Google has a well-developed sense of irony.

Yesterday evening, performance of Google’s own websites (Gmail, Calendar, Google itself) deteriorated so badly so quickly that they became unusable in Chrome. Everything was fine on other sites and in other browsers, so I contacted Google support about the problem.

Support was extremely quick to respond and very helpful. The support rep recommended that I first try disabling the new experimental protocol they had just rolled out. I disabled it, and indeed, perfomance came back to the usual near-instantaneous level.

Apparently, their fancy new protocol didn’t play nice with their own sites, slowing them down to the speed of a snail on Diazepam.

The name of the new protocol?

Quic.

PS: In an unexpected deviation from normal supplier behavior, when I asked my support rep how it was possible that Google had rolled out an experimental protocol that brought their own websites to a screeching halt, the rep answered honestly. Here’s what he said:

Google works in a weirdly manner as this is not the first time that something is rolled out in this way, I think that they evaluate potential customer that could be affected and if the number is not that significant or the impact in production is not that relevant, they proceed, in this way they also push the manufacturer to be ready for the future technology, you called Google, but I bet some other customer called Dell or HP or Lenovo to complain about it, is just an strategical business plan.