May 9, 2005

On Friday, Google confirmed that it was aware of as many as five sites where Web Accelerator was returning users cached pages under other people's user names.

Google's Web Accelerator uses a combination of local and server-based caching and preloading of Web pages to more quickly serve Web pages to a user's browser.

Google's servers, in many ways, act as an intermediary between Web sites and a user's browser.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has stopped caching pages from those sites, said Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web.

Users of some smaller Web forum sites have complained in online postings that they began receiving Web pages which displayed other people's user names after downloading Web Accelerator. The forum site, Somethingawful.com, was among those warning its users to avoid Web Accelerator because of reports that pages from other users' logins were exposed.

"It is an unfortunate problem, but it looks worse than it is," Mayer said. "We are caching those pages on the server side with the user name on them…You see it, but it's important to point out that you are not logged in as user and you do not have the session cookies needed to perform operations as [that] user."

Mayer said the problem stemmed from the way some sites have implemented their HTTP cache-control headers, which provide information such as language preferences to a browser. Google uses those headers to determine whether a page is meant for an individual user, in which case it would not live on its servers, Mayer said.

Google plans to notify the Webmasters of the affected sites about the need to fix their cache-control headers as well as work on a solution within Web Accelerator, Mayer said.

Web Accelerator already prevented secure sites using the HTTPS protocol, such as online banking and e-mail sites, from being cached.

Read more here about the initial test of Google's Web Accelerator.

Web Accelerator's problems appear to extend beyond forum sites, though. Web-based software developer 37Signals LLC began blocking the program after discovering that it was initiating links which performed critical functions, such as account deletions, on 37Signal's Web applications.

A few users complained about deleted accounts on 37Signals's Basecamp and Backpack applications, and the company traced the problem to Web Accelerator, said 37Signals President Jason Fried. To make matters worse, the problem occurred the same week that the Chicago-based company launched Backpack, a personal-information management application.

"It was serious enough to frighten us, since we had just released a product and it coincided with Google's release," said Fried, who first wrote about the issue in his Weblog. "We became aware of the Web Accelerator issue, and within 30 minutes of figuring it out we instituted a block."

As for Web Accelerator's impact on Web applications, Mayer initially said that most of the reports she had seen appeared to be unsubstantiated. When informed about 37Signals' problems, she said that it is possible that some sites are not complying with a Web standard used by Web Accelerator.

Web Accelerator ignores links where a question mark appears before the URL string in the HTML code. A question mark is usually included in a string to indicate personally identifiable information such as a user ID and would typically be used in a link that performs a function like a deletion, Mayer said.

"The product is in beta," Mayer said. "It could be that our assumption around the question mark and the way sites comply with the standard is incorrect. If that is the case, then we'll have to redesign the prefetch algorithm."

Click here to read about how Google's browser toolbar update stirred up a debate over Web site content.

Fried acknowledged that the applications do not conform to all standards. For example, functions such as a deletion technically should be handled with buttons rather than links, he said.

Google needs to recognize, however, that many sites use methods that vary from standards, he said.

"To me, the real test here is not so much that Google may have made mistake but how they respond to it," Fried said. "Are they going to call it a mistake or blame everyone else to [make them] build products the way they should be built in a perfect world?"

For other users, Web Accelerator has caused a number of unwanted changes to their Web browsing.

Mike Rumble, a Web programmer at U.K.-based Lawton Communications Group Ltd., said he downloaded Web Accelerator on Thursday and soon noticed that about one out of every 20 Web sites were failing to load. Instead, he was redirected to an error page from Web Accelerator, prompting him to try again or to search on Google.

Rumble faced more trouble when he visited his Web-based e-mail account from Apple Computer Inc.'s .Mac service. He was continuously logged out of the account, something he blamed on Web Accelerator's preloading of pages.

"After signing in it became impossible to get any use out of the service, as every click would lead back to a sign-in page," Rumble said in an e-mail interview. "It appears that the Web Accelerator's prefetching mechanism was signing me out of the service as soon as I had signed in, by 'clicking' on the sign-out link and killing my session."

Rumble, who regularly tries out new software for his office, said he decided to disable Web Accelerator because he feared that it could also wreak havoc on his company's Web-based content management system.

"Google Web Accelerator appears to be a poorly executed, potentially destructive product," he said.

Similar sentiments to Rumble's have been shared in blog postings and online forums across the Web, though other users have said that they are finding that Web Accelerator is saving them time in their Web browsing.

To Mayer, part of the backlash against Web Accelerator likely is a result of Google sitting in the middle between users' browsers and Web sites.

By caching Web pages on Google's servers, Web Accelerator is following caching methods already in use by ISPs and by many corporate firewalls, Mayer said. But Google is making that activity more visible to users, who often are not aware that their employers or ISP may be serving them earlier versions of a Web page.

"It does break the paradigm of how people are used to browsing," Mayer said. "It does change the experience slightly in little ways, and it's worth the tradeoff."

Source: eWeek

Read Serge Thibodeau's daily blogs on search engines at Serge Thibodeau Live. We strongly suggest you bookmark our web site by clicking here.

Get your business or company listed in the Global Business Listing directory and increase your business. It takes less then 24 hours to get a premium listing in the most powerful business search engine there is. Click here to find out all about it.

Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.

You can link to the Rank for Sales web site as much as you like. Read our section on how your company can participate in our reciprocal link exchange program and increase your rankings in all the major search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo and all the others.

Call Rank for Sales toll free from anywhere in the US or Canada:   1-800-631-3221
email:   info@rankforsales.com

| Home | SEO Tips | SEO Myths | FAQ | SEO News | Articles | Sitemap | Contact |

---

Copyright © Rank for Sales 2003    Terms of use    Privacy agreement    Legal disclaimer

       Ce site est disponible en Français