Google Web Accelerator 798
Lukey Boy writes "Google has released a free web accelerator product for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. According to their information page the software uses Google servers as a proxy for web content, delivering the pages to your system more rapidly and compressing them beforehand."
Hmm, (Score:3, Interesting)
free webstats (Score:5, Interesting)
hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
isn't this basically a proxy? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've RTF(ine)A and I give... what makes this different/better/faster/whatever than a proxy server?
And, while I'm at it.... I submit my vote that Google make linux/*nix versions of their stuff more quickly/readily. I find it no small irony that a company that relies on over 10,000 linux servers (actually I think the number may exceed 40,000) essentially making them one of the largest benficiaries of the OSS community they don't yet have a Google Desktop, nor are offering a beta of this accelerator for the linux community.
Don't get me wrong, I like Google, think they've done great stuff, but come on -- how about paying back a little to the hand that giveth.
Great for dial up users (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a little too paranoid for this one... (Score:5, Interesting)
To learn more, read our Google Web Accelerator Privacy Policy (http://webaccelerator.google.com/privacy [google.com]).
Does anyone know if the accelerator gives you the option to omit certain webpages from your accelerating experience, or is this going to turn into a huge information mine? (Not that the two are exclusive, there are going to be users who just blindly send anything through the accelerator regardless).
So let me get this straight ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Anonymizer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Smart. Scary. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:isn't this basically a proxy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing really that I can see other than that it will always compress which is something that some sites do not have enabled, which should offer some speed ups and help reduce over all web traffic. I'd assume that this is tied into Google's cache used on the search engine, so if you request a page through the proxy for which the cached data is stale it will update that also, then re-index the data for the search engine. If so, this could be *very* useful for alleviating things like the Slashdot effect, although it would need to pull the graphics to be of any real use here. The problem with caching the graphics though, is that it's going to make it *really* difficult for Ad-Blockers to work out which files are ads and which are not...
Re:Smart. Scary. (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Is Google reading my email?
No. Google scans the text of Gmail messages in order to filter spam and detect viruses, just as all major webmail services do. Google also uses this scanning technology to deliver targeted text ads and other related information. This is completely automated and involves no humans.
Re:Squeezable Software (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why CSS is a good thing. You're not downloading the look & feel of the site every time you make a non-cached request. Getting the data out of their too would go a long way towards cutting down on the amount of useless bits browsers have to download over and over again.
Re:Soon, google will be an AD MACHINE!@ EULA (Score:2, Interesting)
Kinda scary if you're one or two links away from illegal content. Is this an issue, say, if you end up with bad material cached on your machine, or is it just inherently obvious that if you're concerned about these sorts of things, you dont use it?
Re:isn't this basically a proxy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Uh, it's not ironic at all. As you said, they use Linux servers, not desktops. Those servers don't need Google Desktop or Webaccelerator.
Don't get me wrong, I like Google, think they've done great stuff, but come on -- how about paying back a little to the hand that giveth.
You think they're trying to do Windows users a favor by releasing these products? They're doing it for themselves. They make money off of these products by solidifying their mindshare and marketshare. Releasing Linux versions (or OS X versions, for that matter) obviously isn't worth it to them.
Already one privacy problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, browsers other than Firefox and Mozilla can take advantage of GWA if you set them to proxy requests over Localhost:9100 while GWA is running in the system tray.
So basically, if anybody else is logged into the same system as you at the same time, they can figure out whether or not you have visited any given page by connecting to your GWA installation and seeing whether or not the page downloads faster than your Internet connection speed.
dial-up or metered gprs/umts alternative (Score:2, Interesting)
There is another accelerator that does http gzip compression with jpeg/gif resizing and recompression; perfectly suited for metered gprs/umts or dialup modems.
http://rabbit-proxy.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Re:What does Google gain from this? (Score:5, Interesting)
- More aggressive preloading of top search results (made possible because Google is providing the bandwidth, so they're not wasting other people's bandwidth), makes Google search results more responsive => people rely on Google more
- In the future, improved google ad relevancy by serving you ads related to your browsing habits (Sign me up! maybe I'd actually get ads that are useful to me instead of the normal crap ones. You can always turn it off when you want privacy, so stop frothing at the mouth already.)
