There has been a lot of talk around the blogs today on Google’s new Web Accelerator but one of the unique perspectives I’ve seen is an essay by Mike Lambert titled PageRank 2.0. Mike explains the lack of income stream attached to the Web Accelerator by speculating that it will actually help Google to more accurately rank pages in a climate where inbound links are less and less reliable for ranking the page rank of a site (due to spam).
‘Instead of using a random surfer model, Google can use a real surfer model, based on the aggregate web traffic of the people using their Web Accelerator. They can discover /exactly/ how the Google Juice should flow in the real world.’
The Google Web Accelerator Privacy Policy says could support this theory as it includes the statement – ‘When you use Google Web Accelerator, Google servers receive and log your page requests…’
It’s an interesting theory – and one that I’m sure will be debated by many for some time to come. What do you think?
Update: Check out some of the following discussions going on in forums – all in all the reaction to the Accelerator is NOT positive:
Also check out Inside Google’s take:
‘The privacy implications are staggering. Google can now know absolutely everything. If they thought Gmail created a mess when the Gmail ad thing went down, its going to look like a stubbed toe next to this. The hell will rain down on Google over the following weeks, you better believe it.’
