In a world where many people read everything on mobile phones, a few seconds of load time can mean the gain or loss of millions of readers and advertising dollars. Now Google Inc wants to help publishers — and itself — by speeding things up.
Google is working with the social media service Twitter Inc and major news publishers like the Guardian and the New York Times to create a new kind of Web link and article storage system that would load online news articles and digital magazine pieces in a few milliseconds, according to several people involved in the project. That is a fraction of the 5 to 10 seconds it can take to load a typical Web site.
The project is still in its early stages, and many details are still in flux, according to the people involved, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the partners had not yet made an announcement.
The goal is to develop a universal standard for publishers — one that could be used to load articles more quickly wherever they appear. However, accomplishing that while retaining the look and feel of those pages has proved difficult.
The effort is also an attempt to protect the Web from the onslaught of mobile applications and steer publishers away from the closed, proprietary systems that are being built by companies like Facebook, Apple and Snapchat.
“Google and Twitter are rightly fearful that publishers are going to start doing something specific for Facebook and they will become an afterthought,” said Danny Sullivan, founding editor of Search Engine Land, an industry publication that closely tracks Google and the search industry.
The move is one of several Google initiatives meant to increase its influence with publishers. The company is also exploring ways to use its search engine to increase traffic to high-quality publisher content.
Google makes most of its money from ads sold on Web sites, including its own search page. For its part, Twitter, which depends heavily on conversations around news articles for its traffic, wants to keep visitors on its platform longer. The new technology would also more prominently display tweets embedded on Web pages.
Twitter and Google declined to comment on the project, which is expected to be announced with initial test partners within the next four to six weeks. Eileen Murphy, a New York Times spokeswoman, confirmed that the Times was one of those initial partners and has been helping Google develop the format.
The tech news site Recode first reported on the project on Friday.
According to the people involved in the project, publishers would have to slightly alter their articles’ Web coding and make it available to be copied, or cached, so that it could be quickly loaded on Web browsers, Twitter or other services, even those that don’t participate. However, articles would look and behave like anything else on the Web — complete with banner ads, photographs and links to other articles.
Pinterest Inc, the operator of a picture-sharing platform, is also involved in the project. The new method is also expected to work on blogs created on the WordPress publishing platform.
The more time people spend with mobile devices, the less they use the Web.
This year, US smartphone users are projected to spend 81 percent of their time using mobile apps, versus 19 percent using the mobile Web, according to research firm eMarketer Inc.
People often favor mobile apps because they are faster, cleanly formatted and are constantly updated to take advantage of the evolving features of new smartphones.
Despite the migration to apps, much of the content inside popular services like Facebook Inc, Twitter and Pinterest continues to come from Web links. And compared to many apps, the Web feels clunky and slow, adding seconds of load time that can prompt impatient mobile users to move on to something else.
The Eurovision Song Contest has seen a surge in punter interest at the bookmakers, becoming a major betting event, experts said ahead of last night’s giant glamfest in Basel. “Eurovision has quietly become one of the biggest betting events of the year,” said Tomi Huttunen, senior manager of the Online Computer Finland (OCS) betting and casino platform. Betting sites have long been used to gauge which way voters might be leaning ahead of the world’s biggest televised live music event. However, bookmakers highlight a huge increase in engagement in recent years — and this year in particular. “We’ve already passed 2023’s total activity and
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) today announced that his company has selected "Beitou Shilin" in Taipei for its new Taiwan office, called Nvidia Constellation, putting an end to months of speculation. Industry sources have said that the tech giant has been eyeing the Beitou Shilin Science Park as the site of its new overseas headquarters, and speculated that the new headquarters would be built on two plots of land designated as "T17" and "T18," which span 3.89 hectares in the park. "I think it's time for us to reveal one of the largest products we've ever built," Huang said near the
BIG BUCKS: Chairman Wei is expected to receive NT$34.12 million on a proposed NT$5 cash dividend plan, while the National Development Fund would get NT$8.27 billion Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday announced that its board of directors approved US$15.25 billion in capital appropriations for long-term expansion to meet growing demand. The funds are to be used for installing advanced technology and packaging capacity, expanding mature and specialty technology, and constructing fabs with facility systems, TSMC said in a statement. The board also approved a proposal to distribute a NT$5 cash dividend per share, based on first-quarter earnings per share of NT$13.94, it said. That surpasses the NT$4.50 dividend for the fourth quarter of last year. TSMC has said that while it is eager
China yesterday announced anti-dumping duties as high as 74.9 percent on imports of polyoxymethylene (POM) copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, from Taiwan, the US, the EU and Japan. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s findings conclude a probe launched in May last year, shortly after the US sharply increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and other imports. POM copolymers can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc, and have various applications, including in auto parts, electronics and medical equipment, the Chinese ministry has said. In January, it said initial investigations had determined that dumping was taking place, and implemented preliminary
RSS