anyone tried the google web accelerator?

[nudone]

that's just it really - has anyone tried the google web accelerator?

http://webaccelerator.google.com/

i've seen a service that you have to pay for here in the UK which is mean to be okay and works by sending you compressed versions of the the pages you are browsing.

i'm assuming the google accelerator does a similar thing.

[nudone]

i've uninstalled it. just seemed to make everything slower - must be the pages i visit - or maybe it's just rubbish.

[Deozaan]

From my understanding, web accelerators just cache pages. So if you're visiting pages you haven't seen before, or refreshing old pages, you're pretty much wasting your time.

[nudone]

wish i could remember, but the one you pay for (in the UK) does actually deliver compressed pages to you - you can actually configure how much you want the jpg's compressed that are downloaded in the page. there might be other compression settings but i can't remember now.

the main benefit of the service/tool was for dial-up users (obviously) but they did try to push it as a worthwhile service for broadband users also - which seemed less of a good idea.

just thought the google thing might be the same but it appears not (maybe).

[f0dder]

Dunno how the google thing works, but they probably cache content... If you have ridiculous high-speed internet and the site has been cached by google already, then it might improve things (considering that not all sites are fast, and google has ridiculous bandwidth and storage). It might also help against the slashdot effect.

But hm, not really interesting to me, as things are now anyway

[justice]

Seeing as the program has been updated a few times I decided to give it another try and first impressions are very good. Prefetched pages load instantly and there's a very noticable difference between prefetched pages and regular ones.

I'm using it on Firefox btw, and so far I'd say it's a keeper. Note that i'm also using FasterFox with "optimized" settings, which might influence the speed comparisons. Anyone else tried this lately?

[f0dder]

Oh, a thing nobody has mentioned yet - this makes it even easier for google to track your surfing habits... perhaps somethign to keep in mind for the paranoid?

[justice]

And when was the last time you got personally targeted using google's info on your surfing habits? all their applications of the data are anonymous (they use the same algorithms to generate ads for every visitor, nothing special just for you). All don't require you to login to your google account to download / user GWA. I've never got any spam for products because I've been browsing specific webpages for example because of Google's tracking of surfing habits. Regardless the issue is not specific to GWA is it? the only thing that's GWA specific is this line: It is possible that a URL or other page information sent to Google may itself contain personal information. You get a prompt before the first time you start it about this and the option not to use it, or exclude sites altogether.

See http://webaccelerator.google.com/privacy.html for more info:

October 14, 2005

The Google Privacy Policy describes how we treat personal information when you use Google's products and services, including information provided when you use Google Web Accelerator. In addition, the following describes our privacy practices that are specific to Google Web Accelerator.

Information we collect

    * You do not need to provide any personal information in order to download and use Google Web Accelerator.
    * When you use Google Web Accelerator, Google servers automatically receive and log your web requests. Web requests and data sent in encrypted form using an HTTPS connection will not go through Google. It is possible that a URL or other page information sent to Google may itself contain personal information.  For information about how some web sites embed personal information in web requests, click here.
    * Google temporarily caches cookies from third party sites that are used in your web requests. For more information, please see the Help Center.
    * To accelerate delivery of content, Google Web Accelerator retrieves and caches web pages before you request them. Therefore, your Google Web Accelerator cache may include copies of web pages you have not visited. You can clear the cache following instructions in the Help Center.

Uses

    * We process your requests in order to operate the Google Web Accelerator. In addition, we may use log information about Google Web Accelerator usage to improve the quality of Google Web Accelerator and other Google services.

Your choices

    * You can disable Google Web Accelerator at any time by following steps explained in the Help Center.

More information

Google adheres to the US Safe Harbor privacy principles.  For more information about the Safe Harbor framework or our registration, see the Department of Commerce's web site.

Further information about Google Web Accelerator is available here. 

For more information about our privacy practices, go to the full privacy policy.  For questions concerning the product or your account, please check out the Google Help page.

[icekin]

I found these alternatives, don't know how effective they are:

($) Tweakmaster - http://www.tweakmaster.com/

(FREE) Fastcache - http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/fc.htm

Fastcache only caches DNS requests, I think. No way to compress pages that have not yet been loaded.

(FREE) Treewalk DNS - http://ntcanuck.com/

Free for personal use, but again, only caches DNS I think.

I also use OpenDNS (http://www.opendns.com), which is quite fast and does not require you to install anything, but its not as fast as Treewalk, Fastcache or Google Web Accelerator because th DNS requests still have to be fetched and are not locally cached. But, don't web browsers normally cache DNS requests anyway?

[f0dder]

Ugh, OpenDNS... not my cup of tea. But I'll leave it at that, use forum search in case you wonder.

Yeah, DNS requests are cached at various levels in your system, including browsers... but since TreeWalk does have an effect when my ADSL line is maxxed out, I guess that browsers perhaps don't tend to keep DNS entries for their max lifetime, and most likely don't persist the DNS cache when you close the browser (wouldn't make sense either, imho). Dunno about Windows' own DNS cache, but treewalk does seem a bit more efficient.

I wouldn't mind a DNS cache for Windows that isn't bind-based, btw...

[justice]

I've removed GWA again unfortnately as I suspect it prefetched links in my wordpress admin section causing at least one page to be deleted by itself. This was after I set GWA to be disabled for this site. I also noticed some AJAX functionality stopped working occasionally. That's not acceptable. I can't rule out wordpress 2.4-bleeding edge however. I'll send this feedback to the GWA team because it did work well.

Hi WebAccelerator Labs,
I just wanted to sent you the reason why I stopped using Google Web Accelerator. There seems to be issues with the combination of GWA and Wordpress administrative pages. I maintain a Wordpress enabled site and as I didn’t want anything unexpected to happen I disabled GWA for this site. However I found that when removing pages (this happens with a regular link called “delete” at the end of a row in a table of pages) occasionally (couldn’t reproduce it) the AJAX call would fail. If I then refreshed the page two pages would be gone. I didn’t get any further ajax call fails when GWA was uninstalled. This was on wordprss 2.4-bleeding edge so this can also be because of a wordpress bug? Are you aware of such issues and if I choose “stop GWA” from the system tray will this have the exact same effect as not having it installed? Then I might be able to use it on sites except this one.

Best Regards,
S.

After this, I looked at the help pages and they say any Get request with parameters will not be prefetched which means that it shouldn't delete any pages. I'm not sure how ajax calls are handled however. So this is more of a worry than a definate bug.

[f0dder]

Hm, AJAX stuff... I wonder if those use the standard proxy settings, or a direct connection?