Google looks to 'caffeine' for significant speed boost

by Stevie Smith - Aug 11 2009, 15:45

With Microsoft and Yahoo partnering against Google in the search/advertising market and Facebook this week announcing the acquisition of real-time search specialist FriendFeed, the online search titan is hitting back with a much-needed performance boost of its own.

More pointedly, Google Inc. has today revealed a “secret project” that it claims will drastically improve the processing times associated with the search queries of its global user base.

Currently dubbed “caffeine” by watching and waiting industry insiders, Google has skirted around concrete details regarding its revamped search platform, although it is expected to officially replace the existing Google engine once service tests have been successfully carried out.

Of course, while Google users probably won’t notice any obvious changes to the aesthetic presentation of the world’s most popular search engine, Google has indicated that radical back-end alterations will result in considerable performance improvements.   

“For the past several months a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search,” outlined the online giant in an official blog announcement.

“It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

The upcoming service improvements would suggest Google is not willing to rest on its laurels in relation to its absolute dominance in the online search market – not least considering Microsoft’s continuing efforts to haul back the search leader and also the appearance of alternative search engines such as the recently launched Wolfram Alpha.

With competition building in the search space, Google’s promised performance upgrade should, according to Martin McNulty, director of search marketing specialist Trafficbroker, result in Google running “almost twice as fast at times… like a Google Gti.”

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