Of course, people are going to be crying "spyware"! But this is different from most spyware. Firstly, it doesn't clog up your Windows installation and slow down or crash your computer; in fact it speeds up your browsing. Secondly, you can turn it off, or uninstall it if you want. Thirdly, you only get it if you explicitly download it. Fourthly, it might actually improve Google's relevancy for search results and ads, which would benefit me directly. And finally, so many people are watching Google right now that the instant they do something evil, everybody on the globe will know about it. If that happens, it's trivial to switch to a competitor. And that's exactly why they *won't* be doing anything evil.Re:Slashdot effect? (Score:5, Interesting)
So it sounds to me that if the website being slashdotted is cache-able (and the slashdotters have this accelerator), it could ease the website's server load.
Does it anonymize requests? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not that google doesn't keep logs to let law enforcement see who you are, but in theory, the logs of the sites visited would see google unless they explicitly told them you're ip correct?
Re:Google turns Evil (Score:2, Interesting)
"But AC, then I'll just stop using them when I find out."
By then, it is too late.
Hmmm... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Smart. Scary. (Score:3, Interesting)
The only thing they might do is some compression, but this assumes a number of things to make your connection faster:
1) the content isn't already compressed. Lots of sites already gzip html etc...
2)The google servers have a faster connection to the server than you do (they might have a faster general net connection, but the effective speed changes by the minute due to server load, net congestion etc...)
3) Your connection to the google servers is faster than your connection to the destination server. This is likely true right now, will it be with massively more load - IDK.
4) Your computer can decompress content and run the google background process faster than it can recieve textual information over a pretty fast line. This might be true, it depends on your PC, and it's load.
The only thing I haven't talked about is whether google is going to compress images. Personally I think it'd be kind of stupid becasue:
1) they'd have to do it lossy, and so now pics look like crap.
2) broadband is rather fast for most web pics now adays. Broadband is just tending to get faster. It doesn't really have the limitations dial-up does that make this attractive in any way.
There is no good reason to sign up for this. Unless you like feeding more info about yourself to a big company, or can't manage to get effective caching through cheap or OSS software on your PC.
Re:Exactly. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Squeezable Software (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless you use MSIE, whose handling of the cache is terrible. If you have an URL www.example.com/style.css MSIE will cache it. However, if the URL is something like foo.example.com/style.css, it will not cache it, thus actually increasing the bandwidth. The same happens for .js, .html, .png, .jpg, .pdf and any other file extension.
To prevent this, the webmaster will find out only after quite a lot of web search efforts how to tweak the headers that Apache sends such that MSIE actually caches the data.
correct (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, they might use info about popular pages and browsing habits to improve search results (like I'm sure they are doing now with the Search History feature).
Andrew
PS: As soon as I saw this on GoogleBlog I realized the 'privacy' freaks were going to flip. If you don't like it, don't use it.
why no talking about adsense (Score:5, Interesting)
The other problem with talking about AdSense performance is that your success or failure a) can't be proven and b) could influence other's decisions to or not to market using Adsense. How well or not someone else's site is doing with AdSense has exactly zero to do with how well it will do on your site but people think it does anyway.
If Google took away the gag you'd have thousands of people bitching about how little their site is making and it would make Google look bad even though it has nothing to do with them. Sorry but your crappy little Geocities site isn't going to generate enough traffic to allow you to quit your day job. You'd also have people going on and on about how much they're making which would cause people to have unrealistic expectations.
Google wants entire control of the PR side of AdSense which is reasonable. It's how they pay the bills and make investors happy.
