Google tool to speed Web surfing

Google has introduced a technology designed to make Web sites load faster.

A beta, or test version, of Web Accelerator was introduced via the Google Labs technology incubation site late Wednesday. The tool, which must be downloaded, will tap into the power of Google's global computer network and thus help sites load faster, according to the company.

Web Accelerator works by sending URL requests through company servers designated specifically for speeding site downloads. The application also can compress site data before sending it to computers.

The system stores copies of sites frequently accessed by individual PCs and automatically retrieves new data from those pages, so that a Web browser needs to process only updates to those sites when asked to load them. Google said the tool will not work on some pages, such as encrypted sites managed by financial services companies, and is not designed to speed downloads of multimedia files.

In an e-mail sent to CNET News.com, a Google representative said the company is always looking at new ways to help its users access information more quickly.

"Now we're using our efficient networks to help other pages load more quickly as well, so that once our users leave Google.com they will still be able to enjoy a fast online experience," the representative said.

The beta of Web Accelerator is targeted specifically at computers with broadband connections; Google said that dial-up customers may not see much improvement using the tool. The first phase of the beta is aimed at Europe and North America and won't likely speed surfing outside those continents, the company said.

To use the application, a computer must have Microsoft's Windows XP or 2000 and at least version 5.5 of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser or version 1.0 of Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser. Other browsers running on Windows can be manually configured to run Web Accelerator, Google said. After installing the application, a toolbar for use with the system shows up on browsers.

In an attempt to quell potential privacy concerns related to storing Internet usage data, Google said that Web Accelerator receives much of the same kind of information people already share with their Internet service providers (ISPs) when surfing the Web.

The Google representative said that the company has gone to great lengths to ensure that the tool does not broadcast information that could lead to some form of online attack. In addition to avoiding encrypted sites, the representative said, Web Accelerator can be set not to pre-fetch data from sites, can have its history of downloaded sites cleared in moments, and is easy to disable altogether.

Web Accelerator marks the latest effort by Google to flaunt the enormous computing power of the worldwide network of servers used to support its market-leading search engine. Last year, the company launched its Gmail Web-based e-mail , which dramatically shifted the footprint for such applications by offering 1GB of free storage.

At the time, leading e-mail providers such as Yahoo and Microsoft offered a few megabytes of storage for free and charged customers who wanted more space. Since then, Google has boosted Gmail capacity to well over 2GBs of free storage, and its rivals have changed their own policies to offer greater amounts of storage at no cost.

Google's PC servers, which number in the thousands, run a stripped-down version of Linux, which is based on the distribution of the open-source software marketed by Red Hat.

[bobby_brady]

Very nice, if it's free

This would be a nice feature.

[Christopher Hall]

I agree

I don't know how they do it, but I hope they keep up the good work.

Google hasn't asked me for any money, yet, so it wouldn't surprise me if this were a free service. Either that or it may be site-specific, allowing the site admins to pay for access to a set of nodes, speeding up load times across the board.

[SteveBarry687]

Just click the link

The link in the story will take you to the download site where you can get it for FREE. Everything Google is FREE.........for now.

Although, I have been using it for all of ten minutes now, it seems to have slowed down my webpage loading. I will report back later and let you know how it works after a full day.

Make Live Easier

This WebAccelerator thing is gonna make Google live better by easily keeping track of your web habits. Good one!!!

[201293546946733175101343322673]

Small Qustion Here

Well, after reading the article, does Google mean during beta period only people who live in the US and in Europe can enjoy the speed increase? Or does Google mean no matter where you live around the world, as long as you are surfing US and European web sites, you will feel the speed increase? :)

[frankz00]

Where Gates misses

Gates is focused on killing Google the Search Engine and meanwhile Google is one step ahead each time with things like this. And since the "beef" of this thing resides outside of the desktop, things like this are going to be harder to squash. Gates needs to look inside and come up with INNOVATIONS instead of following everything he sees and trying to kill it.

[Stating]

Couldn't Agree More

Microsoft has become a slow, lumbering behemouth. They spend $7 billion a year on R&D and what do they have to show for it? If we turned the clock back to 2000, and were forced to revert to Win2K, Office 2K, and IE5 would we even notice a difference - other than it being cheaper?

Maybe this is why they are licensing their excess technology, so new product can actually get out the door.

Microsoft licensing spare technology
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/11570315.htm


Keith
www.techcando.com

[Andrew J Glina]

Perhaps

...but this is hardly a new concept. There have been programs out like this for years. While they might speed up your browsing, they also waste bandwidth downloading pages that you never see. Thus in terms of a company site, or even a small LAN (like me) you will be worse off.

[TimeBomb]

Google = Beyond reproach?

I love how people turn such a completely blind eye to everything Google does, no matter how ominous its privacy implications are.

Take these excerpts from the Google Web Accelerator privacy page, http://webaccelerator.google.com/privacy.html :

"When you use Google Web Accelerator, Google servers receive and log your page requests"

"Google temporarily caches cookies from third party sites that are used in your Web requests"

And that's just the tip of the iceberg!

So let me get this straight; If I use their services, Google can track what I search, scan my email messages, receive and log my HTTP page requests, cache my cookies (complete with user IDs and passwords, where applicable), index every file on my local system, track my usenet posts, and more.

Do people really think that Google is the world's first selfless, 100%-trustworthy company?

Also free crawling for Google

As stated in my blog (http://www.scotthodson.com/blog/?p=15) this is a great way to have Google users do crawling for them.

"There is one potential hidden benefit to this all for Google: each user is a crawler for Google, so if a page is not in Google?s cache index, the browser could pull the page down from the author?s site directly (like a browser normaly would), then upload the content to Google directly, doing Google?s crawling work for them."

[Stating]

Great Business Move

Smart move by Google. It will further entrench them in the search engine space by giving users a two-for-one, not only finding content but serving it up faster. They are leveraging the infrastructure they already have in place to crawl websites and cache them. I frequently use Google's "Cached" link to access content from sites' servers that are temporarily overloaded or inoperable.

I also think that Google's new offering has the potential to cut into some of Akamai's web caching business, specifically their web application accelerator. And I wouldn't be surprised if Google starts serving up their own ads in the cached sites by injecting them into the data stream. If I am a small-mid sized web operator then I might see this as a fair trade to give my visitors faster load times. This is particularly useful in situations where web traffic is spikey and unpredictable, like when Drudge links to your site.

Keith
www.techcando.com

[Andrew J Glina]

Lawsuit

Interesting point about adding/replacing ads. I wonder if it would be challenged however. Gator did similar things...

Think again before using!!!

Well google started intially with a web search we all should be thankful for with out which our life on the internet would have been miserable. But right now it is offering tools like the google desktop search, it has come up with a beta web accelerator it is real important think again before using these Beta tools. Now that you have google desktop search that saves the context of your emails, your searches how secured a you moving down the lane. Web accelator it is liking creating a proxy through which you are connecting to outside world. Do you want to give in all your security bank details through the proxy. If so think again!!!!

Any linux version?

I hope beyond beta stage they'll release a linux version too.

[Christopher Hall]

Google Conspiracy Theories?

I seem to recall similar arguments surrounding the introduction of Gmail. The only reason Google ever collects any information at all is for marketing purposes. The way the company uses that information is pretty much universally regarded as being one of the best, least intrusive means of marketing on the internet.

Why is it that any time someone tries to do something good for the world, all the privacy nuts go bonkers?

Only runs on Micro$oft windows?

How about them providing opensource versions so that it can be run on any operating system.?

You'd think they thought Microsoft Windows was the only operating system using the web.