Comments on: Why is Google so Fast?

By: Httpwatch Blog

Httpwatch Blog — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 09:45:07 +0000

Yes, Google does some clever things to make its search query fast, but if they didn’t also pay attention to front end issues such as page size, round trips and caching all that effort will be wasted.

Steve Souders (Google’s chief performance engineer) has a ‘Performance Golden Rule’:

“80-90% of the end-user response time is spent on the front-end”

See slide #8 of his ‘Higher Performance Websites’ talk:

http://www.slideshare.net/w3guru/high-performance-websites-by-souders-steve-presentation

This blog post acknowledges the power of Google’s distributed super-computer, but then goes on to show what they also did on the front end to ensure that search pages load as fast as possible.

By: Tim

Tim — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 09:25:39 +0000

Wait.. no.. this is rubbish, sorry.
What you’ve said is true and it *will* reduce load on servers, but it won’t increase the speed for the end user by much.
Google rely on complicated search algorithms and a complex mix of hardware and software to query such a massive database, so quickly.
There is talk that parts of the database are always loaded in RAM, and Google uses a custom filesystem.
Those are things that will actually make a difference for the end user, not reducing the number of requests (and remember, the website servers will be different to the servers that query the database).

By: Gaz

Gaz — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 22:16:21 +0000

That image keeps popping up in the top left hand corner of all my google searches, over the content ( or google logo to be more exact “top left” ) Sometimes it appears multiple times at various points down the page.

I should point out that Im using IE8 in quirks mode, but still, very annoying. I thought I had some kind of strange spyware…

Doesnt happen in Firefox either just IE8 ( Quirks mode for IE7, Im sure its probably just a strange beta issue )

By: Jordan Clark

Jordan Clark — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:59:12 +0000

Excellent article, very well researched. However, Google is an extreme case - they exist in a very competitive market. I would not advocate this way of coding for the average website; their code flies in the face of most modern coding standards.

Then again, it’s never done their bank balance any harm!