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May 04, 2005

Google Web Accelerator

wa_google_logo.gif

This is really freaking cool:

webaccelerator.google.com

Google caches the web already, and they've got amazingly good net connections with amazingly fast web servers. Now you too can harness the POWER OF GOOGLE! By installing this browser plug-in you can access pages through Google's cache instead of from the server the site your browsing is served from.

"But what about pages that update frequently?" you ask. Ahhah - Google's got a solution! It caches the specific parts of the page that don't change, but if part of the page has changed, you'll get the updated version of that piece from the original server.

Even more amazing - it creates it's own index of frequently viewed pages on popular websites. When you visit a popular website, it will start caching the most popular pages on that website onto your computer in the background. That way, in the likely event that you visit some of the most popular pages of the website, you're viewing it from your own hard drive - it doesn't get any faster than that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so why in the HECK is Google doing this for FREE? Well, it's so they can monitor browsing habits and continue to enhance their ever-perfect search indexes and sell advertising.

Who cares? Live a little. Let Google see your browsing habits and browse the net at Warp-google.

Works with MSIE 5.5+ and Firefox 1.0+. Mac users, you're SOL.

Posted by SparklesMpls at May 4, 2005 07:40 PM

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Comments

Comments

warp-google hehe

Posted by: higher powered | May 4, 2005 08:22 PM

those anti-apple people! ;)

Posted by: myke | May 4, 2005 10:08 PM

er...is this feature anywhere near my 'power' button?

Posted by: Michael Guy | May 4, 2005 10:32 PM

This is a great blog. Do you mind if I link it to mine? Let me know. Peace - JJ

Posted by: JJ | May 5, 2005 03:32 PM

Of course, by all means, JJ - I don't think you need permission :-)

Posted by: SparklesMpls | May 5, 2005 04:23 PM

Yeah, I'm still obsessed with the satellite imaging feature.

Posted by: Ryan | May 5, 2005 07:05 PM

Um, isn't this at the expense of hosts?

Posted by: Mads | May 6, 2005 04:15 PM

Mads - actually, no, this actually works out cheaper for webhosts because surfers will be accessing Google's cached version of the site (unless the website has been updated). That way they never even hit the website's host, and thus, less bandwidth is eaten up. This is all at the expense of Google.

Posted by: SparklesMpls | May 6, 2005 05:10 PM

Actually, there is quite a security/privacy risk with this. The pages are cached on their server, which includes webmail and other personal information. I had it installed, however, it's not worth my privacy for a millisecond of acceleration on my broadband connection. Here's a good article regarding this: http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2858

Posted by: DiscoB | May 6, 2005 06:35 PM

You sound like a marketing campaign for Google :-P

Posted by: Rich | May 7, 2005 05:06 AM

What does SOL mean?

Posted by: Jamie Watkins | May 7, 2005 06:51 AM

Jamie - SOL = Shit Outta Luck Actually, All - I uninstalled this program last night. It was causing too many login errors with site I regularly log in to. It also didn't appear to always refresh content that was new - I was seeing the old cached version. And it also sorta creeped me out that they'd be mining my surfing behavoirs.

Posted by: SparklesMpls | May 7, 2005 12:55 PM

Hi, i'm from Brazil and i love anna chlumsky. i'm happy you'd seen her. congratulations. i wish i were you... your blog is wonderful.... nice hugs helton. e-mail me!!

Posted by: Helton Santos | May 12, 2005 11:25 PM

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