6 ms·

Speaking as a real user, let me assure you that website speed definitely falls under real user concerns. I don't know how much I'd use this indicator, but loadi

by lkbm 7y ago

Speaking as a real user, let me assure you that website speed definitely falls under real user concerns. I don't know how much I'd use this indicator, but loading speed matters to me. Loading speed matters a lot. This won't win me back from Firefox, but I don't consider it a bad move.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
taeric 7y ago
You know what loads fast? Web pages. What doesn't? User tracking applications that happen to host some content. :(
- robbrown451 7y ago
  If you are against user tracking, great, you've got many on your side. But what loads fast is web pages that are made to load fast. If they are able to load fast despite user tracking (which is entirely possible), then it is simply a different issue, and this should not be flagging them as slow. If they are flagged, it should be by something different. If Google is going to implement this (which I support in general because so many sites are painfully slow because there aren't enough incentives to make them fast), what they should be measuring is speed of loading, independent of whether it is slow because of user tracking, slow because the developers do other obnoxious stuff (fill it with click bait images, have videos autoplay, etc), use frameworks sloppily, put too much contents on the page, have a high res background image or video, have a crappy server or use a slow backend language, or whatever it is. While Google does a lot of user tracking, I think the normal way they do it is actually pretty fast. Fault them for user tracking, but if they are able to allow site owners show Google ads without slowing down the page load significantly, don't lump them in with all these other ones that both track users, as well as make the site a painful user experience.
  - taeric 7y ago
    I don't want to be stonewalling progress. But evidence is that any savings win here will be wasted by the same parties that are bringing the savings. Google lost a ton of good will by making Gmail a laughably bad experience on load.
    - mattkevan 7y ago
      When I had to use gmail for work I switched back to the plain html interface. It was startlingly fast As far as I could see all the complicated front-end stuff added zero to the user experience. Ok, so yeah, you needed a page load to view a message or whatever, but it was quick and hardly noticeable. All they needed to do was freshen up the stylesheet and call it a day. But, I guess, all those developers and product managers needed something to do in between building a new messaging app and killing the previous one.
      - graphememes 7y ago
        Just switched over to the HTML view, and wow. I'm never going back.
themoonbus 7y ago
Walled gardens and proprietary software can allow for fantastic user experiences in a way that open platforms often cannot match. However, I feel focusing on the user experience misses the main point - the web is an open platform, and this is an example of Google exerting an authority that many may not feel comfortable with.
- lkbm 7y ago
  In what way is "indicate that this website is slow" a walled garden or contrary to openness?
  - skywhopper 7y ago
    Because the criteria will inevitably be biased towards technology and techniques that favor Google, Chrome, AMP, etc. If you trust Google to be an unbiased arbiter of objective measurements of website efficiency, you are giving them a lot more credit than I would at this point.
    - jefftk 7y ago
      Visit an AMP page in Lighthouse and you won't see an especially good score. Lighthouse doesn't special-case AMP or pick metrics that would make AMP look good.
      - adrianN 7y ago
        Just because a monopoly is not acting maliciously today, that doesn't mean that it won't tomorrow.
  - themoonbus 7y ago
    Because Google is the decider of what constitutes "slow"? You have a single organization deciding what the threshold is between slow and fast. And, they also have a Google-approved solution (amp) that I'm sure they will tie into the recommended actions for "slow" pages. I'm not saying it's a walled garden (that's a more extreme situation on the continuum between open and closed), I was just using the phrase to illustrate my point that the end-user experience isn't the only factor to consider.
segmondy 7y ago
Then demand for smaller sites, nothing will make for a faster web if web pages are larger than operating systems from just a few years ago. do you know how ridiculous it is to have web pages that are tens and hundreds of megs? The issue is not with the browsers, it's with the damn stupid sites out there. 3G is pretty much useless out there, let alone 2G.
- zeroxfe 7y ago
  How do you demand for smaller sites? To whom do you plead? Why will they listen to you?
  - youareostriches 7y ago
    You demonstrate your intent by paying for content subscriptions rather than visiting sites entirely supported by online advertisements.
    - alexis_fr 7y ago
      There is no paid site that matches the quality of HN. Same goes for most social network: What gives them value is contributions, and contributions only seem to happen if the access is free. Otherwise you don’t reach a high-enough density of people.
      - youareostriches 7y ago
        It should’ve been obvious I was talking about news sites. Even if I wasn’t, you assumed I was talking about social media without any supporting basis.
- holtalanm 7y ago
  I have never seen a site that loaded hundreds of megs of data. That seems a little exaggeratory.
  - 7y ago
reaperducer 7y ago
Do you really need your browser to tell you a site is loading slowly? You're staring at the screen; don't you know if it's slow just by existing and moving forward through time? Or is this just a way for Google to kill off the progress bar, too?
- jefftk 7y ago
  If I'm staring at the screen waiting for a page to load, a loading indicator can help me figure out if I should keep waiting longer or give up. That's very useful! If this gets site owners to work more on loading speed so they can get a badge that's great. I used to work on mod_pagespeed and one of the big problems was that publishers just didn't care that much about loading speed. (Disclosure: I work for Google)
  - jfoster 7y ago
    Based on what this feature is and the scenario you described, I think it may disincent site owners from speeding up slow sites. At the moment, a user doesn't know if a site will ever load. If Chrome reassures that "this site usually loads slowly" they may stick around since they are then reassured that it probably will eventually load, it's just taking a while.
    - jefftk 7y ago
      Maybe users will respond that way, but that's still a good outcome. Giving users a better idea about what to expect so they can make more informed decisions? Great!
      - close04 7y ago
        > Giving users a better idea about what to expect Can I expect Google to do the same about data that may be sent by Chrome to Google without users realizing, just so users can make informed decisions?
        7y ago
shantly 7y ago
Memory size is a problem, too. Even a small amount of Javascript can allocate a ton of memory. I'd love to see a more memory-efficient language replace JS, then a reasonable but lowish memory limit put in place. Say, 8MB, which still seems generous to me. The only trouble is you'd have to find some way to keep developers from using the DOM as extra memory. But the capabilities of Web scripting languages, outside perhaps some very strict and explicitly enabled on a case-by-case basis sandbox, really ought to be limited more anyway.
- icebraining 7y ago
  JS is not necessarily heavy. For example, the Espruino is a platform running JS on microcontrollers with less than 100KB of RAM: https://www.espruino.com/ https://www.espruino.com/
buboard 7y ago
If their speed assessment works as "great" as their "mobile usability" tool works, i doubt their indicator will be actually meaningful. YEah speed matters a lot , but it's self-correcting. If a website cannot load after a minute on a spotty cellular connection , i ll just close the browser and they lose the impresison
Angostura 7y ago
I agree speed is a concern. It takes me at least second to tap the tittle AMP banner and then tap on the real website address.

