Last week’s launch of SPDY: Speedy Protocol for Internet, sure came with a message. It has come out that Google is seriously considering using page loading time as a factor when returning search results. This isn’t some unsubstantiated rumor, either; it comes from none other than Matt Cutts, the high-profile Google employee who works on Google’s web spam team.
Cutts elaborated that the directive to speed up searching comes right from the top, Google‘s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. He said they want searching to be as fast as “flipping through a magazine”. And that looks like google is pointing to prefer websites that use spdy:// over http://.
At first thought, it feels justified. At Second thought, it seems counter to Google’s accuracy goals to favor fast pages over slow pages when a slow page might be more relevant to a user’s search. And most users won’t mind if a page takes 5-6 seconds more than a non-relevant one. Third and final thought is end of Openness, why would Google force people to migrate to SPDY?
Here is video where Matt Cutt discuss Google’s New Caffeine and SPDY
However, on the personal front I believe a better approach would be to Star /Mark the site a “certified faster”, and ranking should remain Un-altered.
If Google can shield me from the slow sites, it will help me find what I’m looking for more quickly.
Of course, new bloggers on shared-hostings will be in trouble if this thing gets rolled out.
What do you think, will this SPDY encourage nothing but a closed monopoly? Or will Google really take this step seriously?