Comments on: GoogleBlue

GoogleBlue

kickingtheground — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:22:45 -0800

Google thinks your internet connection is too slow. They want to make it faster.

By: bokane

bokane — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:29:15 -0800

Anyone know if this can be used as a proxy for, e.g., getting around governmental firewalls? It seems to work based on caching, after all...

By: AlexReynolds

AlexReynolds — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:29:38 -0800

Windows only *yawn* Google just doesn't get it...

By: clevershark

clevershark — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:31:49 -0800

This is the same sort of thing that Netscape and NetZero offer -- and which has otherwise been around for years -- I assume?

By: jonson

jonson — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:32:34 -0800

Google just doesn't get releasing a product for 97% of the audience instead of 100%?

By: reflection

reflection — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:34:40 -0800

They don't get what? They obviously get numbers, which is a really good reason to not support other operating systems.

By: Citizen Premier

Citizen Premier — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:35:00 -0800

Is that really Google? Or something nefarious?

By: phylum sinter

phylum sinter — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:47:42 -0800

First my address bar wasn't quick enough, then my method of getting directions wasn't good enough, then my email wasn't efficient enough, and now my 4mbps isn't speedy enough, either. Well alright, but i'm drawing the line here. ...Actually I just want to see google try and improve the panda. COME ON, YOU PANSIES.

By: undule

undule — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:49:40 -0800

A little photoshop over his anus stain might improve the panda slightly.

By: LarryC

LarryC — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:49:49 -0800

Citizen: Yeah it is really Google. I had the same thought, so I went the Google search page and followed "more" => Labs and there it is.

By: dammitjim

dammitjim — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:53:14 -0800

It's true, browser helper thingies like this have been around for a long time. But it's Google. C'mon. It's, like, better and stuff. Actually, Google fanboy-ness aside, I don't typically trust little browser utilities like this from just anyone. Installing anything from C|Net on a Windows machine is just inviting malware/Kazaa these days. So if it's from Google, it's probably not bad. And it does certainly appear to be legitimately from Google. I guess it could be spoofed. Who's going to install it first and see if it secretly starts serving barnyard porn from their computer?

By: phylum sinter

phylum sinter — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:53:49 -0800

undule - don't give them any hints!!! Alright i've installed this thing and already i've saved .3 seconds. This is totally worth the 8mb box it's nabbing from my resources.

By: lumpenprole

lumpenprole — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:54:53 -0800

I'd be interested in hearing people's experience with this. It seems like one of those cache manager things that have been around for a while. I hate those things because they never update flash movies or video files or audio files correctly. I set my Firefox to check for a new version of every page every time, and I still end up clearing my cache ridiculously often.

By: peacay

peacay — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:56:22 -0800

By: jikel_morten

jikel_morten — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:59:46 -0800

Is this a bad time to ask if everone else's google experience has been a little sluggish as of late?

By: kickingtheground

kickingtheground — Wed, 04 May 2005 20:59:48 -0800

A little photoshop over his anus stain might improve the panda slightly.

*cough*

By: dammitjim

dammitjim — Wed, 04 May 2005 21:17:01 -0800

lumpenprole: you know that the olde Netscape trick still works in Firefox? Hold down Shift when you click Reload, and it reloads the page totally from scratch. I've always disliked the idea of these pre-caching things, probably due to having previously worked in tech support. I like knowing what's working about my internet connection, and how well. Same reason I prefer driving cars with manual transmissions. 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.

By: DawnSimulator

DawnSimulator — Wed, 04 May 2005 21:18:13 -0800

Damn...kickingtheground beat me to the anal bleaching link.

By: dg

dg — Wed, 04 May 2005 21:26:07 -0800

Windows only *yawn* Google just doesn't get releasing a product for 97% of the audience instead of 100%? Availability: For users in North America and Europe Those numbers keep going down.

