Google Chrome might "speed-shame" slow loading websites by posting a warning

by Alan Friedman / Nov 12, 2019, 12:27 PM

Google's Chrome team put up a blog post on Monday in which it said that future versions of Chrome might identify sites that load fast or too slowly. And this will be accomplished by placing badges on these webpages to make sure that users know when to expect a particular website to take longer to load. Besides identifying when a website might be slow due to the way that it is written, Google says that a "slow badge" could be added to sites that take longer to load due to the device and the network being employed. At the same time, Google wants to reward those sites that load quickly on the Chrome browser.

Google included an illustration with its blog post that showed the placement of a warning badge on a slow loading site's splash screen that alerts users that a particular website "Usually loads slow." Those sites on the other end of the spectrum will apparently sport a green progress bar just under the URL field to let the user know that the webpage requested will be loaded lickety-split. The company plans to identify slow and fast loading sites gradually and also plans on badging sites that offer high-quality experiences defined by more than just how fast or slow they load.

Badge denoting a slower loading website at left, a green progress bar rewarding a fast loading site on the right

"Speed has been one of Chrome’s core principles since the beginning - we’re constantly working to give users an experience that is instant as they browse the web. That said, we have all visited web pages we thought would load fast, only to be met by an experience that could have been better. We think the web can do better and want to help users understand when a site may load slowly, while rewarding sites delivering fast experiences"-Google

The company says that besides badging a website's splash screen or progress bar, it might add the typical loading speeds for the site being visited. This would be done so that users are aware of what to expect before they start navigating a particular website.

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4 Comments

1. Rampage_Taco

Posts: 1109; Member since: Jan 17, 2017

The concept seems quite convenient. But there are other factors at play when it comes to load speeds, which aren't necessarily the fault of the website. As for the other feature of tagging "high-quality", couldn't Google use that to their advantage and pick and choose what sites are high-quality to control internet traffic. Then use this system to draw more traffic to their owned or affiliated sites while swaying viewers away from "enemy" sites? Or perhaps even strong arm sites to pay them to be deemed "High-Quality"