google web accelerator

[1984]

does this thing work? is it spyware and is it any good? im super curious

[JohnDemolition]

worthless. it didn't do anything when i used it. just made everything SLOWER.

[rridgely]

If google doesn't know everything you do already they will if you use that program. There is a special mode for when you do banking and stuff. That alone should raise flags about what info they are getting.

 

I doubt it works(but I haven't tried it)

[eagle00789]

Well, i have tried it, and i have to agree with JohnDemolition. it slows it only down. As to rridgely: the special mode is there so it DOESN'T make contact with the google servers.

 

Google WebAccelerator is actually nothing more then a speedy (??) proxy-server

[rridgely]

Thats what I was saying though. If that thing needs a special mode so that it doesn't record sensitive information then you might as well have spyware installed on your computer. I pretty much trust google for now but I still dont want them having exact records of every single thing I do on the internet. (and to be honest all I do right now is read news and answer posts here. ) But still if it records passwords if you dont go into "privacy mode" or whatever it just doesn't sound like a good idea. Especially not for the .02 second increase in speed you might get.

[eagle00789]

i have to agree with you on that...

[Andavari]

When I used dial-up last year with Netscape it came with their gimmicky accelerator that they gladly touted in T.V. ads, and on their Netscape ISP site, I removed it after a short time using it.

 

In their defense they can speed up the loading of normal pages but you're also getting degraded image quality which was something very unappealing to me. Completely forget about it on broadband sites that actually require a broadband connection. Also they will do nothing to increase your file download speeds.