Google is not the only one who benefits from reduced latency, fast page loads, efficient use of SSL sessions, and server pushed resources.
If anything, the people who benefit the most are those who _can't_ afford massive forward deployed CDN networks, large servers, and fat network pipes.
If the internet should have taught us one thing so far, it is that it's the open technologies which are built to be easy to understand and explore for humans which have driven the net forward.
HTTP 2.0 is massive step backwards in that respect, and the only thing we're getting in return is slightly shorted response times.
You know what? We can deal. We're getting better and better bandwith. We're getting more and more computing power. A few milliseconds doesn't hurt anyone.
Let's not create a shit protocol violating everything the internet was built on, just because we're all of a sudden feeling resource-constrained. Now, of all times.
rolls eyes
While we can certainly wait and see whether people will balk and make changes, the only true way to stop it is to replace it.
If you can write a better set of protocols that meet the requirements, do it. If you can't then work with or support those that will.
We have IPv6 connectivity from our colo provider in one location, and a tunnel to our office, but two years in we're still only testing it for this reason - there's never enough time, and it's not yet urgent enough.
Yeah, but the speed of light isn't getting any faster, and little guys can't afford to have their servers everywhere. If HTTP 2.0 reduces the round trip count, then it will make a big difference in download times for small pages.
Different than the spirit of HTTP, those protocols have little to do with publishing content anymore. They are just more kludges, in the history of kludges, to patch browsers into application platforms.
That mainly benefits the big web monopolists, who require the browser to be the ultimate application platform, where they can track to their hearts content, display unsolicited advertising, and basically extort business to advertise on their channels to remain relevant on the web. Not quite the idea of "information repository" that spawned the web in the first place.
Please. All you need for advertising is plain text, all you need for tracking is cookies.
What is the end-user benefit in performance using HTTP 2.0? The only analysis of SPDY I saw indicated low single digit percentage benefit vs HTTPS. Whoop-dee-do. http://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
I would highlight that HTTP 2 > SPDY as far as standards go, and the "beta" protocol of SPDY is already at 55% market share including IE 11: http://caniuse.com/spdy
For those who are interested in speed optimization for 2013 and beyond, plus why SPDY's faster-than-SSL descendants are crucial to the web's success, have a look at http://www.igvita.com/slides/2013/breaking-1s-mobile-barrier... -- I believe there's a video out there too somewhere. Edit: Video link is on first page of the slides.
What's interesting too is that this talk focuses as much on what's achievable without SPDY as what might be with, down the road. We really need faster SSL negotiation for that first time connection cost.
By making things more efficient, HTTP 2.0 is really going to make startups spend more money. Oh wait, no, the opposite thing.
EDIT: It's not the matter of implementation anyways, it's that something important only for Google is proposed as a standard for everyone, which is insane.
More efficient web servers will, if anything, be even better for startups than they are for Google, since they lower the barrier to entry.
You win some, you lose some. The benefit of cutting down on some infrastructure should be weighed against the mind-boggling complexity of HTTP 2.0 and the added difficulty in debugging.