An Ever Impatient Google
from the how-fast-do-we-need-to-surf dept
Apparently the folks at Google felt that their broadband connections were just a bit too slow. Accelerator technologies are nothing new. They've been around for years, though, usually focused on the dialup market, which has resulted in some lawsuits for false advertising when companies have claimed that accelerators create broadband speeds on a dialup connection. However, Google, apparently, feels that even broadband connections should be accelerated, and has launched an accelerator offering, which they claim works on broadband connections as well. It appears to work in a similar manner to most accelerators. Lots of caching and compression, basically, along with some "pre-fetching" of linked pages. It seems like there are two reactions to this technology. First, is surfing broadband really that slow? It's hard to see this being all that beneficial to most users (Google's "time saved" click notwithstanding). The second reaction is the same reaction that seems to come out with just about any new offering out of Google: privacy concerns. That's an awful lot of data that Google now gets access to. Combined with Google's desktop search and autolink feature, expect plenty of hand-wringing about what Google might do with all that info -- though, again, no one is forcing people to use these technologies. In the meantime, cheap dialup provider, United Online probably chose a bad day to announce their own improved accelerator, as it's likely to get buried in the coverage of Google's offering.
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Big problem with accelerator - not privacy
So, I've been using an ad blocker for a while http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html). It basically gives me a list of ad servers, and then directs my computer to a null directory when anything from those ad servers is requested. This has worked very well for the last year or so - until I installed the Google Web Accelerator. After installing, I actually thought that my web experience was slower, which didn't make any sense - until I noticed an annoying Flash ad, on a website I frequent. Apparently it acts as a proxy, which I think messes with my list of ad servers. I'm a bit bummed out - I really liked the idea - but seeing as it's actually slowing the web for me, I can't use it any more. If they fix this, I'll check it out again.
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Google taking power from Microsoft
A different angle on this move by Google - Google taking power from Microsoft. Dudu
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No Subject Given
I too, have, overall found that the Google tool does not speed things up since "The return of the ads" takes away any speed benefit that may have been garnered.
However, one very interesting side effect. Using the Google Web Accelerator with the MS Firewall Clinet allows me to bypass Websense and acceess blocked sites from inside the corporate firewall.
Either tool by itself does not do this, but together, everything is reachable.
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Re: Big problem with accelerator - not privacy
Webwasher "classic" from webwasher.com
is freeware from the nice folks at siemans
computers.
Sometimes I have to switch it off and forget to
turn it back on. Then when the blinking text, animated gif files and other associated rubbish fires up I remember to turn it back on. Also works on web bugs, some naughty javascripts and other assorted web page related ills.
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