Running Google PageSpeed Service? Come August 3rd your site is knackered

Chocolate Factory taking performance tool out behind the barn

Google has announced the impending retirement of its PageSpeed Service web optimization tool, and potentially causing headaches for sites that don't account for the move.

The Mountain View advertising firm said that effective August 3rd, PageSpeed Service will be given the axe, though plugins and third-party implementations will continue to run.

"After 4.5 years of service, the PageSpeed Service team regretfully decided that the time had come to re-focus their efforts elsewhere and on May 5th announced that PageSpeed Service will be turned down," Google said.

More importantly, sites that use PageSpeed Service will need to update their DNS before Google pulls the plug on August 3rd, or risk becoming completely unavailable to users. Google has posted instructions on how to migrate.

The firm is planning to send notifications to all users who will be affected by the shutdown, but cautions admins to check with the PageSpeed console just in case the email gets lost.

For nearly a half-decade, PageSpeed has served as Google's way for administrators to both speed up and analyze the loading of web pages.

The Chocolate Factory also offers PageSpeed plugins through Apache and Nginx, as well as in an SDK. Those plugins will still work following the shutdown, as will PageSpeed services offered by hosting providers.

Google also directed potential defectors to the EdgeCast Edge Optimizer, which also runs PageSpeed. Not mentioned was top competitor CloudFlare, who offers optimization among its line of site management tools.

Google regularly purges its less-successful web services in semi-annual "cleaning" efforts, shutting down little-used projects in favor of concentrating on more popular ones. In the case of PageSpeed, the Chocolate Factory said it was indeed looking to "re-focus" and shift its time and money elsewhere. ®