Beware Google Web Accelerator

I recently decided to check out Google’s latest beta product, Google Web Accelerator. Strangely, I’ve not heard a peep about it, but just saw a link on some search page result. It seems like a basic prefetch and cache scheme. It also gives you stats about how much time it has supposedly saved you. After a couple days of on again, off again web use, I had saved about a minute and a half. Nothing groundbreaking there. You privacy-minded people might get your hackles raised about the fact that some potentially private data is sent to Google as part of the service, although they warn you about 3 times during the setup process and you have to check and say it’s ok with you.

I don’t get too worried about the privacy stuff, but beyond the dubious time savings it’s supposedly giving me, it just wasted about a half hour of my time.

I had just uploaded some files to the LAB, and when I went to check them out, I noticed a little bug. No big deal, fixed it, re-uploaded. Bug still there. File must be cached, right? Clear cache. Still there. Shut down Firefox, restart, clear cache again. Bug still there. Check code. Tests OK in Flash. Maybe an 8.5 player bug? Check file locally. It’s ok. Re-upload. Clear cache, restart Firefox. Bug still there. WTF??? Delete file from server. Clear cache. Not only is the bug still there, the file is still there. Dawn breaks over marblehead. Google Web Accelerator is super-caching the damn thing. Go to prefs, select, “do not accelerate this site.” File still there! Turn off GWA. File gone. Re-upload. Bug fixed. Uninstall GWA.