Google Dropping SPDY For HTTP/2 In Chrome

Chrome has become a widely used and popular browser for a variety of reasons, but one of them is speed. Google developed Chrome to be quick and nimble, and developed their own protocol, SPDY, to make that happen. When Chrome was built, SPDY was necessary, as it roundly crushed other browsers who were using an HTTP 1.1 protocol for transferring web content. With HTTP version 2, Google is ready to ditch their SPDY standard, as the latest HTTP has a lot of performance improvements.

In place since Chrome version 6 (we're now at Chrome version 40 or so), SPDY — a shorter version of the word 'speedy' — was developed at Google to sidestep old-school HTTP. SPDY improved your browser experience by forcing SSL encryption, forcing HTTP headers, and ramping up page-load times.

Your web experience is based on HTTP, and is the standard for information transfer. HTTP version 2 is the first update since HTTP 1.1, which came way back in 1999.

If it sounds like Google is doing an about-face on their tech, that's not the case. HTTP/2 is based largely on SPDY, so the duopoly is redundant at this point. It also won't be immediate; Google says the HTTP/2-SPDY swap will be complete in 2016, but support for both in Chrome will happen in the coming weeks.

It won't be a set-back, either. All major browsers are on-board with HTTP/2, to which Google says "we're happy to have contributed to the open standards process that led to HTTP/2, and hope to see wide adoption given the broad industry engagement on standardization and implementation. We also look forward to further advancements in fundamental Internet protocols that lead to a faster and more secure Internet for everyone."

Source: Google