faster browsing experience and preference on Search that AMP delivered for those who used it, and even cut a sweet deal with advertisers who can deliver their ads faster now on smartphones.

Just to round up the impressive list of its takers - amongst those using AMP are publications like New York Times, CNN, Reuters, The Guardian, NDTV, Indian Express, Scroll, Zee News, Firstpost and many more. Even Twitter, Reddit and LinkedIn have employed Accelerated Mobile Pages on their platforms.

And most publishers have seen an increase in traffic from Search since implementing AMP. In the Adobe Analytics Report released last year, the company found that "top publishers within the United States now see seven percent of all their traffic — across devices — coming from Google AMP."

But AMP will be for everyone now...

Three years hence, Google has decided AMP needs to be a standard for the worldwide web. In a blog post last week, titled "Standardisation lessons learned from AMP", the company explained how it wants to apply the elements of this technology to make the entire web faster.

"We are taking what we learned from AMP, and are working on web standards that will allow instant loading for non-AMP web content," the company wrote.

For that, the company will have to stand in front of the many web standards bodies and plead its case. Google will have to explain how and why its technology benefits the web and hope that standards bodies like W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) feel the same way.

However, in doing so, Google will have to skirt a more important issue. Isn't Google the web?

The world wide web...

By definition, the world wide web (the Internet) is a network of computers that provide information and communication services. But that's more like a dictionary definition of the web. For many, or even most, Google is the web.

Google's Chrome web browser owns the lion's share of the market. Even without it, most users get information from Search, Google's most successful product to date. In December 2017, Search's market share stood at 87.1%, severely outperforming competitors like Bing and Yahoo.

In countries like India, most recognise Google as the Internet. People don't tell you to check for information on the Internet anymore, they tell you to "Google it".

So, one could argue that even without going to the standards bodies, Google is actually standardising the web.

Think again, Google is the web, right?

AMP for everyone...

Now, imagine a scenario where literally every website on the web uses AMP. Would Google still give them preference on Search? The answer is yes, but every website will then get the same preference for AMP implementation, meaning all other existing rules of Search will continue to govern rankings on Search. For instance, if your website was supposed to gain three spots on Search because it was published on AMP, every website will get that benefit. Search rankings for two identical websites published on AMP will then be based on other rules of Search, which have forever been a mystery.

It's as Pixar villain Syndrome said, in the animated movie The Incredibles, "When everyone's super, no one will be."

Currently, by giving preference to AMP pages, Google is putting others at a disadvantage. That means even if you can devise a method to make your website load as fast as AMP, you won’t get special treatment on Search.

So, if standards bodies like the W3C, ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) and more are to agree to Google's idea, they should be asking the company to stop favouring AMP pages. By doing so, they will benefit the mobile web in more ways than one. It will not only be faster, but all websites will have an even playing field.

To pass this as a standard, Google must agree to get rid of AMP.