Jake Archibald avatar Jake Archibald

Performance-testing the Google I/O site

Screenshot of “Performance-testing the Google I/O site”

https://jakearchibald.com/2021/io-site-perf/

Jake continues his series of web performance audits, this time with the site for Google's I/O conference, and the result is a real shame.

Imagine you went to a restaurant, took a seat, and 20 minutes later you still haven't been given a menu. You ask where it is, and you're told "oh, we're currently cooking you everything you might possibly ask for. Then we'll give you the menu, you'll pick something, and we'll be able to give you it instantly, because it'll all be ready". This sounds like a silly way to do things, but it's the strategy the I/O site is using.

I really hope there are very good excuses for this mess.

  4. General question about synthetic performance monitoring:

    How do you define the device/network settings of your tests?

    • Do you use low end devices / bad network to easily detect issues?
    • Or do you try to be close to your RUM data, to have more predictability when you deploy changes?

    I usualy do the former, but I think both could be useful.