Member Avatar for rusho00

I posted 2 days ago about connections problems to Google.com and more major websites. The reason was broken pipes from my country to the USA.

While this connection problem occurred I noticed that when I accessed other websites, that were easily accessible, the Google toolbar slowed down the connection speed. After disabling the toolbar all was ok and the speed was good again.

I thought the toolbar didn't affect the speed of accessing other websites except from checking the PR, but it actually caused a long delay for each page to appear. I don't how much of a problem this is but I got a feeling that the toolbar plays a bigger role in the surfing experience than I previously thought.

I know this may reveal my little knowlegde of the technology behind the Google Toolbar but that's ok, maybe you will teach me a little about this stuff.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Robdale

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Brief answer: both views can be right. A toolbar normally adds only small overhead, but when the network route to the toolbar's servers is slow or broken, the extra background work an extension does can create a noticeable delay on every page load. That explains 's experience while and are also correct for normal conditions.

Why it happens: toolbars and add-ons often make automatic network requests (updates, lookups, suggestions), inject scripts into pages, or run code in the browser's page process. If any of those remote calls are delayed (high latency, DNS failures, or timeouts) the browser may wait longer before the page is usable. Extensions that run synchronously on the main thread or load extra resources per page amplify the effect.

Quick, practical checks:

  • Test with the toolbar disabled (use the browser add-on/extension manager). For Internet Explorer you can also test with iexplore -extoff; Firefox has a "Restart with Add-ons Disabled" (Safe Mode).
  • Open Developer Tools -> Network and watch for long requests or requests initiated by an extension; the Initiator and Timing columns point to the offender.
  • Run a traceroute/tracert to the slow site and to Google to confirm routing/latency problems; use nslookup/dig to rule out DNS delays.
  • Create a clean browser profile or a portable browser to see if the problem disappears.

If the toolbar is the culprit: disable the offending features, update or remove the toolbar, or switch to a lighter extension. If the root cause is routing to Google (persistent high latency or packet loss), work with the ISP or try an alternative route (VPN) as a diagnostic step.

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Member Avatar for Techie08

I don't think a google toolbar would slow down your connection that much, since it's not really doing too much. It sounds more like general connection issues, are you using wireless? I'm not a whiz on computers, but normally google's toolbar doesn't affect the speed at which you surf the net. Sorry i couldn't be more help.

Member Avatar for Robdale

I too agree with Techie's answer, toolbar don't affect the net speed. May be some sites which takes lot of time to load can affect the speed.

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