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.

The project is its early stages and while the company says it hopes to launch AMP next year, no date has been set.

Google said it was unveiling the project early because it wants to work with publishers, the advertising industry and other web platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. The code for AMP will by made public, allowing any company or organisation to tailor it to their own needs.

The company said it wanted to collaborate with the wider industry to develop a framework for what works effectively on mobile devices. Early demos of AMP articles show pages with less clutter, such as related stories, but that could change as the project progresses.

Google’s head of news and social products Richard Gingras said: “This is about making the world wide web great again ... to make sure all users can access the vibrant ecosystem of the world wide web, and get it in a near instant fashion everywhere in the world.”

The initial plan for AMP has come from the Digital News Initiative, a collaboration between Google and eight European publishers including the Guardian, Les Echos in France, El Pais in Spain and the Daily Mail in the US.

The shift away from desktops to mobile devices has left many publishers struggling to get their articles and other content on to people’s devices quickly.

Those slow speeds are blamed for the rise of ad-blocking software, which stops many publishers from earning money from advertising online. Apple allowed third party apps to block ads in its Safari web browser last month, which is expected to massively increase the number of people deciding to block ads on iPhones and iPads.

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Guardian head of strategy Tony Danker said the the AMP project needed widespread support from the industry to stop consumers punishing all publishers for the bad user experiences they suffer on some websites.

Guardian strategy chief Tony Danker said: “They punish each of us for the sins of the whole ecosystem.”

“This will work if it has a critical mass of platforms, publishers and advertisers. We would urge all the platforms involved to come together to collaborate on web fundamentals and compete on other things.”

Though Google said it would not give web pages built using AMP priority in Google News, the algorithms that decide a piece of content’s prominence take into account how quickly a page loads. The company has also demoed a carousel sitting at the top of a Google search page which would feature articles built under AMP, giving them greater prominence and allowing users to swipe between articles on a specific topic or within a particular publication.

The project is partly a response to the launch of Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News, both of which allow newspapers, magazines and digital media companies to publish content directly to their platforms.

However, publishers who use either product have to follow rules on how articles and ads are presented.

Both Apple and Facebook have pitched their own services as ways to improve the experience on mobiles. But by encouraging consumers to spend more time within their own platforms rather than the wider internet accessed through a web browser, they threaten Google’s core advertising business.

Google says anyone is free to cache web pages under the scheme, in theory allowing Facebook or Apple to provide AMP articles on their own platforms just as quickly as with Instant Articles or Apple News, but allowing publishers to retain more control over their content.

Though Google says AMP is designed to make it easier for publishers to retain their business models, anyone adopting AMP is likely to have to make radical changes to the way they deliver online advertising, and it does not yet support ways of charging to access content.