Google Makes Web Pages Load Instantly
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
Same thing happened with DNS when Google enabled DNS pre-fetching in Chrome.
Good example / explanation of the problem:
http://www.pinkbike.com/news/DNS-Prefetching-Implications.ht... (cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-3Lip30...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Caylee_Anthony
It doesn't seem too out of left field that investigators would use your browser history as well.
It may seem far-fetched at the moment, but I'm reminded of that East Coast teacher who was fired because the classroom computer was infected (apparently, not by her actions) and started popping porn up on the screen.
Common sense quickly demonstrated that she was not, in any personal sense, at fault. Still lost her job; was, IIRC correctly, at least considered for criminal prosecution, and had to spend months and probably lots of lawyer fees attempting to clear her name.
I am mindful to be very cautious about assuming a limit to the stupidity or maliciousness of people who will be making assumptions -- or, regardless of their own understanding of a situation, simply have an agenda to push -- in the future.
First and foremost, I think they are solving a problem nobody has, potentially for "my Chrome is faster than your Firefox" points. I do not mind waiting an extra 300ms for having a modicum of control over what my browser does. I don't know about others, but page loading is not usually something I even notice anymore.
Secondly, fully rendering sites I never visit, including script execution, seems like a seriously bad idea. This turns a mildly annoying while slightly beneficial feature (loading resources in the background) into a monster, especially when combined with abominations like ro.me on autoplay.
Thirdly, I could imagine scenarios in which my Google searches would be leaking this way to sites that have no business seeing my traffic.
I realize that what they are currently talking about is opt-in, but can only hope that in time this feature won't be picked up by the other browsers and become the silent default for everyone.
Your point is still legitimate, but the 1,100 ms (not 300 ms) in that photo which you refer to is the time to serve the search query results, not time to load the page you then click on, which usually takes a number of seconds more.
Rendering the page, after selecting the result, does take a lot longer (6s for something like the BBC home page here) but I still maintain that it's largely invisible and not something most users would complain about or even notice.
It's when it gets taken away again that you notice.
As a webmaster for a site where retention and "stickiness" are critical, I can say without hesitation that those 300ms are potentially HUGE. For the vast majority of the users coming into a site who are unaware of these things, faster page load times make a huge difference in retention and repeat visits. People unconsciously like pages that appear faster. Ask them WHY they like one site over the other, they probably won't say it's the speed, but the stats say otherwise.
* Thanks for that link, abarth
Now, personally, I can turn this off, I know, and I also understand the speed advantage for end user retention. People might say 300ms doesn't matter to them - maybe not consciously - but it certainly DOES matter when it comes to retention. People like faster sites automatically - it's a subconscious thing - very well proven by good studies. (amazon, etc) a 300ms savings on page load is a HUGE win from the site owner point of view.
Give the site owners some kind of passive control over this feature (a-la robots.txt for spiders) so those who are really concerned about bandwidth can opt out (though if you are top ranking for a google search term you probably WANT that traffic - that's money down the drain otherwise) and appropriate controls, and it's a good idea.
In fact, it's an inevitable idea. with it's ups and downs. It's going to happen - so let's roll with it.
I don't like if Google uses its own browser to give their sites features, that could not be implemented without - website's features should only be made from source code on the server. In my opinion.
This is core innovation from Google - but I see the problem with incorrect website visitors. It think Chrome when prefetching the pages, should send some information with the request that the request is a prefetch.
Google's prefetching is instant search list with the most likely result being automatically be loaded in the background before the user clicks on it.
Web owner nightmare: Having a common irrelevant keyword that means most of the world downloads the content without viewing the page.
There will probably be a switch, but non-techs usually don't flip switches
When the Chrome development team decides something should be a certain way, they are sometimes not at all accommodating of differing viewpoints.
The browser does download subresources, including images, scripts, and stylesheets. The new page visibility API is intended to help folks keep accurate web stats:
And besides, this is a Chrome browser feature. Google would extend Bing the same curtosey, and even if not, Bing could make an extension or do the same with IE9, etc, etc.
"Other Web browsers could also employ Instant Pages, because Google has released the necessary code for all to use. "We are opening up the code because we want other browsers to implement it—it is good for the users and for the Web," said Singhal."
Even if this weren't the case, as drivebyacct2 said, this doesn't do anything to make us dependent on them, especially when compared to gmail or google docs.