No Thanks Google Web Accelerator
May 5, 2005 at 07:25 PM
I don't like it.
I don't like it at all.
Google's latest "Beta" software is the Google Web Accelerator.
It works by essentially serving as a proxy for many of your web requests. That means that is stores the pages you wish to view, and to view them, you actually get the Google stored copy of the page.
From a content provider standpoint, having Google mediate all content to your visitors is an unpleasant thought.
From a consumer standpoint, having Google mediate all my content is an unpleasant thought.
Aside from the obvious problems of not having updated content until Google gets around to caching the new content, a future where the Internet = Google makes me uneasy. A future where Google sits between every user and the Internet sounds like more power than I want Google (or anyone) to have.
I've stopped rooting for a Google browser.
Plus it only works for Broadband. Doesn't work for dialup. Doesn't increase the speed of file downloads (media files, zip files, mp3s, etc). Aren't we broadband folks pretty darn happy already with how fast vanilla web pages come down? Was this really an unmet need in the marketplace? Aren't there a few other products in beta that Google could be finishing up?
It's weird because it is Google. Microsoft tried to do things with web browsing that upset a lot of people, and then Google tries to do something similar and the outrage is tempered a bit.
Google isn't a bad company generally, but how can they possibly think that this is what people want?
Posted by: GBGames | May 06, 2005 at 08:18 AM
Good question! Looks like that pledge against doing evil might be losing it's footing.
Posted by: Carson McComas | May 06, 2005 at 08:31 AM