AMP Browser: desktop browser with AMP support

AMP Browser is a free Chromium-based web web browser for Microsoft Windows devices that may load AMP pages just like mobile browsers can.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an open source project that is pushed mostly by Google. The project aims to make websites faster through various means, but most importantly by limiting what AMP powered web pages may use or display in regards to technology.

Speed plays an important role on today's Internet. Websites that are slow loading lose business, and Google and other search engines give faster sites a boost when it comes to visibility. Google plans to roll out a mobile first index in the near future as well which will certainly take speed of sites into account.

The name AMP suggests that it is a technology for mobile devices only. There is no technical reason to block AMP on desktop devices.

AMP Browser

AMP Browser is a Chromium-based browser. The current version is based on Chromium 59 Stable.

The AMP Browser is an open source web browser based on Chromium which accelerates web browsing by automatically loading AMP web pages, saves bandwidth by enabling data compression, and respects privacy by blocking ads and tracking scripts.

AMP Browser installs the AMP Browser Extension on start which provides the AMP functionality in the browser. It is not the first to do so; Amplifier AMP/Canonicial Switcher for instance was released back in 2016.

The browser extension adds an icon to the browser's main toolbar that you may use to toggle the functionality. This may be necessary at times, as Accelerated Mobile Pages are very basic when compared to regular web pages. This means that you may not have access to other features that the site provides on the AMP version.

One shortcoming right now is that AMP pages are not highlighted in the Google index. You never know if an AMP page will be loaded or not when you click on a result. The loading works really well, and since AMP powered pages limited what is displayed, load pretty fast usually as well.

You can switch to the original webpage at any time by clicking on the AMP Browser Extension icon in the browser's toolbar.

Verdict

AMP Browser shows that AMP pages can be loaded using desktop browsers as well. It remains to be seen if Google will enable the functionality for desktop Chrome as well.

The browser suffers from one main issue right now. There is no indication whatsoever that highlights whether a link will be loaded as an AMP version or a regular version. That is a problem, as the main use case for using the browser is its AMP support.