This is how Google Web Light makes websites look in slow connections

If Google is to get a hold of the next billion first smartphone owners, they need to do much more than just sell affordable smartphones. This much we have established. This is something the Search Giant really focused on at Google IO, where they announced more initiatives that would improve the smartphone experience in emerging markets.

One very important issue that was addressed was slow connections. Google never named this feature, but we do know it is being internally named “Google Web Light”. This is a service that would optimize websites for 4x faster loading and less data consumption. About 80% less data, to be exact. In short, it should make your browsing much faster than it would be if you loaded a regular page.

Google Web Light would automatically activate when the browser detects slow internet speeds (we don’t know how slow), and only in select emerging markets. This means we likely won’t be seeing this feature coming to the USA anytime soon, and so far it’s only available in Indonesia.

I guess what matters here is we haven’t quite seen how pages will look when this feature is active, until today. In fact, Google has a page that allows you to preview it, and we just wanted to show you an example so you can get an idea of how Google Web Light works. Here is how the Android Authority mobile site looks without, and with the optimizations.

So there’s an obvious decrease in details and imaging, which was to be expected. Images also show in much lower quality, but at least your data speeds will seem much faster and pages will load in a jiffy.

I honestly can’t see why this should only be a feature for emerging markets. I hate trying to browse the internet when out of the city. A feature like Google Web Light would truly be a life saver. Wouldn’t you agree?