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Google Web Accelerator
Lukey Boy writes "Google has released a free web accelerator product for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. According to their information page the software uses Google servers as a proxy for web content, delivering the pages to your system more rapidly and compressing them beforehand."
More information about GWA is posted here: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050504-1453 07
Also, browsers other than Firefox and Mozilla can take advantage of GWA if you set them to proxy requests over Localhost:9100 while GWA is running in the system tray. It should also be pointed out that this is apparently geared towards broadband users.
...a proxy which just compressed stuff on the server and then decompresses it on the client?
Oh... yes.
Google Web Accelerator uses various strategies to make your web pages load faster, including:
* Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic.
* Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible.
* Downloading only the updates if a web page has changed slightly since you last viewed it.
* Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance.
* Managing your Internet connection to reduce delays.
* Compressing data before sending it to your computer.
From Google, You may not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system without express permission in advance from Google.
It's good to see Google abiding by their own rules.
People on WMW have pointed out that you can stop Google pre-fetching by banning IPs 72.14.192.0/20.
First off, it's called a "calendar". Secondly, there already is a kick-ass free online calendar.
I don't respond to AC's.
... But how does it know how many minutes you save...
I assume it would calculate your current download speed as well as the size of the information you're retrieving, then do the same based on going through Google's servers, and come up with an approximate value of saved time.
Something like that anyhow I think.
Hope be with ye,
Cyan
Well the FAQ says the exact opposite:
3. Can I use Google Web Accelerator with a dial-up connection?
Dial-up users may not see much improvement, as Google Web Accelerator is currently optimized to speed up web page loading for broadband connections.
*** DRINK MORE COFFEE ***
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
Well, domains yes, specific pages, no. And they even let you turn off the autoupdater if you want. First time I've ever seen that from Google.
What I'd to know is how this helps a broadband connection but not dial-up. My connection already loads most pages nearly instantly.
Only on
We already have compression of HTTP content, it's just that some idiots don't enable it on their servers.
The magic words are: apt-get install libapache-mod-gzip
Belief is the currency of delusion.
The larger your proxy is, the more probabilities you have of finding that page that you are looking for in the proxy's cache.
Google has a tremendous amount of cached pages and images.
That's where the real gain comes from.
Plus, the trad proxys that I know do not compress. I don't know how relevant this is because for the most part, web pages' heavy stuff is not text but images that are already compressed. Still, this will save you some time.
Then keep in mind that the google servers are probably faster than other servers and more resistant to slashdot-and-the-likes web tsunamis.
Read the info page. You just have to point your proxy settings to localhost:9100.
Trolling is a art,
I installed it, and now (I assume due to the way the program works), my HOSTS file no longer blocks the domains I listed. I have a LOT of domains for ads, and I almost never see any advertisements. But now, the HOSTS file is useless. Just a heads-up for anyone that has an active HOSTS file on their computer.
Regarding 2:
Remember that they are already retrieving a huge amount of the web on a regular basis for their search engine. They may well have a "faster connection to the web server", since they might have already retrieved a copy of the resource beforehand. Also remember that, assuming it's not dynamic content, they can serve copies of the resource to hundreds of thousands of people without having to download it themselves.
Basically, it boils down to whether they can serve the content faster than the origin server, and do so often enough to outweigh the cache misses. Given that plenty of origin servers are underpowered/underconnected and that they already have a decent infrastructure around the globe, this isn't hard to believe.
Also, they can use heuristics in the client software to decide whether or not to hit the Google servers or go direct to the origin. In the case of going direct to the origin, there is no slowdown at all.
As far decompression being slower than the network connection, that won't be a problem unless you have something like a 286 on a broadband connection.
Nice troll. Inflamatory, and correct only by a tenuous strand of tortured logic. It was Union Carbide who gassed Bhopal, which didn't merge with Dow until 1999, a full fifteen years after the incident, and five years after Union Carbide sold its 51% interest in the Bhopal facility.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The Google toolbar only sends the URL of the page you're visiting back to Google, with a harmless google.com URL as the referrer. People would scream about privacy complaints otherwise. With this, the only information sent to Google is stuff that's necessary for the service to work. Fortunately for Google, that information happens to be important.
Yahoo and presumably Alexa do send referrer information if WebRank is enabled. I don't know what percentage of people turn off WebRank, but with Web Accelerator, there's no opting out if you use it.
Works with Wine:
:)
1) Install on a Windows box
2) Copy Program Files\Google\Web Accelerator files to linux box
3) "wine GoogleWebAccWarder.exe &"
4) Set your browser proxy to "localhost" port 9100
5) Surf with speed
If it fails, check your windows\temp directory for the google logs...