by lkbm 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

taeric 7y ago

You know what loads fast? Web pages. What doesn't? User tracking applications that happen to host some content. :(

robbrown451 7y ago
If you are against user tracking, great, you've got many on your side. But what loads fast is web pages that are made to load fast. If they are able to load fast despite user tracking (which is entirely possible), then it is simply a different issue, and this should not be flagging them as slow. If they are flagged, it should be by something different. If Google is going to implement this (which I support in general because so many sites are painfully slow because there aren't enough incentives to make them fast), what they should be measuring is speed of loading, independent of whether it is slow because of user tracking, slow because the developers do other obnoxious stuff (fill it with click bait images, have videos autoplay, etc), use frameworks sloppily, put too much contents on the page, have a high res background image or video, have a crappy server or use a slow backend language, or whatever it is. While Google does a lot of user tracking, I think the normal way they do it is actually pretty fast. Fault them for user tracking, but if they are able to allow site owners show Google ads without slowing down the page load significantly, don't lump them in with all these other ones that both track users, as well as make the site a painful user experience.
- taeric 7y ago
  I don't want to be stonewalling progress. But evidence is that any savings win here will be wasted by the same parties that are bringing the savings. Google lost a ton of good will by making Gmail a laughably bad experience on load.
  - mattkevan 7y ago
    When I had to use gmail for work I switched back to the plain html interface. It was startlingly fast As far as I could see all the complicated front-end stuff added zero to the user experience. Ok, so yeah, you needed a page load to view a message or whatever, but it was quick and hardly noticeable. All they needed to do was freshen up the stylesheet and call it a day. But, I guess, all those developers and product managers needed something to do in between building a new messaging app and killing the previous one.
    - graphememes 7y ago
      Just switched over to the HTML view, and wow. I'm never going back.

themoonbus 7y ago

Walled gardens and proprietary software can allow for fantastic user experiences in a way that open platforms often cannot match. However, I feel focusing on the user experience misses the main point - the web is an open platform, and this is an example of Google exerting an authority that many may not feel comfortable with.

