I saw there wan an old thread about this, mostly thinking google is out to control the world. It was too old to bttt.

So far, this software seems to work nicely. I'm assuming it caches a bunch of stuff on whatever page you're on, making page load times increase. What do you people think?

http://webaccelerator.google.com/

3/24/2006 8:50:33 AM

i don't really see the need

3/24/2006 8:54:57 AM

well, i heard some minor cons bout it, including slowing some users down due to realtime AV protection trying to scan everything that is cached.

[Edited on March 24, 2006 at 9:08 AM. Reason : asd]

3/24/2006 8:59:19 AM

Quote :

"I'm assuming it caches a bunch of stuff on whatever page you're on"

http://webaccelerator.google.com/support.html#basics2

Quote :

"Google Web Accelerator uses various strategies to make your web pages load faster, including: * Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic. * Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible. * Downloading only the updates if a web page has changed slightly since you last viewed it. * Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance. * Managing your Internet connection to reduce delays. * Compressing data before sending it to your computer. "

3/24/2006 9:04:03 AM

question is does it work well? this thing came out in the middle of 05 and i havent heard that much about it. why isn't everyone using it?

3/24/2006 9:58:29 AM

back when it did come out, they were caching secure pages like people's personal forum pages that everyone shouldn't have access to, etc.

they stopped it then and just now re-released it

3/24/2006 10:01:16 AM

it also pisses off site owners because it can potentially skew their page views/hits. i.e. if Google is caching and serving up a page to GWA users, then the original site owner doesn't know these people have seen his site.

also, it can do prefetching (on by default) of pages, including top hits of Google searches, by downloading pages that you haven't clicked on yet in the background. Therefore, it's possible that your browser cache could end up with pages and content that you never clicked on. This could be a problem if, for example, a certain search term had been google-bombed with a porn page (i.e. you do a benign search for legitimate terms, and the first result ends up being an unrelated porn page that was google-bombed). When you search for that term, you can clearly tell that the top result is irrelevant, so you never click on it. But GWA could go ahead and download it to your computer anyway, making it appear as though you visited that page.

finally, even if it isn't explicitly stated anywhere (which at least at one point, I believe it was), GWA is tied to your Google Account. When you're signed into your Google Account you know that all yoru search terms are stored and indexed by Google in your "Search History". This is a convenience to you, but it also gives Google lots of data that could potentially used against you, but their purposes are to better serve you targeted advertising. Now if you use GWA, Google will be aware of all of your internet activity, not only your searches, and it will be tied to your Google Account.

We all know that Google and all the search companies have been asked recently for 'anonymous' search data, and some lawyers have attempted to gain access to personal data from Google. It's only a matter of time before a lawyer goes after google to get ahold of all of someones search data tied to their google account, and if you use GWA, that gives even more incentive for people to get ahold of it. I think it's going to come down to a Supreme Court decision, hopefully sooner than later, as to how many rights Google and other search companies have to this data, but in the meantime, it appears to be fair game to try to get at.

3/24/2006 10:23:42 AM

and first i was like, "yeah whatever" I don't have anything to hide.

but after reading that (the linking between the google account and the everywhere i go on the internet thing) it IS a little scary. not that i have anything to hide, but it is a little crazy that all of my browsing history could potentially be linked with my gmail account if i used GWA.

so is the consensus that the technology is good and useful, but the privacy risks are real friggin scary?

3/24/2006 3:16:21 PM

lol the consensus is whatever you want it to be.

3/24/2006 3:26:19 PM

if you stay logged in to your google account, it logs all of your browsing history anyways. regardless of whether you have GWA installed. see http://www.google.com/searchhistory

personally, i'm not worried about saving .2 seconds to get my google results so i don't use it. also the fact that it has had a lot of performance problems not to mention a waste of resources (not that i can't spare 10mb or whatever it is, just why clutter up the pc with something that i don't really care about)

[Edited on March 24, 2006 at 3:39 PM. Reason : me]

3/24/2006 3:36:55 PM

Quote :

"Do not collect any history until I choose to resume."

mine's been paused

3/24/2006 3:45:44 PM

Quote :

"if you stay logged in to your google account, it logs all of your browsing history anyways. regardless of whether you have GWA installed. see http://www.google.com/searchhistory "

unless i'm missing something (which is entirely possible, i'm not being sarcastic) the Search History is just that - it's a history of your search habits, including which results you click on from your searches: not your browsing habits.

But GWA is different - it has the capability to index all your internet traffic (minus HTTPS pages and other special cases included in the TOA), including pages you go directly to (without using google), your bloglines clicks, your email (if you don't use HTTPS email like gmail), all your bookmarked porn, yada yada yada.

i know my search history at http://www.google.com/searchhistory/ is only showing my google search history, not all my browsing data too.

3/24/2006 8:12:51 PM

my search history is blank...even though i have a personalized google page with my gmail up.
whats up with that?

3/24/2006 10:37:07 PM

^^ oops, durr. for some reason i thought he was talking about search history. even though it clearly says browsing history. i goofed.

3/24/2006 11:18:38 PM