would be interesting to compare this to world wide typical and average bandwidth availability.
google used to prize page load times for their search landing page. i wonder if the increase is coming about because they recognize they can indeed get away with it and maintain their performance goals, or if they re-shifted priorities and/or acceptable values for load times.
Perhaps also the page is tee-ing up for even faster results page access, by way of instant search.
And I haven't checked, but perhaps most of the k weight comes in after the page has rendered, in which case it wouldn't negatively impact perceived load time.
The page is also more featurefull than it used to be when in the logged in state.
google used to prize page load times for their search landing page. i wonder if the increase is coming about because they recognize they can indeed get away with it and maintain their performance goals, or if they re-shifted priorities and/or acceptable values for load times.