Google has updated its eponymous voice-recognition search app with speed improvements the company claims will save users "a combined 6.5 million hours" this year.

"Each time you open the app or do a search, everything will load just a bit quicker," said Google VP Tamar Yehoshua in a blog post.

Not only should the app feel faster overall, says Yehoshua, news articles that show up in searches should load almost immediately, thanks to wider adoption of the company's open source Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project.

Introduced in February, the project aimed to make pages using AMP load four times as fast and use 10 times less data than traditional web pages. AMP-optimized stories are indicated by a lightning bolt icon and show up in the top stories section of search results.

In addition, the app now includes video highlights in select Google Now cards for NBA and NHL games.

Google for iOS is a free download on the App Store for iPad and iPhone. [Direct Link]