By: mischief

mischief — Wed, 04 May 2005 21:27:58 -0800

Hmm, I have to continually log back in to MeFi, MeTalk and AskMe. All my other log-in sites are fine though.

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Wed, 04 May 2005 21:34:42 -0800

This makes me apprehensive. Why? Because it means that in addition to knowing about your searches, Google will now know about every visit you make to any url. But Google has a "do no evil" policy -- they're not the government or even Wal*mart, so why's this a problem, you ask? Because even if Google is run by living breathing saints, all that data in one place is going to be an irresistible temptation to corrupt employees within Google, to hackers without, and to any government official who can order a subpoena or a black-bag job to get at it. It's simply too much information about private habits in one place. The Dutch government on 14 May 1940 was by all accounts a good and trustworthy government, and one might have argued that Otto Frank would have had no reason to dear having lots of his and his family's personal information in the hands of the Dutch authorities. But on 15 May 1940, the Netherlands surrendered to Nazi Germany, and turned over all government property to the occupiers -- which would have included any "do no evil" Dutch databases. Thankfully, the Dutch population records didn't record visits to anti-Nazi or Jewish websites, or Anne Frank might not have been able to hide from the Nazis even for the two years she was able to. Of course, we argue that that can't happen here, but ask any Japanese-American who spent time at Mazanar Relocation Camp. And have you visited a left-wing or even a Democratic Party site lately? The Bush Administration recently removed from a delegation, made up of phone company employees and formed with the sole purpose of discussing purely technical matters, employees who had donated to the Kerry campaign. They knew who had donated because, by law, the donations are kept in a database. Clearly, those employees are no longer as valuable to the employers, if they can't even get a seat at the table because of their personal political convictions. Will the bumped employees be getting bonus this year, do you think? It's open season on people's private lives, and it's foolish to make it easier for your private life to be tracked. We must bear in mind the great aggregations of data, even in the most well-intentioned hands, can and will be appropriated or stolen by those who would use them for ill. The best remedy is to aggressively limit such collections of data.

By: jonson

jonson — Wed, 04 May 2005 21:41:00 -0800

Googlwin! Godwoogle?

By: mischief

mischief — Wed, 04 May 2005 21:42:27 -0800

In the accelerator preferences: "Specify sites that should not go through Google Web Accelerator." I put MeFi and the login problem disappeared.

By: Jairus

Jairus — Wed, 04 May 2005 21:45:45 -0800

Think of it this way: It's not a 'web accellerator', it's a very fast anonymizing proxy.

By: blacklite

blacklite — Wed, 04 May 2005 21:50:01 -0800

I didn't think this would be a very interesting thread, but now that we've tied anal bleaching into it, I'm quite satisfied. As much as I like Google's products, I don't think I'm going to go for their web accelerator either. Something about it just seems a little off to me. It's like signing off the last bit of my autonomy. I like getting my data from different servers. And, as has been mentioned, the updates of the caches never seem to be quite right. And my cookies cached on Google servers? ... No thanks.

By: Jairus

Jairus — Wed, 04 May 2005 21:50:23 -0800

orthogonality, you're assuming that Google is keeping a database of users -> websites. If they don't keep identifiable logs, it can't be used against anyone.

By: tkb

tkb — Wed, 04 May 2005 21:51:21 -0800

# Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible. browser already does that I think they are defining frequently in terms of all users of the web accelerator, not just you. Whatever the exact route between your local machine and the site you are visiting, the odds are that the route to Google is shorter and faster. If many users are viewing a site that is more or less remote, then this should be a big win. # Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance. this is what they all do - i think it's wasteful of network resources, especially on wireless The wastefulness of this depends on how well Google can predict what links you might click on next. Presumably they don't download every link on every page that you view, but if every day you come to metafilter and click on the first five links on the page, then it could be a pretty big win.

