Google Stresses Speed Yet Again with New Tool

Google has launched a new extension for its Chrome browser, which lets developers identify performance problems with their web apps. This may be an increasingly important issue if Google starts counting speed as a ranking factor in search results. The tool is called Speed Tracer , and it uses a "sluggishness graph" combined with other metrics to help pinpoint the problems that are slowing web apps down. Engineering Director Bruce Johnson explains : In the spirit of clean, simple design, developers need only look at the Y-Axis of their application's Sluggishness Graph to see how they're doing: