AlbertPacino
Forerunner
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Yesterday, Google released perhaps its most controversial product ever: The Google Web Accelerator. Its a simple product, one that promises to speed up your internet connection like many little applications have in the past. It doesn't seem like much.
Of course, peer a little deeper, and you might even be impressed. The ideas behind Web Accelerator are pretty nice, smart enough to be worthy of a Googler's 20% time. Google has essentially decided to make "an extra copy" of the entire World Wide Web (or at least the HTML and images of it) and let you run it off their servers, because Google's servers are always faster (Blogger and Orkut aside, of course).
Dig even deeper and the picture grows to reveal a whole nother world of possibilities. Google is really offering to replace the web, wanting everyone to use their copy instead of the public copy. While the World Wide Web is currently a decentralized network of nationwide servers, Google wants the whole web to run off its computers, in one of its anonymous, nondescript data centers.
Look just a bit deeper and the picture becomes a bit murky. If you run the web off Google's computers, then Google knows everything you do. It reads every page you read, every email you write and send, and sees every bit of pervertedness you look at. Google has complete control of your web, and the freedom to change it as it sees fit, if it ever decides to. More importantly, Google can keep a record of everything you do, information that could prove quite valuable.
Now, pull out your microscopes. That murkiness? It's not confusion, or paranoia. No, your internet just got a little darker, because someone has decided to crap on it.
See, Google isn't serving web pages faster, its serving other people's versions of the web page faster. What does that mean? Try using Web Accelerator on a forum site, one with lots of geeks who love Google and probably already have Web Accelerator installed. Why, if you're lucky, you'll be logged in as someone else, as the folks at SomethingAwful.com discovered. The posters in that forum discovered that most of the times they refreshed the page, they were logged in as a different person, seeing their friend's control panel for the forums.
They were even kind enough to provide screenshots.
This isn't the first time Google has stepped in it.
Controversy, that is. Thirteen months ago, when Gmail was "released" into beta, the concept of an ad system that read your email frightened folks. Last October, when Google Desktop Search hit, the call from IT departments was to stay away over security concerns. And just a few months ago, an Autolinking feature in Google's newest toolbar angered many prominent bloggers.
All of those were concerns. This is real.
Installing Accelerator will, at some point, let you into a private area you shouldn't be seeing. Maybe it'll be a control panel or options area for a logged in user. Maybe it'll be a **** site with password protection. Maybe it will be a private Microsoft message board where developers discuss trade secrets regarding the next version of Windows. It will happen, and when it does, I expect screenshots.
Oh, there are benefits to using the Accelerator. Web pages run more than twice as fast, no doubt about it. And there is a benefit to Google, a perfectly nice one at that. By seeing where you browse, Google knows which pages are useful and which are spam. After all, a fake link designed to curry favor with Google won't get any clicks, so Google knows to just go ahead and ignore it.
But are the benefits worth the costs? Web Accelerator is free, so the cost of using it is not readily apparent. For example, on any site that has a logon, you must tell Web Accelerator not to index them. In addition, anyone who runs a website with any user-specific data, you must add "pragma no-cache" to the HTML header of every page to prevent problems. Accelerator might break site statistics (so very valuable to most webmasters), so it's almost advisable to site owners to disable Web Accelerator on every single page. <font color="#FF0000">According to Search Engine Journal</font> webmasters have a much simpler way of blocking Web Accelerator, by banning the IP address ranges 72.14.192.0 – 72.14.192.255.
In fact, if there are so many negatives to this product from a webmaster perspective, who would anyone not disable caching of their pages? Of course, if Google has released a product so damaging that it requires a massive edit of the entire internet, maybe it shouldn't be their problem, it should be Google's.
So, what's the big upside, the one reason so tempting that Google can assure it will not see a mass banning of its product?
PageRank.
The hidden benefit is that sites which allow usage of the Accelerator will likely get a boost in Google rankings relative to sites that do not. Google will have deeper usage data for those sites, data which can be used to determine that site's rankings. Given the highly competitive search engine optimization field, and Google's lofty place within it, that may be a temptation that proves too juicy to resist.
