One reason to use SSL is to avoid any intermediary caching servers. I hope those days are gone but some providers might still use them. Data retrieved via SSL w

One reason to use SSL is to avoid any intermediary caching servers. I hope those days are gone but some providers might still use them. Data retrieved via SSL would avoid the local cache and be more accurate. So perhaps this was one of the factors in the decision to use SSL. The decision to turn on compression could have been completely separate.