incrediBILL - 4:41 am on Oct 13, 2012 (gmt 0)

It's about time they got this thing ready for prime time!

First, image size is one of the most common areas that I see slowing down page loads.

I agree about image size being a problem. However, the problem here is you have no real control over the image quality if you let some random tool apply some random compression. It's obviously better than nothing, but I prefer compressing my own images so I know what the visitor actually sees.

Furthermore, how to you know their compression doesn't ditch any watermarks or meta data in the file? Would have to test it before trusting this aspect of the product.

If it doesn't benefit Google in some shape or form, they would not be giving it away.

Of course it benefits Google. They crawl the web and it speeds up page delivery and reduces bandwidth usage, therefore making crawls faster as well as speeds up visitor page loads and Google page preview screenshots.

The whole thing is Open Source so anyone can see what it's doing so any paranoia is just silly at this point. I'd install it if I didn't think it might interfere with my control panel software. I'll probably just wait for them to include it in a future control panel build.