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What good are all these metrics, and measures, and approaches, and techniques when Google's own websites en masse wouldn't give two craps about them? Physician

What good are all these metrics, and measures, and approaches, and techniques when Google's own websites en masse wouldn't give two craps about them? Physician, heal thyself.

Guest0918231 7y ago
I just loaded a few Google services I use. AdSense takes 6 seconds to load. DoubleClick takes 10-15 seconds to load. Running a speed test on fast.com I'm getting 200Mbps. Without question Google makes the slowest and least responsive sites I use. It's like the 600lbs man giving tips for staying in shape and living a healthy lifestyle. When they have a nearly unlimited budget and access to some of the best engineers and infrastructure on the planet, and they can't practice what they preach, it's difficult for me to listen.
- anderspitman 7y ago
  Switching from Google Analytics to GoatCounter[0] was one of the best decisions I ever made for my personal site. I hadn't realized that the slowness of GA was keeping me from using it. The UI of GC is so fast that I often check it for fun, even on my phone. [0]: https://www.goatcounter.com/ https://www.goatcounter.com/
- kaycebasques 7y ago
  Are you referring to the AdSense and DoubleClick websites?
brlewis 7y ago
Why shouldn't they reach out to the public at the same time as reaching out to the rest of Google? It's a huge organization.
slig 7y ago
These metrics are good because your users care, and you can lose money if they leave, and that's why you should care.
- amenod 7y ago
  Of course you should care. It is just ironic that Google is preaching this.
  - eh78ssxv2f 7y ago
    It's not Google that's preaching this. It's Chrome. Sure, Chrome is owned by Google. but at the scale of Google, you might as well consider them as independent organizations.
walshemj 7y ago
it matters for SEO / inbound marketing
kaycebasques 7y ago
What Google sites are you referring to and what "do as I say, not as I do" behavior are you seeing? I'm not doubting you, I'm just asking for specific URLs so that I can forward the feedback to specific teams.
- fenwick67 7y ago
  Gmail and YouTube were the first Google products I could think of (other than search), neither loads in under a second over WiFi where I have 50Mbps. Not even with a warm cache.
- rurp 7y ago
  Gmail since the redesign is unbearably slow.
- dmitriid 7y ago
  Gmail. Youtube. Google.com is 34 requests and 2 MB resources. That page contains an image and an input box. Original web.dev they rolled out was something like 15 megabytes in size (thankfully, they fixed that). Google domains is 1.3 MB of JS for what is essentially a static site. Their recent announcement about some advanced video compression they did (I immediately forgot, it was on HN). 55 MB with a 3 second video on it. Material design. Just the front page is 3 MB of resources. Of them, 1.3 is Javascript. For a static page. I can agree though that they have very slowly been getting better with some of their public properties. When we start talking about internal/private/customer-oriented pages (GCP console, GMail that immediately come to mind), they are just horrendously awful.

What good are all these metrics, and measures, and approaches, and techniques when Google's own websites en masse wouldn't give two craps about them? Physician, heal thyself.

Guest0918231 7y ago

I just loaded a few Google services I use. AdSense takes 6 seconds to load. DoubleClick takes 10-15 seconds to load. Running a speed test on fast.com I'm getting 200Mbps. Without question Google makes the slowest and least responsive sites I use. It's like the 600lbs man giving tips for staying in shape and living a healthy lifestyle. When they have a nearly unlimited budget and access to some of the best engineers and infrastructure on the planet, and they can't practice what they preach, it's difficult for me to listen.

anderspitman 7y ago
Switching from Google Analytics to GoatCounter[0] was one of the best decisions I ever made for my personal site. I hadn't realized that the slowness of GA was keeping me from using it. The UI of GC is so fast that I often check it for fun, even on my phone. [0]: https://www.goatcounter.com/ https://www.goatcounter.com/
kaycebasques 7y ago
Are you referring to the AdSense and DoubleClick websites?

brlewis 7y ago

Why shouldn't they reach out to the public at the same time as reaching out to the rest of Google? It's a huge organization.

slig 7y ago

These metrics are good because your users care, and you can lose money if they leave, and that's why you should care.

amenod 7y ago
Of course you should care. It is just ironic that Google is preaching this.
- eh78ssxv2f 7y ago
  It's not Google that's preaching this. It's Chrome. Sure, Chrome is owned by Google. but at the scale of Google, you might as well consider them as independent organizations.

walshemj 7y ago

it matters for SEO / inbound marketing

kaycebasques 7y ago

What Google sites are you referring to and what "do as I say, not as I do" behavior are you seeing? I'm not doubting you, I'm just asking for specific URLs so that I can forward the feedback to specific teams.

fenwick67 7y ago
Gmail and YouTube were the first Google products I could think of (other than search), neither loads in under a second over WiFi where I have 50Mbps. Not even with a warm cache.
rurp 7y ago
Gmail since the redesign is unbearably slow.
dmitriid 7y ago
Gmail. Youtube. Google.com is 34 requests and 2 MB resources. That page contains an image and an input box. Original web.dev they rolled out was something like 15 megabytes in size (thankfully, they fixed that). Google domains is 1.3 MB of JS for what is essentially a static site. Their recent announcement about some advanced video compression they did (I immediately forgot, it was on HN). 55 MB with a 3 second video on it. Material design. Just the front page is 3 MB of resources. Of them, 1.3 is Javascript. For a static page. I can agree though that they have very slowly been getting better with some of their public properties. When we start talking about internal/private/customer-oriented pages (GCP console, GMail that immediately come to mind), they are just horrendously awful.