Mark Geller

Erick Schonfeld wrote an article in TechCrunch today called Google’s Need For Speed, in which he argues Google is obsessed with speed because it leads users to do more searches, which results in more ad clicks. He notes Google research that shows delays of a few hundred milliseconds returning results translated to 0.6% fewer searches by users, which could add up to tens of millions of dollars per quarter in lost revenue.

It is true Google is obsessed with speed. Recent examples include TechCrunch’s confirmation that Google’s URL shortener is the fastest on the Internet as well as the statement by Gmail product manager, Todd Jackson, at SXSW that no new features will be added to Gmail that increase latency, period.

However, to say Google is passionate about speed because it leads to more searches and more ad revenue misses the larger point. Instead, Google’s speed obsession comes from the recognition by the founders and other Googlers that faster speed makes most products better, and better products lead to broader adoption, greater usage, a higher quality of life for everyone, and yes, more revenue and profits for Google.

Latency is a tax. The longer it takes to do something, the less likely we are to do it, or to do it often, or to enjoy doing it. For example, take going to the DMV or the post office. These errands are dreaded mainly because they take a long time and involve waiting for a random and unpredictable amount of time. If you knew going to the DMV would take 5 minutes or the post office was a simple in-and-out trip, you might not love it, but you would not dread it.

The same goes for tech products. Google search by voice on the iPhone is a great feature–the voice recognition is truly remarkable. However, because the feature takes *a few more seconds* to load and return results, I usually type the query instead. If the experience were instant, I would use it more often, which might lead to me using other Google services or iPhone apps more, which when added together may make me less likely to switch phones and even carriers–big differences from latencies of a few seconds.

However, more than increasing revenue, Google’s founders are simply passionate about making better products and faster experiences. I recall Larry Page in a company-wide meeting bemoaning the fact that it takes longer to boot up a machine and write a simple Word document today than it did 20 years ago–i.e., the industry as a whole had failed to improve one of the most basic computing tasks in two decades. He was personally bummed by this lack of performance. And all Googlers are well aware of Larry’s and Sergey’s practice of expressing latency in terms of the human lifetimes lost, e.g. “If this feature takes 2 seconds longer than it should and it is used 200 million times per day by users, that means we are wasting 146 billion seconds of users’ time per year, which equates to 61 human lifetimes–in other words, this feature is killing 61 people per year.”

In other words, Google cares about speed because Google cares about users.  That increases revenue for Google and it will for the rest of us too.