Note - this comment posted with Google Web Accelerator.
æeee!
You mean Googledot?
".. and there's no catch!"
Unfortunately, the catch is google now knows your surfing habits, and their's no privacy policy.
To neuter GWA:
y s.rdf. rdf
Internet Explorer 6:
Tools -> Manage Add-ons
Disable:
Google Web Accelerator - Toolbar
Google Web Accelerator Helper - BHO
Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections
Remove the proxy entry, or use your own, like The Proxomitron or Proximodo.
FireFox 1.0.3:
Mozilla Firefox\chrome\chrome.rdf
Mozilla Firefox\chrome\overlayinfo\browser\content\overla
Mozilla Firefox\chrome\overlayinfo\global\skinstylesheets
Search for "googlewebacc" and remove any <RDF:*></RDF> sections that contain it.
Tools -> Options -> General -> Connection Settings...
Remove the proxy, or use your own such as the two linked above.
No more toolbars!
Now, if you want to use GWA selectively, you can use the aforementioned Proxomitron or Proximodo and configure them to use an external proxy, with the 127.0.0.1:9001 address as you would for other browsers. Then setup FireFox, IE, or whatever to use 127.0.0.1:8080 as the proxy address.
Horde comes with CPanel. Many times professional web hosting companies provice CPanel, which includes Horde, Squirrelmail and Neomail as webmail options by default.
GWA works fine with Opera. If you notice on the info page, you can maually set Opera's proxy settings to use GWA, you just don't get the "x seconds saved" figure in the browser.
The GWA does three things that save bandwidth:
1) Compress all HTML content passed between Google and client
2) Use local cacheing
3) Send diffs (just what changed) of files that are in the cache but out of date.
I could refresh Slashdot over and over, and the only thing that I would have to download when the page changes is a compressed diff, probably a savings of at least an order of magnitude.
In the situation you describe though there are many computers using one connection. Since GWA interfaces with browsers via a simple HTTP proxy (The IE/Firefox integration is just for the "x seconds saved" display), you should be able to install GWA on one computer and set multiple other computers to use that proxy.
Of course Google might check to see if the machine making the request is on localhost.
I can't really see what google (or anyone for that matter) can really do to accelerate web content on broadband connections. [...] There is no good reason to sign up for this.
The reason you're skeptical is because you don't know as much about the Internet as google does.
When you download a web page on your 6Mbps cable modem, do you think it instanly goes to 6Mbps throughput, transfers the page, and then drops to zero? It doesn't. The efficiency *decreases* as your connection gets faster (which is why google does not claim to speed up slow connections - there's little room for improvement). Here's why:
The TCP stack under your browser starts by establishing a connection (3 way handshake). Then it sends a packet with the HTTP request. Finally after those long round trip times of basically doing nothing, your browser starts receiving HTML. As the HTML comes in, the process repeats for the embedded stuff (images). If you have a fast link (and especially if the server is far away), your link spends a lot of time doing nothing while connections are established and transactions take place.
By routing your connection through google, many efficiencies can be gained. These are listed in, of all places TFA. It's not just caching, either. Prefetching, for example, is a trick where their servers will start requesting and transferring the images within a web page, even before your browser has requested them. Since the HTML already went through google's proxy, they know what your browser is going to request before your browser does.
So instead of just pooh-poohing it because you don't understand the technology, why don't you go download a copy of Ethereal, which will let you see these tricks in action. Then you can offer us a more educated opinion based on empirical fact, instead of a long diatribe amounting to "I don't understand how it works, therefore it sucks".
Nice try, but Yahoo! Mail works perfectly through the Google Web Accelerator. Better even.
7. Can I run Google Web Accelerator on a browser other than Internet Explorer or Firefox?
For other browsers running on Windows, you'll need to manually configure your proxy settings to 127.0.0.1:9100 for HTTP connections.
Isn't there already a web version of Outlook?
Looks like there is. Either from Microsoft, or this outfit which isn't too expensive. $15 for the latter vs untold MILLIONS (of pesos) for the former. But still, it's there if you want it.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Intellectual Property You acknowledge that Google or third parties own all right, title and interest in and to Google Web Accelerator, portions thereof, or software provided through or in conjunction with Google Web Accelerator, including without limitation all Intellectual Property Rights. "Intellectual Property Rights" means any and all rights existing from time to time under patent law, copyright law, trade secret law, trademark law, unfair competition law, and any and all other proprietary rights, and any and all applications, renewals, extensions and restorations thereof, now or hereafter in force and effect worldwide. You agree not to modify, adapt, translate, prepare derivative works from, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise attempt to derive source code from Google Web Accelerator, or to extract significant portions of Google Web Accelerator's files for use in other applications. You also agree to not remove, obscure, or alter Google's or any third party's copyright notice, trademarks, or other proprietary rights notices affixed to or contained within or accessed in conjunction with or through Google Web Accelerator. -- emphasis mine
I think that it's just a firefox bug. The same thing happened to my 1.0.3 install. But it was about a week ago, before I had even heard about this new google program. I had to uninstall and then go and delete my profile before it would work again.
