Google’s iOS app gains Accelerated Mobile Pages, sports highlight videos in Now cards

Google app icon small

Google’s native Search application for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad this morning received a newsworthy update in the App Store, gaining faster browsing with support for Accelerated Mobile Pages from major publishers and another feature which allows you to instantly watch sports highlight videos in Now cards.

The app’s available for free on the App Store.

News and articles that load instantly are distinguished by a lightning bolt and “AMP” next to them in the Top Stories section of your search results.

And whenever you get a sports highlights Now card, you can now tap the Play button and watch the video right there, no need to load a new webpage.

Accelerated Mobile Pages, an initiative that the search giant announced in October 2015 strives to tackle the problem of slow loading times on mobile due to ad tracking and other JavaScript code injected into webpages.

Designed to rival Facebook’s Instant Articles, Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages are optimized articles from Google’s content partners which are hosted on Google’s servers and optimized for delivery on mobile devices.

The goal for these articles is to appear on your iPhone and other mobile devices almost immediately after clicking a link in Google search results.

Today’s update arrived ten days following the previous release which brought out much-needed support for hardware keyboard shortcuts for iPad users and the ability to see the busiest hours for places and local businesses directly in the search results page.

Download Google’s iOS app for free on the App Store.