Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
System Requirements
Operating System: Win XP or Win 2000 SP3+
Browser: IE 5.5+ or Firefox 1.0+
Availability: For users in North America and Europe (during beta testing phase)
Press Release:
Google Web
Accelerator significantly reduces the time that it takes broadband users to
download and view web pages. The Google Web Accelerator appears as a small
speedometer in the browser chrome with a cumulative "Time saved" indicator.Here's how it works. A user downloads and installs the client and begins
browsing the web as she normally would. In the background, the Google Web
Accelerator employs a number of techniques to speed up the delivery of
content to users.
Looks like some of the Mozilla hires are paying dvidends.
I've gotten the impression that there's less emphasis on prefetching than on smart proxy caching including incremental changes to pages.
Ah that's alright then. If it's only a small a part of it that's, just disable the pre-fetching and everybody's happy!
[edited by: mrMister at 8:45 am (utc) on May 5, 2005]
It's not spyware due to the option of uninstalling
By this logic, Spam wouldn't be spam if it has an unsubscribe option.
How does this thing handle web applications where prefetching could essentially fire off an action within the application that was not desired?
You mean something like an admin system for your web site, where at the press of a button you can add, edit and delete pages.
Yes, Google WA was more than capable of "prefetching" these delete events for you, thus deleting pages on your web site for you!
From what I can tell though, Google seem to have taken steps to prevent this from happening now. The prefetch doesn't seem to be working in the same way as it did when I first analysed it.
<link rel="noprefetch" href="http://url/to/get/">?
I wish it were that simple
I can't believe google is going the Way of the "gator" like businesses
"Download our Free, Appealing but useless little App" and we will be "In Control" w'll know exactly what you do on the web and when, thus better targeting you with our ads down the line....
Google : You don't need to do this kind of Stuff, better continue to concentrate on Pure, Plain Web Search.
Second, it is both a Scraper, and Spyware, and a Proxy.
Third, it does not honor robots.txt and does not even specify an User-Agent string for that file.
Forth, it generates extra useless traffic and wastes your bandwith.
I have only two things to say about this
No, this is not negociable. If Google wants to have access, they will have to have a different view on users than Gator / Claria. There is absolutely nothing even remotely positive to say about this product
[edited by: claus at 11:19 am (utc) on May 5, 2005]
any quality proxy must pass the ua unchanged. Thus, it will be the same ua as your browser.
[showcase.netins.net...]
about 100 pages surfed: total saving 9 seconds. It still isn't as fast as raw Opera...
Has anyone been able to identify it via User Agent yet
As Brett stated it uses your browsers UA so it can't be blocked via UA string.
I think the only way to block it is through the IP range of 72.14.192.0 - 72.14.207.255 via .htaccess . I send them to a custom 403 on another domain (the .net,.info etc of the same domain name) in which I added one of the reasons they may have been blocked was by using the Google's webaccelerator.
As Brett stated it uses your browsers UAAs a Google employee was quoted as saying on SEW, it does use a Google User Agent.
See, this is part of what has me so concerned.
WebAccelerator could well be a fine product with benefits to users and webmasters alike.
But the constant stream of contradictory information makes me wonder why Google seems to be going out of its way to obfuscate these issues.
If someone gives me the impression they're hiding something I always assume the worst possible scenario. Am I alone in this?
With apologies to GoogleGuy, what has he really told us about WebAccelerator?
http://showcase.netins.net/web/phdss/environ2.htmabout 100 pages surfed: total saving 9 seconds. It still isn't as fast as raw Opera...
Yep, I still use the old Opera 6.06 and have yet to find a faster browser for a Windows based PC ;)
You need to show this thread to your colleagues as well:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Seems like Google Accellerator becomes a referral spam application when the prefetched page contains some sort of referral URI.
I have had 6 referrals from Webmasterworld to a website of mine since I posted the first time to this thread. I have never disclosed the website URI to Webmasterworld.
News Flash: Google hires hires lead Opera programmer. Ex-Mozilla programmers, re-join the Mozilla team :).
We might not be their target market though. AOL stil has some 20 million users, not to mention netzero, earthlink etc., who still use the modem.
Claus: Could you please post the complete (and most compact) required code to block this thing so mod_rewrite novices like me don't wipe out their traffic.
Could you also post the relevant text of your custom 403 so we can help Google users get the message.
Ta!
And rightfully so. Robots.txt is designed for spiders with automatic methods to determine which link to crawl next. With Google's Web Accelerator, however, each request is directly triggered by the behaviour of a human user.
So, it's a proxy. Google aren't the first in this field: my ISP has a transparent proxy, yours does too. AOL have been doing something like this since... well, forever.
Rather than worry about the proxy accessing your site, I think it would be more useful to look at the wider consequences of the proxy in terms of Google's operations, be it advertizing or search. Google is above all else a data-collection and data-mining company. So simply put, what does this new data bring?