Source
Yesterday, Google released perhaps its most controversial product ever: The Google Web Accelerator. Its a simple product, one that promises to speed up your internet connection like many little applications have in the past. It doesn't seem like much.
Of course, peer a little deeper, and you might even be impressed. The ideas behind Web Accelerator are pretty nice, smart enough to be worthy of a Googler's 20% time. Google has essentially decided to make "an extra copy" of the entire World Wide Web (or at least the HTML and images of it) and let you run it off their servers, because Google's servers are always faster (Blogger and Orkut aside, of course).
Dig even deeper and the picture grows to reveal a whole nother world of possibilities. Google is really offering to replace the web, wanting everyone to use their copy instead of the public copy. While the World Wide Web is currently a decentralized network of nationwide servers, Google wants the whole web to run off its computers, in one of its anonymous, nondescript data centers.
Look just a bit deeper and the picture becomes a bit murky. If you run the web off Google's computers, then Google knows everything you do. It reads every page you read, every email you write and send, and sees every bit of pervertedness you look at. Google has complete control of your web, and the freedom to change it as it sees fit, if it ever decides to. More importantly, Google can keep a record of everything you do, information that could prove quite valuable.
Now, pull out your microscopes. That murkiness? It's not confusion, or paranoia. No, your internet just got a little darker, because someone has decided to crap on it.
See, Google isn't serving web pages faster, its serving other people's versions of the web page faster. What does that mean? Try using Web Accelerator on a forum site, one with lots of geeks who love Google and probably already have Web Accelerator installed. Why, if you're lucky, you'll be logged in as someone else, as the folks at SomethingAwful.com discovered. The posters in that forum discovered that most of the times they refreshed the page, they were logged in as a different person, seeing their friend's control panel for the forums.
They were even kind enough to provide screenshots.
This isn't the first time Google has stepped in it.
Controversy, that is. Thirteen months ago, when Gmail was "released" into beta, the concept of an ad system that read your email frightened folks. Last October, when Google Desktop Search hit, the call from IT departments was to stay away over security concerns. And just a few months ago, an Autolinking feature in Google's newest toolbar angered many prominent bloggers.
All of those were concerns. This is real.
Installing Accelerator will, at some point, let you into a private area you shouldn't be seeing. Maybe it'll be a control panel or options area for a logged in user. Maybe it'll be a **** site with password protection. Maybe it will be a private Microsoft message board where developers discuss trade secrets regarding the next version of Windows. It will happen, and when it does, I expect screenshots.
Oh, there are benefits to using the Accelerator. Web pages run more than twice as fast, no doubt about it. And there is a benefit to Google, a perfectly nice one at that. By seeing where you browse, Google knows which pages are useful and which are spam. After all, a fake link designed to curry favor with Google won't get any clicks, so Google knows to just go ahead and ignore it.
But are the benefits worth the costs? Web Accelerator is free, so the cost of using it is not readily apparent. For example, on any site that has a logon, you must tell Web Accelerator not to index them. In addition, anyone who runs a website with any user-specific data, you must add "pragma no-cache" to the HTML header of every page to prevent problems. Accelerator might break site statistics (so very valuable to most webmasters), so it's almost advisable to site owners to disable Web Accelerator on every single page. <font color="#FF0000">According to Search Engine Journal</font> webmasters have a much simpler way of blocking Web Accelerator, by banning the IP address ranges 72.14.192.0 – 72.14.192.255.
In fact, if there are so many negatives to this product from a webmaster perspective, who would anyone not disable caching of their pages? Of course, if Google has released a product so damaging that it requires a massive edit of the entire internet, maybe it shouldn't be their problem, it should be Google's.
So, what's the big upside, the one reason so tempting that Google can assure it will not see a mass banning of its product?
PageRank.
The hidden benefit is that sites which allow usage of the Accelerator will likely get a boost in Google rankings relative to sites that do not. Google will have deeper usage data for those sites, data which can be used to determine that site's rankings. Given the highly competitive search engine optimization field, and Google's lofty place within it, that may be a temptation that proves too juicy to resist.
Source
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