lkbm 7y ago
In what way is "indicate that this website is slow" a walled garden or contrary to openness?
- skywhopper 7y ago
  Because the criteria will inevitably be biased towards technology and techniques that favor Google, Chrome, AMP, etc. If you trust Google to be an unbiased arbiter of objective measurements of website efficiency, you are giving them a lot more credit than I would at this point.
  - jefftk 7y ago
    Visit an AMP page in Lighthouse and you won't see an especially good score. Lighthouse doesn't special-case AMP or pick metrics that would make AMP look good.
    - adrianN 7y ago
      Just because a monopoly is not acting maliciously today, that doesn't mean that it won't tomorrow.
- themoonbus 7y ago
  Because Google is the decider of what constitutes "slow"? You have a single organization deciding what the threshold is between slow and fast. And, they also have a Google-approved solution (amp) that I'm sure they will tie into the recommended actions for "slow" pages. I'm not saying it's a walled garden (that's a more extreme situation on the continuum between open and closed), I was just using the phrase to illustrate my point that the end-user experience isn't the only factor to consider.

segmondy 7y ago

Then demand for smaller sites, nothing will make for a faster web if web pages are larger than operating systems from just a few years ago. do you know how ridiculous it is to have web pages that are tens and hundreds of megs? The issue is not with the browsers, it's with the damn stupid sites out there. 3G is pretty much useless out there, let alone 2G.

zeroxfe 7y ago
How do you demand for smaller sites? To whom do you plead? Why will they listen to you?
- youareostriches 7y ago
  You demonstrate your intent by paying for content subscriptions rather than visiting sites entirely supported by online advertisements.
  - alexis_fr 7y ago
    There is no paid site that matches the quality of HN. Same goes for most social network: What gives them value is contributions, and contributions only seem to happen if the access is free. Otherwise you don’t reach a high-enough density of people.
    - youareostriches 7y ago
      It should’ve been obvious I was talking about news sites. Even if I wasn’t, you assumed I was talking about social media without any supporting basis.
holtalanm 7y ago
I have never seen a site that loaded hundreds of megs of data. That seems a little exaggeratory.
- 7y ago

reaperducer 7y ago

Do you really need your browser to tell you a site is loading slowly? You're staring at the screen; don't you know if it's slow just by existing and moving forward through time? Or is this just a way for Google to kill off the progress bar, too?

jefftk 7y ago
If I'm staring at the screen waiting for a page to load, a loading indicator can help me figure out if I should keep waiting longer or give up. That's very useful! If this gets site owners to work more on loading speed so they can get a badge that's great. I used to work on mod_pagespeed and one of the big problems was that publishers just didn't care that much about loading speed. (Disclosure: I work for Google)
- jfoster 7y ago
  Based on what this feature is and the scenario you described, I think it may disincent site owners from speeding up slow sites. At the moment, a user doesn't know if a site will ever load. If Chrome reassures that "this site usually loads slowly" they may stick around since they are then reassured that it probably will eventually load, it's just taking a while.
  - jefftk 7y ago
    Maybe users will respond that way, but that's still a good outcome. Giving users a better idea about what to expect so they can make more informed decisions? Great!
    - close04 7y ago
      > Giving users a better idea about what to expect Can I expect Google to do the same about data that may be sent by Chrome to Google without users realizing, just so users can make informed decisions?
      - 7y ago

shantly 7y ago

Memory size is a problem, too. Even a small amount of Javascript can allocate a ton of memory. I'd love to see a more memory-efficient language replace JS, then a reasonable but lowish memory limit put in place. Say, 8MB, which still seems generous to me. The only trouble is you'd have to find some way to keep developers from using the DOM as extra memory. But the capabilities of Web scripting languages, outside perhaps some very strict and explicitly enabled on a case-by-case basis sandbox, really ought to be limited more anyway.

icebraining 7y ago
JS is not necessarily heavy. For example, the Espruino is a platform running JS on microcontrollers with less than 100KB of RAM: https://www.espruino.com/ https://www.espruino.com/

buboard 7y ago

If their speed assessment works as "great" as their "mobile usability" tool works, i doubt their indicator will be actually meaningful. YEah speed matters a lot , but it's self-correcting. If a website cannot load after a minute on a spotty cellular connection , i ll just close the browser and they lose the impresison

Angostura 7y ago

I agree speed is a concern. It takes me at least second to tap the tittle AMP banner and then tap on the real website address.