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May 05, 2005

Google Accelerates the Web

Google is now offering to "accelerate" the web through their free Web Accelerator browser plug-in. How does it work? From the Google Web Accelerator FAQ:

Google Web Accelerator uses various strategies to make your web pages load faster, including:

  • Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic.
  • Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible.
  • Downloading only the updates if a web page has changed slightly since you last viewed it.
  • Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance.
  • Managing your Internet connection to reduce delays.
  • Compressing data before sending it to your computer.

Sounds both very cool and a little scary at the same time. The idea that a significant percentage of Internet traffic could one day go through one company's proxies is a little mind boggling. I haven't decided yet whether I want to participate in the beta. Anyone out there give this a try yet?

Posted by cantrell at May 5, 2005 01:16 PM | References

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Comments

This technology has been around for a number of years now, with one ISP in the UK using it as it's cole gimmick (and winning a number of awards aat the same time: www.onspeed.com).

What should be said about the Google beta is that it's not aimed at dial-up users, but rather 1Mbps minimum users. It actually slows down usage if you are on dial-up.

Posted by: Kevinjohn Gallagher at May 5, 2005 01:27 PM

Yep, I've seen these accelerators around before, and have to admit my gut reaction is the same as yours, Christian.

Relying on a company whose core asset is data warehousing of internet resources and usage to proxy all my web requests just seems a wee bit too prone to corporate misuse for me to feel comfortable using it. An ISP I can understand (and expect) - but what internal benefit could Google be gaining from this service if not real-time web usage metrics that extend light-years beyond what their spiders are currently pulling in?

I'll be watching from the sidelines as well... seems interesting, but questionable. ;)

Posted by: Scott Fegette at May 5, 2005 04:08 PM