Faster and lighter mobile web pages for Indonesia
Google are trying to make the web faster in developing technology countries starting a trial in Indonesia. As part of Google search results users will have an option for a faster experience… something they are sure to choose if on a limited 2G connection. After a quick test I found that they strip external references, inline all CSS, replace image references with base-64 encoded images and lazy load in parts of the page that aren’t immediately visible on the device.
In two weeks, we’re starting a field test in Indonesia to provide streamlined search results and optimized pages when the user searches on slow mobile connections, such as 2G. Our experiments show that optimized pages load four times faster than the original page and use 80% fewer bytes. As our users’ overall experience became faster, we saw a 50% increase in traffic to these optimized pages.
An excerpt from Faster and lighter mobile web pages for Indonesia
