Web Accelerator By Google!

Joined : 29 Dec 2007 Posts : 15 Location : lagos

The Web Accelerator can speed up your surfing
experience by reducing the time it takes Web
pages to load on your browser.

Popular websites are retrieved by Google,
compressed, and then cached, or stored,
on its own servers, which are supposed to
dish out Web pages faster than the vast
wilderness of the Internet.

Compressing Web pages a third of their original
size speeds up the time it takes for it to show on
your browser.

So, does it work? Just barely.

A Google counter tells you how much time
you've saved using Web Accelerator. After
about an hour of random browsing, I had
saved about 5 seconds.

But you may get better results depending
on the websites you frequent.

But there are some things you should know
before you load up Web Accelerator for a test
drive.

Privacy advocates are worried that since
Web Accelerator forces you to go through
Google's servers to get to your Web page,
it basically knows (and probably records for
advertising reasons) your Web-surfing habits.

But even though your actions in cyberspace
are tracked, there's no way to find out who
you are unless Google goes through your
computer's IP address and getting your details
from the Internet service provider.

You can also choose to turn off Web Accelerator
for specific websites where you feel privacy is more
important than speed.

There is one potential security flaw though.

Google sometimes caches Web pages from
discussion groups or forums, which may be
protected by passwords.

For example, "A" logs into discussion forum
about music and Google caches the page while
he is logged on. Later on, "A's" name may appear
on the page as the user if "B" surfs to the site
as he is viewing Google's cached copy.

Google does not cache secured and encrypted
sites, such as those belonging to banks and
online retailers, so your username and passwords
are safe.

The Web Accelerator shows some potential
if it can deliver what it promises.

Go to http://webaccelerator.google.com if you
want to download the Google's Web Accelerator,
specifically designed for broadband users and
easy to use.

Learn more;
http://webaccelerator.google.com/support.html