Speed Matters for Google Web Search [2009]
10 points by dhruvp
10 points by dhruvp
Back when Google actually did web search.
My new digital thermostat has an unavoidable latency of around 1000ms every time I want to adjust it. 2000ms+ if I need to switch it from cooling to heat, which is common in the early spring when for heat at night and AC during the day.
This latency is long enough for the wrong system to switch on if I don't adjust { temperature, mode } in the correct order. Woe is me and every other user of things undogfooded.
Can you write your own app for it? The latency of the digital on-device display of my ecobee units is second only to the even worse delays in the app and on their site, so I wrote a cli app to interface with it instead.
Probably not, as I have also refused to give it access to my WiFi, since I have seen too many horror stories on the security/privacy of these things, or folks learning by surprise that they've given their grid operator veto power over their air conditioning on hot days.
Speed matters for Google web search... but not much? Even at the highest added lag they only lost half percent of searches. It's good to have a monopoly.
Also, imagine being a technical user included the the highest lag tier and wasting a bunch of time trying to figure why searches are slow from one of your machines but not from the other.