14 DAY TRIAL // Google has been experimenting with a data compression feature for the mobile Chrome for a few months now. By using a proxy server, the search giant compresses and optimizes web content in the cloud before pushing it to the browser.
This can result in significant savings in bandwidth which, in turn, means faster loading pages. The fact that some of the processing is done in the cloud also means snappier pages on your phone or tablet.
The feature is now being made available to all mobile Chrome users in the latest stable update for Android, Chrome 28, which is now rolling out via the Play store.
Both bandwidth reduction and faster pages are even more felt in a mobile browser than in a desktop one, which is why Google decided to build the feature for the Android Chrome. But it may eventually be made available for the desktop Chrome as well.
When enabled, the data compression proxy redirects traffic through Google’s servers, which pull the page you want to view and then apply a number of optimizations.
For one, an SPDY connection is established between the browser and the proxy. SPDY, also created by the company, is faster than plain HTTP and is also encrypted.
Beyond the connection, images on the page you request are converted to WebP, Google's own format that offers a better compression/quality ratio than either JPG or PNG images. The proxy also rescales the images based on the resolution and pixel density of the device they're being displayed on.
All other resources, like HTML, CSS, JavaScript files are minified, i.e. the source files are optimized to be as small as possible, and compressed with gzip before being sent. Some sites already do this, some don't, but the proxy ensures that the entire web benefits.
Google is hardly the only one working on this or offering the feature. Opera Mini performs even more optimizations and processing server-side. Opera's new Off-Road mode is very, very similar to Google's data compression proxy, including the fact that it uses SPDY and WebP.