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Julie Bort

Should Google lead a charge to make the Web faster?

Google suggests that Web protocols like TCP/IP and HTML are ready for an overhaul

By Google Subnet on Wed, 06/24/09 - 12:22pm.

Google Tuesday said it wants to build a faster Web, and is willing to go so far as to revise, or even replace, foundational protocols like TCP/IP and HTML. Google's official blog said that such protocols were created "when broadband and rich interactive web apps were in their infancy."

The blog further pointed to performance measurement tools such as Yahoo!'s YSlow and Google's recently launched Page Speed as ideas on the right track, but said these are not enough. "As a community, we need to invest further in developing a new generation of tools for performance measurement, diagnostics, and optimization that work at the click of a button."

A faster Internet would mean faster mobile phones, faster e-commerce and, say the Google engineers, would raise "the quality of life" around the world. (All those seconds you would gain by not waiting for a photo to download could be, say, donated to volunteer hours for a world health organization?)

Below is a video in which multiple engineers at Google argue that the Web needs to be faster. Hey, everyone wants a faster Web, no one would argue against that. Is Google the best one to lead this effort?

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I'd no sooner let Google

0

I'd no sooner let Google redesign the Web than I would let Microsoft do it. That's all we need, some giant corporation rebuilding the Internet on proprietary protocols that we have to pay through the nose for to use.

Vern, SwiftWater Telecom
http://www.swiftwatertel.com

Right, there is a reason for standards bodies

0

Have to agree ... if Google really wants to make the Internet faster there is a 30-year organization the company can go to, a little something called the IETF. So the chest pounding in public, complete with the video obviously intended for an audience other than the networking folks that could really make the Internet faster is odd. What does Google have up its sleeve?

This whole browser war thing

0

This whole browser war thing is stupid. The one application that no one pays for, and it's an issue.

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