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Google fixes one of AMP’s biggest flaws by allowing you to share original link

Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages project, otherwise known as AMP, has made a huge difference for users of the mobile web by providing a streamlined, super quick browsing experience. However, it’s not perfect. One of the biggest flaws for many with AMP is that you have no way to share links to articles viewed in AMP to other services. Starting today, though, you can.

In an update today, Google has finally enabled the ability to view the original article link on AMP pages, and then copy or share that link within other apps on your device. To access the original link, users simply need to tap the link icon in the AMP header bar, which will reveal the full link for easy copying.

If you’ve been a user of AMP, you’ve likely run into this issue at one point or another, where you’re trying to send a link to an article from your mobile device, but can’t send a link to the actual article, instead sending users to the AMP page.

Google explains that this change will benefit both users and publishers, as the ability to share a link to an article will not only send more users to the site, but will also increase the potential for that original user to return to the site. This isn’t just a change for usability’s sake. Rather, Alex Fischer, a Google software engineer, explains that URLs show “to some extent, trust and ownership of content,” and this update helps publishers feel a little more at home with AMP.

The change is already available for iOS users via the Google and Chrome apps, and will be coming to Android in the coming weeks.

Today, we’re adding support for this functionality in form of an anchor button in the AMP Viewer header on Google Search. This feature allows users to use their browser’s native share functionality by long-tapping on the link that is displayed. In the coming weeks, the Android Google app will share the original URL of a document when users tap on the app’s share button. This functionality is already available on the iOS Google app.

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