Google Page Speed Service Rewrites Sites For Up To 60% Speed Boost

Google reckons your site is too slow, and wants to rewrite it for you. A new launch from the search giant, Google Page Speed Service, promises speed boosts of anything from 25- to 60-percent after you allow it to prefetch your site, streamline it according to its own "best practices" and then offer it up from its own network of servers worldwide.

According to Google, in its own testing some sites have more than doubled the speed at which they load, without users needing to bother with the traditional fixes to address sluggish page speeds. If you're skeptical, there's a "try before you buy" option which gives some estimates based on average browsers and connections.

"To use the service, you need to sign up and point your site's DNS entry to Google. Page Speed Service fetches content from your servers, rewrites your pages by applying web performance best practices, and serves them to end users via Google's servers across the globe. Your users will continue to access your site just as they did before, only with faster load times" Ram Ramani, engineering manager, Google

Initially Google will offer the Page Speed Service free of charge, though that will change as the system exits this testing phase. The benefit for the company itself is – beyond charges – presumably greater control and access to sites along with increasing its own footprint. Whether web admins will trust Google to deliver their prized online presence, however, remains to be seen.