Google Web Accelerator

Google’s newly released beta the Web Accelerator has had a tumultuous first week. On May 4, the day of its release, Search Engine Watch gave an overview of the product’s feature. Before the day was out, people were reported problems and the forums were up in arms. Accusations of bandwidth stealing and the usual ‘Google doesn’t have the right to my content’ cries gave way to security issues like the unintended deletion of accounts and pages returned of private login pages. Blog posts and forum threads sprung up everywhere, full of speculation, accusations and condemnation.

Melissa Mayer, Google’s director of Web products, acknowledged the bug and says they are working on a fix. In the meantime, Google has closed the beta though you can still reach the download page.

I’ve refrained from commenting thus far simply because it has only been a single week. Like any beta product there are bugs and concerns to work out yet. Google’s reputation as a company permanently in beta however, hurts them here. People expect more from a Google beta project and the Web Accelerator doesn’t match up.

Having used the WA for a week or so, I’m largely unimpressed and find it breaks things quite often and doesn’t save me all that much time. Hopefully as it develops, Web Accelerator will become a much less evil and more useful application. In the meantime, I’ll just wait out the extra half second.

Susan Esparza is former managing editor at Bruce Clay Inc., and has written extensively for clients and internal publications. Along with Bruce Clay, she is co-author of the first edition of Search Engine Optimization All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies.

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