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.
Anyone caught it adding stuff to your shopping basket without telling you?
Mods: Am I allowed to post the URL to the page I'm talking about on SEW?
It doesn't take note of the last modified date of the page. if the page has been modified since the last cache, Google will still show you the cached version.
It doesn't obey robots.txt
It is capable of adding items to shopping baskets without you having to click on anything.
Basically it adds a random string of crap to the end of the URL to make sure that each page load is unique.
Not an option if you run AdSense as I had to yank SessionIDs from the URL to get their contextual targetting to work properly.
if the page has been modified since the last cache, Google will still show you the cached version.
Deadly for dynamic sites and ecommerce.
It is capable of adding items to shopping baskets without you having to click on anything.
Fatal for ecommerce sites as that will invoke customer hysteria about site security:
"I see someone else's products in my cart!"
I don't think it can be used as any type of general proxy to do any auto site ripping. The best you could do, would be to drive IE as a spider (which is trivial to do at current and has nothing to do with Google).
Uhm...have you ever looked at the plug-ins available for ripping sites from within firefox? They use your IP and UserAgent (unless you change the user-agent), so yes it would allow "very fast" and easy site-ripping behind a proxy.
I'm not trying to spread misinformation, but I fail to see one good point of this "for the user or site owner" - can someone mention one please?
Lemme see - it's meant for broadband user (which most are already able to download at 1-4Mbs). No gain here.
Doesn't work with cookies - there goes affiliate income for some, login info for others, and broken shopping carts for others (or adding products to a cart from prefetch).
Prefetch - Clicks/registers clicks and downloads a page you may not even vist. Great for small PPC or bandwidth for sites not even being visited.
Sorry, but I have yet to see a benefit mentioned?
[edited by: The_Contractor at 12:10 am (utc) on May 5, 2005]
if the page has been modified since the last cache, Google will still show you the cached version.Deadly for dynamic sites and ecommerce.
Just what I was thinking, especially in conjunction with my 3rd point.
In theory, it could add an item to your shopping basket, but it will show you the cached version of your on-page shopping basket and you'd be none the wiser unless you double check your basket contents on the checkout page.
I haven't clicked them, but they are in my accellerator cache, which can be seen when enabling the "Highlight Links to Prefetched Pages" feature.
I'm not trying to spread misinformation, but I fail to see one good point of this "for the user or site owner" - can someone mention one please?
Tch, haven't you been reading...
Benefit for the user: You can really get back at that nasty system administrator at work by telling all your colleagues about the Web Corruptor. he'll soon be doing overtime trying to sort out the bandwidth problems!
Benefit for the site owner: Automatic clicks on your site ads, automatic additions to your customers' shopping baskets!
;-)
Considering I don't want it hitting my server or interfering with my visitors why would I care if they are busy making it better? I WANT MY PERSONAL REPLY! :)
Have I mentioned just how smart Google's PhDs are lately?
Just thought it beared mentioning all that money Google spent on hiring only those with the highest education, the supposedly bestest and brightest, and how it's paying off right now making the world a better place.
Not.
However, I feel that they should have put something as potentially harmful as this through a lot more rigourous testing and public consultation before letting it loose on the Internet.
Benefit for the site owner: Automatic clicks on your site ads, automatic additions to your customers' shopping baskets!
Yes, but can it prefetch their credit card info and submit it later :)
Well, even though there is mostly/all negative comments in this thread I believe it gives Google some valuable info they may/many not have thought about. I guess they could have struck a silent deal with AOL for broadband and it's users wouldn't have a clue ;)
Hello everybody and am already in love with this forum :-)
so Leoxiv said that
if Page A(index 1)!= Page A(index 2)then Page A is CLOAKING
its a splendid observation but how on earth they can measure inequality as precisely as that?! there might be just tiny differences ...
Just thought it beared mentioning all that money Google spent on hiring only those with the highest education, the supposedly bestest and brightest
Yeah, but didn't they hire a Microsoft guy as well? ;-)
[edited by: mrMister at 1:02 am (utc) on May 5, 2005]
To make the accellerator work your internet security program needs your approval to connect the accellerator to the internet.
Try to remove the accellerator from your security programs firewall internet access protocol. When you've done that restart the accellerator, try to open a page - interesting error page, eh?
The Google Accellerator is an application that cooperates with your browser and checks for data on the page requested via another port than 80 (HTTP).
Ergo, no proxy IP and no user agents.
One tool that I love is their desktop search...you can control everything, and clean the history /cache anytime you want.
1. if 5% of internet users utilise this technology then the web is slowed down because of the huge extra bandwidth requirements by this 5%.
Thus the another 10% of users say.. "the internet is so slow." and of course they look for how to improve their speed. They therefor download the 'Web Accelerator'.
This compounds the speed issue and thus making it even slower for the other 85%.
This keeps going until the web accelerator has a 100% market share. And of course, as the internet is slowed down so significantly we are all running at a speed not faster than now.
2. The web accelerator click on other PPC advertising. Thus making the advertisers pay more and look for other alternatives that are more cost effective. i.e. adwords
At least with Google, these issues get quick attention. Which is a lot more than can be said for a lot of other big Internet companies.
if 5% of internet users utilise this technology then the web is slowed down because of the huge extra bandwidth requirements by this 5%
Yes, you hit the nail on the head and win a stuffed animal of your choice.
Imagine if EVERYONE installs this mess and web usage which may already be borderline goes up 3x, 4x, or more within a few months! The bandwidth for most of the servers we host hits 80%+ for a couple of hours a day during peak times and this technology would just literally destroy access times during peak. Packets would be dropping all over the place and the sheer economics of the situation doesn't justify adding more bandwidth to the network.
The only solution would be to block any pre-fetch technology from all servers.
Not pretty.
Check out the fifth parahraph - something on how to ID a prefetch request.
