Yeah, this is old news, but I’ve been thinking about Google’s web accelerator. As you recall, Google introduced this in early May, but a week later stopped downloads, claiming that it had reached capacity for the time being. Not everyone was buying that as the reason. The web accelerator was derided by many webmasters for various implementation drawbacks, and when Google halted the beta distribution, many smelled the same kind of disingenuous spin that they heard with the Google News/China incident. Many believed that Google pulled the program because of the webmaster’s complaints, and manufactured the “capacity” issue as a coverup.
I’m not so sure. A very credible source insists that, for now anyway, Google simply can’t handle the load. “(Google) ran out of bandwidth,” the source told me. “It’s as simple as that.”
While Google certainly does have an extraordinary infrastructure, it is not limitless, and I think this move proves it.
