Google Labs, a sandbox of sorts, for new Google projects is offering a beta version of the Google Web Accelerator. Unlike the numerous and often spurious offers for increasing the speed of dial-up connections, Google’s Web Accelerator works only with broadband connections.
The accelerator is a program that you download for free from Google to run on your desktop. Google describes the the various strategies that it uses to improve the responsiveness of your broadband connection:
1. Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic.
2. Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible.
3. Downloading only the updates if a web page has changed slightly since you last viewed it.
4. Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance.
5. Managing your Internet connection to reduce delays.
6. Compressing data before sending it to your computer.
It is important to note that Google is not increasing the speed of your connection. They are using the techniques above to bring the pages you request closer to you (even caching them on your computer). The accelerator will not improve your download speed for files (music, data, video, etc.).
Google Web Accelerator requires the Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP 3+ operating system, and a modern web browser.
My work and home connections are pretty zippy already, and I work on my corporate laptop exclusively, so I was hesitant to take it for a test drive for you. I am not sure how the product would play with my corporate network. Does anyone have any experience using GWA?
Tags: broadband, Connectivity, google, gwa, internet, New Concepts & Technologies, Productivity web accelerator** Download the Best Videos on the Web for your iPod - Free! **