Google is trying to speed up web pages with a new open source application layer protocol called SPDY (pronounced speedy).
Regular HTTP connections suffer from protocol overhead and latency — which is why after all there is big business in WAN optimization from vendors like Citrix, Cisco, Juniper, Blue Coat and Riverbed.
With SPDY, Google is aiming to provide web optimization for all with a target reduction of 50 percent in web page load times.
That’s a very tall order in my view, especially if they hope to do it in some kind of standardized way.
But wait, Google is big enough that they don’t have to wait for standards.
Google can bake SPDY into their own Chrome web browser and then make Google servers optimized for SPDY. Google has already done some lab tests with a SPDY enabled Chrome browser and they achieved a 64 percent reduction in page load times.