Another interesting concept by Google. Click Here >> Google Web Accelerator Beta

Yes, very interesting. Note that Google will never rent or sell a user's personal information to third parties without a user's explicit permission. But that does not prevent them from using the information internally for diabolical purposes.

i just installed this, its kinda neat however i ran into serveral sites, 2 i use often: this users forum, and the email web app. both of which dont work with google accelerator, i found out that you have to turn it off ("dont accelerate this page") in order to get into my email and this forum page.

That's interesting. I am using it and I didn't have to disable it to see the forums or my email.

I am using IE 6......

i forgot to mention that im using IE 6 and Firefox, it happend in both browsers.

I downloaded and will try it as an interesting tool. However, I'm wondering if anyone knows what is going on or what improvement might be expected (I saw no description, just download tool on page)?

I'm guessing they're just increasing cache size, using the "if you went there before you might want to return" concept and then maybe also trying to guess where you might want to go next (new site) and pre-downloading that page in the background. I hope I'm wrong here, because that would encompass a lot of assumptions, download a lot of unneeded pages and at best be sporadically valuable.

Anybody know what the the basic principle is?
Ed

From their explanation:

Google Web Accelerator uses various strategies to make your web pages load faster, including:

* Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic.
* Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible.
* Downloading only the updates if a web page has changed slightly since you last viewed it.
* Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance.
* Managing your Internet connection to reduce delays.
* Compressing data before sending it to your computer.

I also see where it is only for broadband users and that dialup might even be slowed by this tool (since it does pre-fetch of pages like the top SERP).

Ed

It may seem to be a 'tool' but to benefit who?.. no other than Google business. If you break it down is nothing but the same spyware principle but done by a major company.

I may sound a bit blunt, but I am hoping that users here are well aware, or at least to a degree that wont make them compromise their most valuable data to an always work in progress such as Google (or windows for instance).

The priciple in most spyware is to Record your Surfing Habits and sent them to a central database to turn it into some form of profit for them.

Privacy is no longer yours. I deal with some people who store critical information in their computers and laptops, and believe I am proud to see them guard it like every record is a LIFE.. and yes.... every record is someone's LIFE.

This may be old news by now that I am posting this, but I see nothing but a great target for virus developers, and If I am not too late to say it, I would dare to predict a bad virus that will work around the Google technology and their Search technology.

Same goes for their Google Desktop Search, it was so easy to get into other people's chats, email, password protected profiles.... and indexed data.

Toolbars, BOH's (browser helpers), and similar, do nothing but to add another door to malicious coders to your systems.

My 2 cents.

Scoot

Thanks for pointing out this program, I had heard it mentioned in passing but didn't quite understand the whole purpose. Probably cause I wasn't paying attention, but thanks for the info. I am off to download it and then I will be back to reply with my thoughts too!

Thanks again,
Jessa

ooh are googles servers faster than everyones ISPs? I dont' think so. ISP's caching makes sense. this does not. just a security risk if you ask me.

I mirror the security concerns already mentioned, but I don't believe strongly that Google is actually saving/seeing any information that they don't have already.

I think that the web accelerator essentially uses the version of the site/image/text that Google has in it's cache to display IF that is faster than directly from the server. If it is a page that Google has never spidered at all or cannot or will not index due to password protected files or robot exclusions, then Google can't make the page go any faster. So, for example the pages in the admin panel won't go any faster because of this program because Google cannot spider these pages (both password protected AND robot excluded).

But then, I think that and I could be wrong. You can manually set the web accelerator to ignore specific domains and not accelerate it. So for instance, I do this for all internal links and client sites that I work on, but when I am browsing these Forums or Yahoo! news or SEOChat or whatever, it can help. I've already saved a total of 24.5 minutes according to the counter in my browser.

AMEN !!!!!!!!

Maybe I am too geeky and deal with too many data overprotectors, but this is my opinion:

Just tried the Google accelerator...... useless tool.

It just happens to be another way for google to track down your surfing habits... shame.

Did you know about th Google cookie expiration date?... Google will track your surfing habits whether is via their main portal or ANY other so called "tools" until the year 2038. how old will you be then?. That is more or less the Windows lifetime. mmmmm....

tech data for google cookie:

Expires on January 17, 2038

PREF=ID=3048346b9569c378
TM=1117047399
LM=1117047399
S=PEbiA8IRSvyWnFhd

The ID number is your very own. Either write it on your forehead, or delete your Google cookie so that they have to give you a new one.
You may have some preferences set between this ID and the TM.

TM=1117047399 means 2005-05-25 18:56:39 GMT -- the time when you first got this cookie.

LM=1117047399 means 2005-05-25 18:56:39 GMT -- the last time you set some preferences.

believed, the S= is a checksum to insure data integrity.


Just my 2 cents.

check out: http://www.google-watch.org/toolbar.html