Google Web Accelerator

[IronWolf]

So... Anyone sold their soul to Google yet and started using their web accelerator?

http://webaccelerator.google.com/

 

[silvermane]

It seems to offer little more than a browser cache can do already. I especially didn't like the "prefetching certain pages" part. Maybe they ARE evil and can read my mind?

Note that it is designed for broadband, as dial-up offers little room for improvement anyway.

 

[IronWolf]

More akin to a proxy server. The compression can be sort of cool as long as your PC isn't processor starved. I guess I like the idea of pre-fetching.... Hhhmmm to sell the soul to Google or not...

 

[trancejeremy]

I am still stuck on dial-up but I have some sort of web acceleration from my ISP (People PC). It really works well. Some pages that took ages to load now are almost instant.

As near as I can tell, it automatically compresses graphics in the webpages. So you end up with a blurrier but quicker loading page. Worth the tradeoff for me, but I'm not sure there would be much point for broadband (so maybe this works differently)

 

[silvermane]

You can switch off graphics in pages altogether... or use links

 

[Mercule]

Note that it is designed for broadband, as dial-up offers little room for improvement anyway.

Why would one need an accelerator for broadband? I've got DSL, and most clicks get me near-instant satisfaction, anyway. About the only time it's an issue is when I do streaming media of some sort, which really wouldn't be helped by any sort of caching.

 

[devilish]

Why would one need an accelerator for broadband? I've got DSL, and most clicks get me near-instant satisfaction, anyway. About the only time it's an issue is when I do streaming media of some sort, which really wouldn't be helped by any sort of caching.

Also, the GWA specifically says it doesn't support media outside of html/images etc.

 

[Psionicist]

Be careful with this program. The program clicks every link on a webpage to download them in the background, to make it appear the internet is faster. Unfortunately it also klicks links such as "[Delete my review]" etc.. Read more here:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/06/1717203&tid=217&tid=95&tid=158&tid=1
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/07/1932224&tid=217&tid=172&tid=95

 

[gregweller]

You also might have to turn off the program for certain sites (which fortunately is easy enough to do). For instance, the on-line catalog for the library I work for will not work with the program. TopSpeed from AOL also breaks it. When a patron is logged in to their account, caching interfers with the authentication.

 

[silvermane]

You also don't want the program if you have a monthly download limit.

In short, why bother?