By: mischief

mischief — Wed, 04 May 2005 22:04:01 -0800

"Presumably they don't download every link on every page that you view" I just hit some porn site with video samples. After "Save Target As" followed by "Save", the response was immediate. So, it may be prefetching links within the domain. Anyway,

Load Time for 81 Pages Without Google Web Accelerator: 4.8 mins With Google Web Accelerator: 4.5 mins Total Time Saved: 17.2 seconds

I can't say the time savings is all that impressive.

By: pmurray63

pmurray63 — Wed, 04 May 2005 22:04:12 -0800

Okay, I've been trying this for about 40 minutes now, and here's what I'm seeing so far: - Many pages are noticeably faster; some are no faster - More ads are getting through my Norton Internet Security - Some minor formatting differences occaisionally appear (font size, spacing, etc.) I'm still wrestling with the privacy issues, but it does appear to have some benefits.

By: pmurray63

pmurray63 — Wed, 04 May 2005 22:07:26 -0800

Heh, I didn't see that Performance Data thing. Here's mine: Load Time for 43 Pages Without Google Web Accelerator: 3.9 mins With Google Web Accelerator: 3.0 mins Total Time Saved: 56.4 seconds Worked much better for me.

By: kuatto

kuatto — Wed, 04 May 2005 22:12:50 -0800

Google is the devil. To paraphrase Yoda: "Firmly entrenched in the capitalist system, they are" "Obey their negative desires, Google must" here's one of my own: "Google's interests are divergent from my own, why should I trust them?"

By: reflection

reflection — Wed, 04 May 2005 22:34:46 -0800

Load Time for 1450 Pages Without Google Web Accelerator: 18.5 mins With Google Web Accelerator: 15.1 mins Total Time Saved: 3.4 mins

By: krisjohn

krisjohn — Wed, 04 May 2005 22:44:49 -0800

I'm trying it out here. 452 pages and no saving yet, but most of my surfing is dynamic. Though you think that some cool compression might have sped things up.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Wed, 04 May 2005 22:53:15 -0800

Availability: For users in North America and Europe Those numbers keep going down. And we hadn't even gotten to the "IE and Firefox only" limitation yet.

By: dg

dg — Wed, 04 May 2005 23:01:15 -0800

Hmm, I have to continually log back in to MeFi, MeTalk and AskMe. All my other log-in sites are fine though. You do know about the thing where MeFi pages contain your username and password in clear text, don't you? I think, but cannot be sure, that this means your username and password are now stored in Google's cache.

By: davy

davy — Thu, 05 May 2005 00:44:43 -0800

MeFi pages contain your username and password in clear text, don't you? I think, but cannot be sure, that this means your username and password are now stored in Google's cache. So somebody could hack Google and then spoof somebody here? E.g., pretend to be languagehat raving ungrammatical death threats, or counterfeit Quonsar as a Sensitive Guy? Wow, what a fiendish plan! With this I could conquer the world!

By: kindall

kindall — Thu, 05 May 2005 02:07:02 -0800

MeFi pages contain your username and password in clear text Not for a while now.

By: Mayor Curley

Mayor Curley — Thu, 05 May 2005 04:46:19 -0800

Windows only *yawn* Google just doesn't get it... "This is a drug, for the world, to give worms to ex-girlfriends!"

By: lotsofno

lotsofno — Thu, 05 May 2005 05:15:14 -0800

i use Opera. there's no possible way browsing the internets could get any faster.

By: mischief

mischief — Thu, 05 May 2005 05:45:22 -0800

I use a generic password for non-critical websites like MeFi. If somebody hacks it, so what.

By: caution live frogs

caution live frogs — Thu, 05 May 2005 05:58:45 -0800

lotsofno: You mean aside from not bothering to load ads in the first place? That saves me some bandwidth. Not knocking Opera, just sayin'... I like the plethora of free advertisement & flash blocking plug-ins for FireFox. Never quite sure why people pay money to get rid of advertising when they can legitimately do it for free. As for Google, anybody that can make Microsoft worry is good news for the consumer. Competition is a good thing.