I'm not going to install this thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:do no evil! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Exactly. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Exactly. (Score:1, Interesting)
Because someone else already did. This is exactly what the google toolbar is designed to do (or the alexa or yahoo). Except the tool bar doesn't require them having asmuch bandwidth as the rest of the interweb combined.
Lets Me Get Around Stupid DRM Restrictions (Score:2, Interesting)
I just installed the web accelerator and had no trouble accessing the movielink site. Awesome!
Of course, they'll probably set up their own servers here in Japan at some point, but until then, I can surf with impunity.
I really wish I had had this when Napster offered that free iRiver H10. I couldn't sign up because of my location. I was mighty mighty upset that I couldn't get a free mp3 player.
Re:Smart. Scary. (Score:1, Interesting)
Now, when the founders leave the company to a business guy, he will start trying to squeeze for more money. When the brilliant shine fades and people don't throw money at Google, they might have to find new revenue streams. Eventually I expect that they will likely become at least semi-evil.
But for the moment, I think they are geeks with a blank check. They want to make the web a better place, providing better services and more convenience. They haven't started to plan all the evil things they can do, because they still have so many good things to do and plenty of money to do it.
Just my guess as a total outsider.
Censorship (Score:1, Interesting)
It Hosed my Firefox 1.0.3 install (Score:4, Interesting)
Firefox wouldn't launch after install. After rebooting I see this http://img115.echo.cx/img115/6282/firefoxhosed5wg
Not exactly what I expect from Google. Although I'm sure its working fine for others I have a plain jane install that gives me no grief. It did work on IE btw, but it totally screwed up Firefox. Uninstalling did NOT fix the problem.
Re:Exactly. (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, it's not always "now" that these problems occur. One reason that one maintains strict ethical breaks between various organizations is not to protect them when they're strong, but on the assumption that one is not always strong every day.
I heard a few years back that Reader's Digest was not doing economically well and that their biggest asset turned out to be a repository of the reading habits of a huge part of the US population. Even if they were not inclined to sell out, they were still candidate for takeover by another company buying them just for this data and not for their editorial work or revenue stream. I didn't end up following the news, so I don't know how it turned out, or even that this account I'd heard was correct. (Maybe someone else knows better can offer more info here.) But even if you take it only as a hypothetical, it seems pretty plausible that such things could happen.
Big companies have sometimes fallen. And one would like to believe we haven't entered a political climate where that will never happen again, even if one doesn't have a deathwish for any particular big company. So what if Google gets all this stuff and then gets either nervous or outright cheap... If their size and economic power is what protects us now, what protects us then?
Re:correct (Score:4, Interesting)
This may also help them determine which links are also useful. Remember that blog software company that was caught hosting spam pages (it was on
Andrew
Re:Smart. Scary. (Score:3, Interesting)
Google's *founders* said that, and you or I may trust them, because they're geeks and they're doing cool stuff. But did google shareholders say that too?
Whatever information Google now has that it is choosing not to use or is using in a benign manner *will* eventually be used to detriment of Google users' privacy if the shareholders decide it's gonna raise their "value".
Re:Sure I won't, but I am still annoyed I can't! (Score:1, Interesting)
Is there a valid reason why google doesn't support Opera?
Just curious. I love Opera, but absolutely hate the fact that Gmail/GoogleMaps (Satellite images in particular)- whatever else - does not want to work with Opera.
I understand that Opera is in the minority, but how are they so non-WC3 compliant that things suck to Google in particular?
slashdot effect (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No Linux support either (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.iosart.com/firefox/xpcom/ [iosart.com]
However, I wouldn't be suprised if Google was hacking into the winsock or something and not just doing normal plug-in stuff.
Whoa, welcome to 1998 -- Slashdot automatically makes links!
OT: Posting in order to get it recorded: May 16 (Score:1, Interesting)
Call me crazy. Just had a premonition, and am posting it here to get it recorded prior to the event.
As follows:
In Jerusalem
Large Kill
Black Gas
May 16
That's all there is. Crazy. But wanted it out there in a place that is public, tracked, timestamped, etc.