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Google Web Accelerator: Page 2 of 3

If you fit the profile and install Google Web Accelerator, you'll find it has a simple interface and unobtrusive design. The application loads a small icon in the upper right hand of your browser window that displays how much time you've saved. By clicking on the icon, you can turn off Google acceleration on specific Web sites (or fully disable the software). Other preferences are accessed through Google's Web-based interface.

Basic functions, such as Preferences, Performance Data, and Help, can be accessed by clicking on the icon in the Windows Taskbar. The Taskbar icon also lets you engage a quick disable function. While the features offered by the Taskbar and browser icons are a bit redundant -- it might have been better to lump all the functions into the Taskbar -- the interface is very straightforward and overall, the program is easy to figure out.

Over the course of three days of use, Web Accelerator claimed 10.6 minutes saved on my system, a fairly hefty chunk of time for a serious Web user. Of course, you should take this statistic with a grain of salt. With different levels of Internet traffic, your mileage will vary, so to test Google's optimistic reported stats I ran manual tests comparing Google accelerated page loads with unaccelerated page loads.

The results bore out some interesting phenomena, with some pages reporting significantly faster loads, some with nearly equal times, and even a couple with slower "accelerated" speeds. For example, CNN.com loaded in 4.55 seconds before Web Accelerator; the same page loaded in 1.12 after. iTunes.com only gained .07 seconds (from 2.38 to 2.31 seconds), while the Drudge Report actually took a little over 3 addition seconds to load.

Problems In Paradise?

From an end user perspective, Google Web Accelerator is a pretty transparent piece of software. However, some Web developers have expressed concerns about Google Web Accelerator's interaction with certain kinds of Javascript applications. While this may affect some users more than others, Web Accelerator is simple to disable for specific pages.