Accessing Google Services for Slow Internet Connections

Accessing some of the Google services which are rich in content may be frustrating if your Internet connection is slow. Here are some helpful features as compiled by the unofficial Google Operating System blog.

1. Gmail's basic HTML mode

Access inbox using https://mail.google.com/mail/h/.

2. Disable Google Instant and auto-complete suggestions

Disable Google Instant at https://www.google.com/preferences?hl=en and then use https://www.google.com/search?complete=0 for search.

3. YouTube Feather

Access using experimental http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta.

4. The old Google image search interface

Access using https://www.google.com/imghp?sout=1.

5. Chrome's click-to-play feature

Type chrome://chrome/settings/content on your Chrome address bar and press enable "Click to Play" in the "Plug-Ins" section to loads content that requires plug-ins on demand.

6. Google's transcoder

Access website using http://google.com/gwt/n to compress websites before loading.

7. The text-only Google Cache

Load a simplified version of the page directly from Google Cache by accessing http://www.google.com/search?strip=1&q=cache:www.domain.com (replace www.domain.com with the URL of the page) on your browser.

8. Chrome's custom user agent feature

Load webpages in mobile devices user agent does the trick of loading pages quicker.

To change the user agent in Chrome, open the developer tools (Ctrl+Shift+I for Windows/Linux, Command-Option-I for Mac), click the "Settings" button at the bottom of the window, click "User Agent", enable "Override User Agent", select "Android 4.0.2 - Google Nexus" or "iPhone - iOS 5.0" from the list and disable "override device metrics".

9. Google Public DNS

Google Public DNS is a simple way to speed up your browsing experience if the DNS service you're using is slow.

10. Use a browser that supports SPDY

SPDY, a new protocol "designed for low-latency transport of content over the World Wide Web." Right now, SPDY is supported by Chrome and Firefox, while many Google sites use it.

11. Google+ in mobile

Access Google+ using https://m.google.com/app/plus/x/ loads Google+ on mobile version, saving precious bandwidth.