Google seeks tips to speed the web

By Rosalie Marshall on Jun 25, 2009 6:27 AM
Filed under Software

Ideas, anyone?

Google is asking for suggestions on how to speed up the internet, and has launched an open conversation on the subject with a new Let's make the web faster site where developers can leave their ideas.

Google operations and engineering executives Bill Coughran and Urs Hoelzle said in a blog post that Google will share what it learns about web performance with the wider internet community.

"To optimise the speed of web applications, and make browsing as fast as turning the pages of a magazine, we need to work together as a community to tackle some larger challenges that keep the web slow and prevent it from delivering its full potential," said the executives.

Developers wishing to comment need to log in to the new site with their Google user name and password and then choose a topic.

However, developers posting a suggestion first have to agree to a disclaimer giving Google the right to use their idea freely and without compensation.

The topics all relate to web speed, and include broadband access, browser technologies, internet protocols and webmaster tools.

Coughran and Hoelzle noted the importance of updating web protocols, and picked out the launch of HTML 5 as a good example.

"With HTML 5 features such as AppCache, developers are now able to write JavaScript-heavy web apps that run instantly and work and feel like desktop applications," said the executives.

Google also called on browser developers to continue to increase JavaScript performance, and for all developers to come up with new ideas for tools that measure the performance and speed of web applications.

2 comments in this discussion

""What I am suggesting is some kind of limit so that we don't have to keep chasing down expensive solutions." Any suggestions on how you would enforce that? If you want to reduce unsolicited ..."

By Sams

Tags

developers, web, google, speed, applications, internet

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Comments: 2

Hendo

Jun 25, 2009 9:01 AM

First I'm not a developer, so I can't help with that. I am a web consumer though, and always will be, so my perspective is from a web-user.
I want to use an analogy. Go back to early PC days, when the top kid on the block had a 20Mb hard drive. Software was written within that sort of boundary. Then the drives got bigger, software grew, drives grew and over time they were chasing each other in a circular race. As drives got better, software took advantage of that capacity, and as the software caught up, the drive-makers slaved to improve their product and so on.
The internet is in a circular race too. As it speeds up and reaches more people, the content has changed, becoming ever more graphic - colour, video, sound, linkages and more. All this uses up bandwidth and slows things down, and at the same time encourages even more congestive postings.
So the question becomes, is this race going to continue for ever like a receding horizon, or is going to be somehow capped? If allowed to continue, then any solution is only short term, the problem of slow speeds will constantly erupt, even at speeds we now see in fibre optic delivery.
What I am suggesting is some kind of limit so that we don't have to keep chasing down expensive solutions. The fact is we can reduce our demand upon the internet significantly just by moderating the inane content. Anyway, sooner or later consumers will get hostile when they see that 90% of their internet charges are absorbed by downloading content totally unsolicited and for the most part unrelated to their reason for being on the net.

Sams

Jun 25, 2009 10:54 AM

"What I am suggesting is some kind of limit so that we don't have to keep chasing down expensive solutions."

Any suggestions on how you would enforce that?

If you want to reduce unsolicited downloads, use a browser that can block unwanted content. It can make a huge difference. If you don't want want video, then don't watch video. If there is a user segment for low-bandwidth websites, then people will build them (otherwise, they won't). You can also use cut-down version of Linux that will install on very low end machines ... there are these things called netbooks.