Google have been recording search habits for years: cookies, toolbar, GDS... The proxy will give them a great dataset of browsing habits. A couple of examples. A proxy user searches for widgets, selects a result. Google can continue tracking the user via the proxy: do they find what they are looking for? How many pages do they visit on the target site? They could not easily follow that kind of activity before. After that comes the browsing cache itself: Google can use HTTP referrers to see what pages requested by users appear to be bookmarked (no referrer) rather than via a link. Google can also compare the cache made by the proxy to the cache made by Googlebot to see the difference. Google can find the "dark web" of pages not readily accessible via Googlebot as users are acting as a super-bot with full Javascript/cookies/referrers capability (and multiple user agent strings to boot).
Overall, with the proxy Google are getting a taste of the web from the user's perspective, rather than a bot's perspective. The user data is giving eyes to the bot. It could bring their search to a whole new level. It is the cloakers who are screaming loudest today, mostly about the (undoubtedly important) privacy concerns, but their real fear is coming from the massive breach in their technology that the accelerator is bringing.
More accurately, it is a compressing proxy.
Dialups do not benefit because modern 56k modems all compress data to/from their isp anyway. The rest of the web is still stuck in the uncompressed dark ages of the 70's. A compressing proxy does indeed stand to speed up the web. One thing we know for absolute certainty is that bandwidth requirements and page sizes are going to increase. I believe average page sizes will increase 3 fold in the next 5 years.
I agree in principle with claus's feelings on the product, but I disagree on some of the specifics:
> a made up consumer need
I do think there is a small justifiable (aka: excuse) need to speed up the web. In theory, the web should have been 100% compressed data years ago, but we are still living out that 1960-70's uncompressed legacy. Compressing data - makes sense for all the major isps, and Google is just muscling in on that territory itself.
> Second, it is both a Scraper, and Spyware, and a Proxy.
How is it a scraper? I see it as a human still at the kb.
Spyware? Agreed, but that is not new - it is just *more* of the same thing they have with the toolbar and all their sources of data now.
Proxy? So what?
> it does not honor robots.txt
It is a proxy on behalf of a human, it isn't a bot.
> User-Agent string for that file.
It can't claus, it *has* to pass the UA unfettered.
> wastes your bandwidth.
Agreed. how much it uses is open for debate.
I think the take away here is that if everyone would just install GZip on their websites, we would have the same effect in ALL browsers and not just in IE/Moz.
for a site like WebmasterWorld it's probably a lot. I have 1000GB limmit on mine and don't even get close to reaching it, so it doesn't bother me, but I could see other sites being upset.
as far as spyware: Sadly, I think we lost the war. Between the bar, this or other future products, they'll know your every move.
It is ZERO. We do not allow prefetching.
RewriteCond %{X-moz} ^prefetch
RewriteRule ^.* - [F]
That is the only extra bandwidth at issue. Everything else is just normal surfing.
There's a lot of hype and misinformation here.
It is the cloakers who are screaming loudest today, mostly about the (undoubtedly important) privacy concerns, but their real fear is coming from the massive breach in their technology that the accelerator is bringing.
Nope, not me, I don't cloak anything. I fail to see how anyone could put a positive spin on this product?
This should really get interesting when people try to put a positive spin on this...sometimes you have to call it as you see it. I'm sure Googles intentions may be good in an effort to get users to provide them with more data, but how this is going about it, well it's wrong. It costs others money and breaks others sites (cookies) – period.
For their stockholders yes. I don't think we know their ultimate intentions with this product. (my personal side thought, is that this is the foundation for a Google ISP)
> tell me a benefit to the user
The speed up of moz/ie (which need all the help they can get in that dept)
> or site owner
None that I can see other than allowing users another method of getting to your site.
The big issue I see is in all the GeoTargetting that people are doing today. If everything goes through a single set of IP's a Google, how do we target LOCAL?
It is the cloakers who are screaming loudest today, mostly about the (undoubtedly important) privacy concerns, but their real fear is coming from the massive breach in their technology that the accelerator is bringing
Cloacking is not the Issue here,
The issue in my Opinion is about a Broader Google Vision to WebUsers.
Google Used to distinguish itself among other internet giants by offering GENUINE, Transparent Services to Users starting from Web Search, News Aggregation....
Now this WebAccelerator thing is Truly a move away from google's traditional way of doing things,
Why would broadBand Users Need to Accelerate Page access by a few Seconds anyway? this is Junk
The true answer to the question :Why only Broadband? is that WebAccelerator Needs Large Bandwith to give you the impression that it is actually delivering speed improvement, what a joke.
Looking at the "Webmaster Guidelines"
[webaccelerator.google.com...] i had a Feeling that this page could well belong to MSDN:
Advertising Links:
How on earth could it Securely identify every available type of ad link out there? no way
Web Apps:
How on earth could we stop it from messing with our CMS, E-Shops that are not under HTTPS? no way
In conclusion, this "FreeWare" will not offer any reasonably postiv service to users, It creates a mess on the web and Takes advantage of users's Computer processing power and bandwith as well as their Private web usage information for Google's datamining needs!
What a great piece of software!
