Canadian innovation brings news to smartphones faster | UCW Blog

Newspapers belonging to publishing company TC Media have joined forces with Google Canada and other leading newspapers, such as the Globe and Mail, Postmedia, and the Toronto Star, to get news to readers via their mobile devices as quickly as possible.

The publishers realize readers do not have the patience for slow-loading webpages, so are using open source code known as Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which loads news articles four times faster.

When readers search for news through Google, the search engine can identify AMP-designed stories from TC Media and its partners – those highlighted by a lightning bolt symbol – and will load them onto cell phones and tablets as quickly as an app would.  

In a post for the Google Official Canada Blog, Google Canada Head of Partnerships Mladen Raickovic wrote: “Until AMP, time had the occasional habit of slowing down on the mobile web. A slow mobile web is a bad experience for users seeking information online, and it is bad for publishers who want readers to quickly access and enjoy the content they have created.”

This is why Google Canada teamed up with the Canadian news industry in October 2015 to embark on the AMP project. According to Raickovic, AMP-designed webpages use ten times less data that non- AMP-designed pages, allowing them to load quickly so readers can enjoy content on the go, scrolling through it without having to wait.

TC Media Atlantic Canada Content Director Thane Burnett said readers who want swift access to news would welcome this innovation, pointing out that, years ago, stories would not reach readers until newspapers were bought by them on the street or delivered to their homes, but with technology like AMP it is possible for local news to reach readers in the blink of an eye.

There is room for improvement through innovation in all spheres of life, as AMP has demonstrated. That is why Canada and British Columbia in particular have become a preferred destination for entrepreneurs., providing the ideal environment for those looking to innovate, commercialize and succeed.

Aspiring entrepreneurs who want to remodel and renew their field of choice, creating unique products and services, should consider an MBA at University Canada West, which can equip them with the executive education and corporate training that can only increase graduate employability and path the way to succeeding in global business.