Let's make the web faster
Frequently Asked Questions
- Why is Google working on making the web faster? Why is it important to make the web fast? What could happen if the internet became faster?
- The web is the most important platform of our times. Hundreds of millions of people use it daily to access information, to communicate and to view and share multimedia content. Improving the speed of the web will help not just Google but the entire web community because it will:
- Increase the number of internet users globally, thus making information more accessible
- Help developers produce better more responsive web apps, comparable in performance to desktop apps. This will make the web more engaging to current users, who will start using it more, for tasks that until now were only possible in desktop apps
- Help new applications and markets emerge
Overall we believe that speeding up the web will improve the quality of life for hundreds of millions of people.
- What has Google done so far to make the web faster?
- Google has been actively working on various efforts on improving the web's performance. We are active contributors to several open source projects that hold a lot of promise to speed up the web, including the effort around HTML5. In addition, by launching Google Chrome, Chromium and V8, we believe we have contributed in the recent spurt of innovation in the browser space and have helped shift the attention of browser vendors to improving JavaScript performance. We have also launched other open source projects such as Native Client and Shared Dictionary Compression over HTTP (SDCH) that help improve the performance of web applications. Finally, our engineering teams have worked hard to make our products as fast as possible to ensure a better user experience. Finally, we also launched code.google.com/speed a site with information for web developers interested to speed up their sites. This includes tips, tutorials and tools such as our own recently open sourced Page Speed.
- What are your plans for the future? Are you going to release any new products at code.google.com/speed?
- We want to make sure that we improve and expand the content of code.google.com/speed. At this moment, we have nothing to share regarding the release of additional products.
- How fast can the web be? What will you consider success in this effort?
- The web has become significantly faster these last 10 years; we believe though that there is still a lot of potential to make the web even faster. Browsing photos, viewing videos, downloading movies should happen instantaneously for internet users across the globe. In general web applications should become as responsive as desktop apps and speeding up the web can help developers achieve this. In the short term, we will consider this effort a success if we raise the awareness of this issue among the wider web community, including web developers, standards bodies and internet companies.
- Who do you want to reach with your effort to speed up the web?
- At this stage we would like to reach out primarily to web developers: code.google.com/speed has a lot of information that could help them speed up their websites. We would also like to connect with the broader web community, to explain why speeding up the web is an important goal for which we all need to work together.
- When do you expect your goal of a faster web to be achieved?
- Making the web faster requires the collaboration of multiple constituents, including web developers, standards bodies, internet companies and regulatory authorities. This is going to be a long process. However we are optimistic and we hope internet users will see real improvements in the responsiveness of web apps soon.
- What makes the web slow? If we all upgraded to a broadband connection would the web stop being slow?
- Bandwidth is only one factor that contributes to latency. There are several other factors such as:
- Websites that do not follow best practices in web development and are unnecessary slow
- Web servers are often not optimized for speed
- Several internet protocols were designed 10/15 years ago, when websites and web applications were different
- Browsers only recently started focusing on speed. Many Internet users are using slow browsers
We believe we all need to work together as a community to address all the factors that keep the internet slow.
- How can I contact you to include my performance tool / a performance tool I am using in your site?
- We want to make sure to include in code.google.com/speed all free tools that can help make the web faster. If you believe there is a tool that we need to link to from our site, definitely let us know by posting a message in our Google Group.
- Why did you list non Google tools on your site?
- Our goal for launching this site is to make the web faster. This is why we decided to include links from our site to tools that can help speed up the web, even if these were not built by Google.
- I want to contribute some tips and tutorials to your site. How can I do this?
- Our effort is still at an early stage, so we do not have a structured way to receive community contributions to our site. If there is a topic in which you have significant expertise and for which you want to contribute content to our site, let us know by posting a message at our Google Group.
- I disagree with some of the methods you recommend at your site. What can I do?
- If there is a topic discussed in some of our tutorials where you have identified a factual mistake, definitely post a message at our Google Group. Our team will review your suggestions and will make changes to the content on our site if necessary.
- When will the site / tools / materials be available in my country?
- Everything is currently globally available on code.google.com/speed in English. We do not have any plans for internationalization of documents, tools and multimedia material to discuss at this point.
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