Google AMP battles ad-blocking, Apple and Facebook by cutting load times

Search company unveils Accelerated Mobile Pages in bid to work with publishers, ad companies and rival platforms

Google is attempting to counter the threat from ad-blocking and rivals Facebook and Apple by radically improving the loading speed of web pages on smartphones and tablets.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) aims to simplify the structure of mobile web pages and place the data needed to deliver them closer to users both physically and virtually in a bid to to achieve almost "instant" delivery of articles to anywhere in the world.