As part of its "make the Web fast" effort, Google has released version 1.0 of a module designed to improve the very widely used Apache software that's very widely used to host Web sites.

The Apache Software Foundation's flagship project is Web server software that delivers Web pages to people's browsers when they request it. It can be extended, and Google believes its mod_pagespeed extensoin for Apache is ready for use, Google said in a blog post.

Related stories

• Google's SPDY wins new allies in plan to rebuild Web plumbing
• Facebook endorses Google's SPDY networking protocol
• 'Speed Dial' finally comes to Firefox

"Users prefer faster sites and we have seen that faster pages lead to higher user engagement, conversions, and retention," said mod_pagespeed technical lead Joshua Marantz and Ilya Grigorik, developer advocate for Google's Make the Web Fast project. And Google offers a big incentive of its own: sites that load faster get p... [Read more]