Google’s answer to Facebook Instant Articles — the AMP Project — is coming early next year

Google introduced its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) program to allow publishers and advertisers to create good-looking mobile content that loads very quickly.

The company launched the program in early October with a select set of partners, and now says it will begin sending traffic to pages created using the AMP specifications early next year.

The AMP Project is an open source initiative that embodies the vision that publishers can create mobile optimized content once and have it load instantly on many types of mobile devices.

Here’s a preview of what pages created within the AMP framework look like on a number of platforms:

Google is one step behind Facebook in this area. Facebook’s Instant Articles is also all about making news content load quickly and look pretty inside the social network’s mobile app. Importantly, it seeks to make news articles and other content feel native to the app’s experience.

Since Facebook’s announcement of the new framework, publishers of all kinds have been trying to get in on the action. Instant Articles puts them, and their advertising, in front of the massive Facebook audience in a way that makes everybody look good. However, publishers do give up some control in exchange for that exposure.

Google says thousands of publishers have expressed interest in AMP since the preview launched with the likes of the BBC, Sankei, the New York Times, News Corp, the Washington Post, and others. Now, more publishers will get to make mobile pages following the AMP technical specifications.

Developers can find samples and documentation at the AMP GitHub repository.

Advertisers are getting into the game, too. Google says Outbrain, AOL, OpenX, DoubleClick, and AdSense are working within the AMP open-source framework to create ads that load quickly and that are creatively in tune with the publishers’ content.

Google is also working with a number of mobile analytics firms to make sure that the performance in the AMP pages is recorded and analyzed correctly. So far, Google said comScore, Adobe Analytics, Parse.ly, Chartbeat, Nielsen, ClickTale, and Google Analytics have all said they will provide analytics for AMP pages in their tools.