Over the years we've seen no limit of specialized hardware, software or other gadgetry promising to defeat the laws of physics and speed up your Internet connection above and beyond its basic capabilities. From the "Juice Boosted" scam to Earthlink's latest absurd acceleration ploy, by and large these are all snake oil. Even well-intentioned ideas to deploy new, faster protocols 99.4% of the time wind up being little more than blistering hype. With that in mind, Google today issued a post over at the Chrome blog claiming they were working on a new protocol they insist could double the speed of everyday browsing:Of course "simulated home network connections" and "lab conditions" are no substitute for the real world, which is why Google is reaching out to the broader community to help test the new protocol, which integrates concepts such as multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression. Those interested can take a closer look at the protocol's white paper for some added technical specifics. From a quick read this isn't so much about replacing HTTP as it is about mutating it into something more efficient, and Google certainly is no idiot at content transfer efficiency.

Again though, -- we've seen these kinds of promises so many times -- be it compression, new protocols, or variations of existing protocols, that we're just kind of innately skeptical until we see real world application. As with any innovation, you might want to wait until Google has a working product before doling out your kisses. Certainly Google's Chrome browser will get lots and lots of added attention from the media from this announcement, so at least that's something substantive.