Relay Media has announced via its website that it has now been acquired by Google. At present Google has yet to make an announcement on the acquisition and so there are no firm details on any of the finer points, although for those who do make use of the Relay Media service (or had planned to), there are some points worth noting.
First off, Relay Media notes that no major changes will occur to their service for now. The announcement specifically notes that the technology is being migrated over to Google, and so it could be the case that things do change in the future. In fact, according to TechCrunch who received details on emails that are being sent out to existing customers, if and when there is “a material change” customers will receive 90 days notice prior to the change. As for new customers, Relay Media confirmed that it is “pausing” onboarding for new publishers while the migration of service to Google takes place.
As for why Google has purchased Relay Media, that seems a lot more straightforward. Relay Media’s main selling point is that it is a platform designed with Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in mind. Thereby offering publishers a richer and more engaging AMP experience beyond what Relay Media refers to as the “bare-bones implementation” of AMP. By going through the Relay Media Platform, publishers are able to convert web-based consent to AMP content easily, while maintaining a higher degree of consistency with the publisher’s general branding and other services. Therefore, with this being based on, and designed to enrich the AMP experience for those producing AMP content, it stands to reason that Google has likely acquired the technology with a view to improving AMP at more of a core level. In either case, due to this being a method in which Google can offer a richer all-round AMP experience, it should be expected that the company will make some form of announcement on the acquisition, and on what can be expected from the integration of the technology, in due course. Speaking of which, it was only a matter of days ago when it was noted that a change was starting to take effect for AMP results in Google Search.