No privacy policy?
I clicked on the "Pricay Policy" link and saw this:
http://www.google.com/privacy.html
-- Brendan Hills
Can I run Google Web Accelerator on a browser other than Internet Explorer or Firefox?
WFM with Opera 8.0
So, after using Mike's Ad-Blocker for the past year or so, I am kind of used to not seeing any ads on the web when I surf. One of the first thing I noticed right after I began surfing with the web accelerator was that all of those annoying ads were back (or at least most of them, especially the Flash ads - and I hate the flash ads...) So, after a quick experiment, the Google web accelerator is making its exit from my install of Firefox. Nice idea, but with Google acting as your proxy, you get the ads again... Oh, and I'm pretty sure that loading all the ads I'm not used to is actually slowing my web experience.
They say:
The problem is that this information, when correlated with information from web sites you're using such as user names, passwords, etc. (all of which would be routed through their proxy and caches except for https information which goes through the proxy but not the caches), can tell them, or anyone else who has access, exactly who you are, where you surf and what you do.Their privacy policies completely fail to address this issue.
Yes, there is: because Opera's Javascript/DHTML support is abysmal.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
Yeah, I can confirm this. I followed access logs for apache on my computer as I hovered over links, and google servers made requests to my computer.
It wouldn't necessarily slow things down. Google is the one using its bandwidth (as well as the host), but the user will get a possibly compressed file from a nearby speedy google server. And it's not all bad for the host either because many people getting copies from the google cache reduces bandwidth for the original host.
It's pretty slick.
Anti-Advertisement software gets bypassed and the ads I haven't seen for years are now displayed for my 'enjoyment'.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'm off to uninstall this POS.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
A .pac file is better suited to blocking ads by denying connections in a web browser. It lets you block/allow by URL rather than just hostname (i.e. block http://server.com/ads/ but still allow http://server.com/goodstuff/ through). It's a lot like the Ad-Block extension for Firefox, but not tied specifically to one browser. It works in all modern browsers and many other internet programs (email clients, etc.). See http://www.schooner.com.nyud.net:8090/~loverso/no- ads/ for details. As with Ad-Block, a few regular expressions in a no-ads.pac file will block most ads as well, even with no site-specific filters.
A no-ads.pac file will be slower than a HOSTS file (it uses Javascript inside the browser to process it, rather than being handled by the networking subsystem of the OS). However, any remotely-modern PC should have no problem with the tiny amount of extra processing needed. John LoVerso has claimed that he used to run it on a (sub-200MHz?) P1 and didn't notice any slowdown on that.
I do use my HOSTS file to block servers that I absolutely don't want any connections made to (in my browser, email, IM, or anything else). However, I found the HOSTS file to work very poorly for blocking ads in web pages, compared to these other methods.
Seriously, I'm not trolling: I've literally lost count of how many times I've written simple DHTML scripts that executed consistently in IE, Firefox, Netscape, Safari, even Omniweb -- only to discover that they caused Opera to absolutely shit itself executing the same code. I don't think it's exaggerating greatly to state that Opera is to DHTML roughly what Netscape 4 was to CSS: so bad that I've simply stopped even trying to support Opera with any but the most basic scripts.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
Yes, you can blow right past your company's firewall/proxy! I usually cannot get to Azureus, but with Google Web Accelerator I can download to my hearts content.
:)
Hmmmm...I wonder how long it will take before my company recognizes that I am no longer opening connections to multiple sites...
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
No Such thing.
I looked over the install, it's a "simple" transparent proxy.
The XPI watches for browser interaction events and communicates these to the Client. For instance, a mouse over preloads the anticipated URL.
There's two primary C++ programs, GoogleWebAccClient.exe, GoogleWebAccWarden.exe.
The firefox files are:
GoogleWebAccFirefox.dll (GUI controls, event forwarder)
GoogleWebAccFirefox.jar (look and feel elements)
GoogleWebAccFirefox.xpt (Event monitor)
The IE files are:
GoogleWebAccToolbar.dll
The controllers are:
GoogleWebAccClient.exe (Receives events, controls proxy to google)
GoogleWebAccWarden.exe (Manages cache and search)
Just a complete guess though...
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.