Google announces new project for quicker loading of news articles - Google on Wednesday formally announced a new project, in partnership with Twitter and a wide selection of publishers, with the objective to ensure that news articles get loaded more quickly on the Web.

But one name which was not included in the presentation was Facebook. It is notable that Google was once the market leader in the field of online news but Facebook has now surpassed Google.

According to Parse.ly, which tracks traffic to Web publishers, Facebook in July surpassed Google for the share of traffic that is driven to publishers. It sends about 40 percent, compared with 38 percent for Google.

Many publishers have signed up for a Facebook program called Instant Articles to host their material.

Google's programme called Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP, gives an initial group of publishers, and anyone else who wants to use the open source software, the ability to have their pages load faster on the Web, through a browser.

They are also able to use Google's cache to increase speed. The stories will work wherever they are linked - on Twitter or even on what executives Wednesday called "other platforms."

It was an apparent reference to Facebook and Apple News, which are both closed systems that aim to keep readers, and advertisers, within their site without taking into account the content they are consuming.

As more people now prefer to read content on smartphones they are spending less time on the Web. Research firm eMarketer said that this year the US smartphone users are projected to spend 81 percent of their time using mobile apps instead.