14 DAY TRIAL // Everyone knows faster Internet is better, but Google is actually doing something about it. The company wants to make the web faster with a variety of different measures detailed on the newly launched site code.google.com/speed, aimed at web developers and full of tips, tutorials and tools, all focused on speed.
“We are excited to discuss what we've learned about web performance with the Internet community. However, to optimize the speed of web applications and make browsing the web as fast as turning the pages of a magazine, we need to work together as a community, to tackle some larger challenges that keep the web slow and prevent it from delivering its full potential,” the official Google blog reads.
Google identified a number of ways to improve the current conditions, for example updating the standards that power the web like HTML and TCP/IP, and the company promotes the HTML 5 proposed standard, which brings some technologies for optimizing speed. Another big focus, the Google engineers believe, should be on further improving JavaScript, on which many resource-hungry web apps rely, performance that has already seen a 100x increase in the past years.
Another recommendation is the use of tools for optimizing websites like Yahoo!'s YSlow and Google's own, recently launched, Page Speed, both of which can identify problems that are slowing down the pages. The last one, increasing broadband coverage, is a no-brainer, and the company believes further steps should be taken to ensure that more people have access to a broadband connection.
The company has been doing its part, of course, keeping the design of its search page and many other products as minimalistic as possible, optimizing its code and even releasing its own browser Chrome, which has a big focus on speed. The new site providing tools and information to web developers is another step it is taking in ensuring that the web of tomorrow will be significantly faster than today.