By: zardoz

zardoz — Thu, 05 May 2005 06:06:36 -0800

What? Doesn't work on Mozilla?

By: Foosnark

Foosnark — Thu, 05 May 2005 07:17:20 -0800

I'm seeing an install link for Mozilla.

By: beelzbubba

beelzbubba — Thu, 05 May 2005 07:21:18 -0800

Anyway, Load Time for 81 Pages Without Google Web Accelerator: 4.8 mins With Google Web Accelerator: 4.5 mins Total Time Saved: 17.2 seconds I can't say the time savings is all that impressive. What, are you kidding? At that rate, if you webaccelerate for an entire year, you'd save 35,040 minutes or over 9 weeks!!!. Think what you could do with that time!

By: mischief

mischief — Thu, 05 May 2005 07:29:48 -0800

That 4.8 minutes of download time equates to one hour of realtime.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Thu, 05 May 2005 07:32:54 -0800

# Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic. that sounds like a logjam waiting to happen Or... not. # Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible. browser already does that Not for everyone to share. Each person with their own cache dosn't help anything # Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance. this is what they all do - i think it's wasteful of network resources, especially on wireless "Web accelerators" for AOL and whatnot work by pre-compressing websites for modem users. This is for broadband. And since it works with google's shared cache, it'll be faster. Anyway, it's IE only so who cares?

By: delmoi

delmoi — Thu, 05 May 2005 07:37:32 -0800

Oh, okay it works for firefox as well. In any event, it's not even linked on their main page. Leave it to Mefi to bitch about someone giving something away for free... Ever think it might be a good idea to limit the use of a beta product at first. What would be the point of someone outside of the continental US area using this to access local websites? I'm suprised they didn't just give this out to a few people and then have users 'invite' their friends...

By: grouse

grouse — Thu, 05 May 2005 07:59:00 -0800

The slight benefits from this are not worth the cost of having Google know everything I do on the web. Not that they don't already know that. This is an ingenious way of getting more data about which sites users visit for improving search results, though. I choose not to take part in the experiment.

By: xmattxfx

xmattxfx — Thu, 05 May 2005 08:22:50 -0800

so has anyone determined whether this will make surfing anonymous (i.e. hide your ip address)?

By: papercake

papercake — Thu, 05 May 2005 09:08:10 -0800

lotsofno, thanks for getting me to finally check out Opera. I'm taking it for a spin and liking it so far.

By: mr.marx

mr.marx — Thu, 05 May 2005 09:10:29 -0800

xmattxfx: yes

By: jmccorm

jmccorm — Thu, 05 May 2005 10:22:15 -0800

The time saved is in Internet Time. The same thing that made dotcoms grow. It is false time, and you're only risking getting your computer stuck in a temporal loop. I would be very careful about overclocking while using this service, because of the tendency to tear a rip in the fabric of spacetime. It will negatively affect your property values... TRUST ME!!!

By: xmattxfx

xmattxfx — Thu, 05 May 2005 12:06:09 -0800

mr. marx: curiously, it does not for me. i installed the webaccelerator on a pc i don't care for, and my ip address still shows up on whatismyip.com

By: dg

dg — Thu, 05 May 2005 15:12:44 -0800

MeFi pages contain your username and password in clear text Not for a while now. OK, my bad.

By: TNLNYC

TNLNYC — Thu, 05 May 2005 20:33:30 -0800

I posted my thoughts on the accelerator here... i think it's a play for a bigger piece of the search pie...

By: poweredbybeard

poweredbybeard — Fri, 06 May 2005 11:14:01 -0800

At that rate, if you webaccelerate for an entire year, you'd save 35,040 minutes or over 9 weeks!!!. Think what you could do with that time! i've discovered an even more efficient way to to do this: go outside. imagine it - for every second away from your computer, that's one second of browsing time cut! speaking of which...