Safari to Strip Out Google AMP Links for Shared Stories in iOS 11

Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) was originally explained to users on the notion of faster-loading webpages, however the search engine giant‘s true motivation is to lock publishers into its proprietary advertising network.

For everyday users, this makes it more difficult to see what site he or she is being taken to, and more difficult to share links to specific pages.

According to a new report from TechCrunch, Apple has elected to remove AMP links from mobile Safari in the newest beta in iOS 11. Google’s AMP was first introduced in 2015.

AMP is, in a nutshell, a specification designed to make web pages load faster on mobile web browsers. It accomplishes this by making use of a specific subset of HTML tags and CSS properties and relying on a bit of Javascript to ensure web pages behave properly, especially when it comes to loading images, videos, audio, and the like. In practice, this means that an AMP page can load almost instantaneously the moment you tap on its link from Google Search.

Very nice: when sharing AMP pages to iMessage or Reading List, iOS 11 Safari automatically removes AMP’s crap from the URL. Go Apple ???? pic.twitter.com/aHgSMcofUv

— Federico Viticci (@viticci) August 23, 2017

The format, however, has fallen under heavy criticism from many developers due to the way it hides the web URL that the content is taken from. The large majority of AMP web pages also remove the URK link from the original publication and generally remove any branding as well as advertising and internal links, which also removes control of web page analytics to Google.

“Earlier this year, Google announced that AMP links now load twice as fast thanks to image compression improvements and other under the hood tweaks,” reads the report. “For the rest of us who favor purity over unbridled speed, this little iOS 11 change is just one more reason to look forward to September.”