Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Several Sites Expressing Concern About Google Web Accelerator:
"Recently I mentioned a new offering from Google called Google Web Accelerator. (Hereafter referred to as GWA.) The idea behind it is that it can speed up your surfing by 'pre-fetching' pages before you click on 'em. And when you do click on 'em -- hey presto, the page is already loaded.
But many sites are expressing concern about the GWA, both because of privacy issues and because the software is causing some severe problems on certain sites.
A really good overview article to start with is from Pandia. It's at http://www.pandia.com/post/026-3.html . It discusses how Accelerator works and the variety of problems that it might cause, from prefetching pages that Webmasters don't want prefetched, to accidentally prefetching ads, which would put a burden on advertisers who are paying-per-click, to messing up shopping carts and discussion forum logins.
CNET has an article at http://news.com.com/2102-1032_3-5698447.html?tag=st.util.print which includes quotes from a Google spokesperson and privacy advocate Richard Smith. The question as to what Google will be doing with the clickstreams generated by the accelerator came up, in addition to how that stream will be tied in with regular Google cookies. Google's Marissa Mayer said, 'To date, we're not doing anything with this data in terms of market research. We have no plans, but should that change we would aggressively notify our users and give them some escape hatch.'..."
"Recently I mentioned a new offering from Google called Google Web Accelerator. (Hereafter referred to as GWA.) The idea behind it is that it can speed up your surfing by 'pre-fetching' pages before you click on 'em. And when you do click on 'em -- hey presto, the page is already loaded.
But many sites are expressing concern about the GWA, both because of privacy issues and because the software is causing some severe problems on certain sites.
A really good overview article to start with is from Pandia. It's at http://www.pandia.com/post/026-3.html . It discusses how Accelerator works and the variety of problems that it might cause, from prefetching pages that Webmasters don't want prefetched, to accidentally prefetching ads, which would put a burden on advertisers who are paying-per-click, to messing up shopping carts and discussion forum logins.
CNET has an article at http://news.com.com/2102-1032_3-5698447.html?tag=st.util.print which includes quotes from a Google spokesperson and privacy advocate Richard Smith. The question as to what Google will be doing with the clickstreams generated by the accelerator came up, in addition to how that stream will be tied in with regular Google cookies. Google's Marissa Mayer said, 'To date, we're not doing anything with this data in terms of market research. We have no plans, but should that change we would aggressively notify our users and give them some escape hatch.'..."
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