Google Web Accelerator grinds to a halt

Davey Winder
Tuesday, 14 October 2008 16:29

Business IT - Networking

Anyone remember the Google Web Accelerator tool? You know, the one that used the power of Google's global computer network to make web pages load faster? It would appear to have slowed down so much that it has stopped working completely...

Most Google applications seem never to escape from the beta status that is automatically bestowed upon them by the search giant. Indeed, iTWire has reported how nearly half of all Google products are still in beta.

Not so the Google Web Accelerator. Unfortunately it never even made it as far as being labelled a beta, and has now died before it could be released from the Google Labs.

Bizarrely designed for broadband users, the Google Web Accelerator was meant to make the browsing experience a speedier one by employing tactics such as caching copies of the most frequently looked at pages.

It would then only download updates to the page if anything had changed since your last visit. Other speed strategies included prefetching some pages onto your computer in advance and 'managing your Internet connection' to reduce delays.

It promised to be easy to use; just download and install it and "from then on many web pages will automatically load faster than before."

Unfortunately, soon after Google launched the thing way back in 2005, it hit one of those maximum demand walls and downloads were briefly stopped. It seems that the Google global computer network was not powerful enough to handle the load after all.

Now it has halted altogether, with a simple message on the Google Web Accelerator page stating that "We're sorry, but Google Web Accelerator is no longer available for download."

Oh well, no great loss. In this broadband age who really needs the web experience speeded up like this? And the thing was no use to dial-up users from the get go as it was optimised for broadband.

Throw in that it refused to work properly with Firefox 3 and even Google owned YouTube was not compatible, and I can only conclude it will not be missed.