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As more demands are placed on your hardware infrastructure you’ve got two choices: (1) increase your hardware infrastructure; or (2) make your hardware infrastructure more efficient. Google’s been grappling with the problem of late, and has decided that option (2) the the preferable way to go.
Google is working to diminish the amount of bandwidth it takes to service each user request. Google has already lightened the load on its homepage. The next logical place to trim some serious fat is at YouTube.
To reduce latency on videos, Google Labs has devised Feather, now in beta, which delivers YouTube pages without a lot of extras. The Feather edition of YouTube does away with search suggestions, comment posting, viewing all comments, video rating, and customization of the embedded player. The downside: not all videos will be available under the Feather option.
The upside is that Feather trims an astounding amount of bandwidth. Videos can be viewed at 52 KB rather than a more typical 391 KB. Which means more videos can be delivered to more users--without having to make big investments in back-end hardware.
Image Credit: Google, Kristjan Aunver/Flickr
Comments are closed on this article
HardK0re
December 04, 2009 at 6:01am
This has potential. I've been trying it for a while. But if I can't even comment on a video, let alone change the size of the player and I lose a lot of stuff I click very often. Trim fat? Just get adobe to make flash a tad bit lighter. Bingo. ~K0re_
webwagemage
December 04, 2009 at 5:22am
Hey Google:
Want to trim fat? Take out the annotations and YOUR STUPID ADS from the videos
!!!
GFC
December 03, 2009 at 11:29pm
I don't even notice the difference. I say, if you want to cut the fat, go for the morons that upload insane amount of useless stuff - problem solved.
aviaggio
December 03, 2009 at 6:14pm
Seems to work very well on my 2.5 year old laptop that normally chokes on YouTube. Big thumbs up!
DBsantos77
December 03, 2009 at 5:24pm
So will Youtube enable SQ now? (Sad Quality?)
-Santos
Teh Rig:
AMD Phenom 720 (Unlocked to Quad, Stable @ 3.4 Ghz 1.4v)
Gigabyte Micro ATX 785gx Motherboard
G.Skill 4GB 1333 DDR3 8-8-8-21 @ 1.6v
HIS ATI Radeon HD4670 (CCC OC'd)
550w Corsair
1337Goose
December 03, 2009 at 4:23pm
The comments on youtube generally leave something to be desired. Honestly, I don't think turning comments off really hurts your viewing experience, unless you're into trolling... in which case youtube threads are a great place to thrive.
~Goose
