San Francisco — Hardly few would deny that faster is better when it comes to the Web, and Google’s latest battle cry for the Internet: “Let us make the Web faster.” Google touts to get Web publishers hooked on speed. In a campaign launched late Tuesday afternoon, Google has designed a Web site for developers that is focused exclusively on making Web applications, sites and browsers faster.
Webmasters looking for ways to speed up page loading times will have a host of tips and tricks to peruse as Google unveiled a new Website aimed at promoting the importance of speed on the Web, said Richard Rabbat, a product manager at Google.
“We are excited to discuss what we have learned about Web performance with the Internet community, said Urs Hoelzle, Google senior vice president of operations, and Bill Coughran, senior vice president of engineering, in a blog post. “However, to optimize the speed of Web applications and make browsing the Web as fast as turning the pages of a magazine, we need to work together as a community to tackle some larger challenges that keep the Web slow and prevent it from delivering its full potential.”
In order to promote the awareness, and help make the Web faster by assembling a community of developers interested in online speed and performance, Google is offering a Web site, code.google.com/speed, for Web developers that offers tutorials, tips, and performance tools.
The site includes a variety of tutorials and tech discussions aimed to help developers optimize their code, with articles including “How gzip compression works” and “Optimizing JavaScript code“. There is also a selection of Tools from both Google and many third parties.
The site will allow developers to submit ideas, suggestions and questions via a discussion forum and by using Google’s Moderator tool, said Google product manager Rabbat in an interview.
Google made the announcement late Tuesday at O’Reilly Media’s Velocity conference in San Jose, California, an event focused on Web performance.
Google’s faster Web campaign is “definitely worth it,” said analyst Michael Cote of RedMonk. “It is a good foil to folks like Microsoft and Adobe who are going after the same set of people with their RIA (rich Internet applications) and HTML/AJAX platforms.”
“Google has the luxury with their crazy advertising revenue to subsidize non-revenue-producing efforts like this well, which ultimately helps drive developers toward ‘The Google Stack,'” Cote said.
In a video posted below, a number top Google engineers and evangelists outline Google’s goal: “I think speed really does matter,” said Google Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra in a video accompanying the campaign rollout. “And I think users are able to discern even very small differences in latency and speed.”
The effort is to make surfing the web as instantaneous as “flipping through the pages of a glossy magazine”. It is a lofty goal to be sure, but given the accomplishments we have seen in the last 15 years, it certainly seems attainable, Google officials said.
“Many protocols that power the Internet and the Web were developed when broadband and rich interactive Web apps were in their infancy. Networks have become much faster in the past 20 years, and by collaborating to update protocols such as HTML and TCP/IP, we can create a better Web experience for everyone,” added Google officials.