Best Free Internet Accelerator

Best Free Internet Accelerator In a surprise move Google released in early May 2005 a beta version of a new product called the Google Web Accelerator (GWA). Unlike most other accelerators which provide caching on your own PC, the GWA utilizes caching on Google's own dedicated web servers to accelerate browsing. On top of that it uses a number of other techniques to speed thing up including compressing html pages and pre-fetching links. The WGA program automatically installs itself into the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers and can be manually configured to work with other browsers. To protect user privacy the accelerator does not function during connections to secure sites such as internet banking. Does it work? You bet with most users myself included, reporting improvements of 10-40% in browsing speeds. There are however some caveats: First the product is only available for Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP3+. Second the product is optimized for broadband use and modem users may experience little or no gain. Third the system is currently working best within the USA and Europe and users located in other areas will only receive a partial benefit. Fourth there are some potential privacy issues involved so all users should closely read what Google has documented on the subject. Personally I don't have a problem but others mileage may vary. Finally some webmasters have been scare mongering with reports that the GWA pre-fetching function can cause all buttons on a web page to be automatically pressed including things like "delete my subscription." I've looked it this and frankly, every case I've seen has been due to very sloppy web coding. However if you want to be super cautious then I suggest you simply disable the GWA for any page that uses forms and buttons. Personally I think it's a storm in a tea cup. These reservations aside this is a terrific product. It provides for nix almost all of the benefits of expensive commercial web acceleration services like Propel.
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http://webaccelerator.google.com/ http://webaccelerator.google.com/support#basics2 <= FAQ