Google PageSpeed service for optimising websites to shut down on 3 August

7 May 2015

PageSpeed helped web developers to optimise and run websites faster

In another display of its “kill your darlings” approach to strategy, Google is to close down its popular PageSpeed service, its hosted solution for optimising and making websites run faster.

Developers have until 3 August to change their DNS settings or their sites will disappear.

PageSpeed helps developers to do things like compress images to optimise cache settings, JavaScript and CSS files. It also caches static assets and delivers them from Google servers around the world.

In a notice on the Google developers page, Google Developers: “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 5 May announced that PageSpeed Service will be turned down. If you are using PageSpeed Service, you must change your DNS before 3 August 2015 or your site(s) will become completely unavailable on that date.

“Explicit notification will soon be sent to users that we believe are affected, however you should not rely on this! We recommend that you log in to the console and look at your list of domains. Anything that shows up as ‘Enabled’ is at risk,” Google said.

Web dev image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com