[flukus]

Trouble is the amount of popular websites that simply don't care how long the page takes to load, 30 seconds would be acceptable to many as long as they get their advertising dollars.

Users won't know who to blame. They might blame the site but they're just as likely to blame Firefox, Microsoft, their ISP or a virus. There needs to be a display saying "hey, this site is slow because it's tracking you in 15 different ways, would you like to disable this permanently?".

[thephyber]

You're not thinking about this from a game theory perspective.

Slow down pages -> more users bounce -> fewer ad impressions -> less ad revenue.

[mehrdadn]

> You're not thinking about this from a game theory perspective.

> Slow down pages -> more users bounce -> fewer ad impressions -> less ad revenue.

Game theory is the theory of how agents deal with each other. You left out the most crucial part of agents affecting each other!

[twhb]

Yet, many big, profitable websites take 10-30 seconds to load on even the fastest connections. We can reconcile the theory later, but the fact is, much of today’s internet doesn’t optimize for load time.

[coolspot]

Also possible scenario is

Slow down pages -> more users frustrated with Firefox -> fewer user share -> Mozilla closes and donates all code to Apache Foundation.

[bigbugbag]

That would be great ! Where do I sign for this ? I cannot wait for this to happen.

[zaphirplane]

Or eclipse which gets unloved projects

[nyolfen]

how is this game theory?

[walshemj]

and lower rankings organically and for ppc get a low quality score on your add and it can really hurt your AdWords account

[duskwuff]

> Trouble is the amount of popular websites that simply don't care how long the page takes to load...

They absolutely do care, though. The longer a page takes to load, the less time users will spend on the site, and the more likely users will give up and close the window.

[tedmiston]

I think "load" here is subjective as well eg a spectrum from time to first paint and a page being visible and/or interactive, up until completely loading all async and deferred content, some of which might only happen after the user crosses the fold.

I think there's a lot of interest in optimizing that initial time but less so for the full load.