Google is pressing forward with its efforts to speed up the Internet. Early this morning, the company launched Page Speed Service, which is designed to automatically speed up Web pages when they load. The service intervenes between Web servers and users, rewriting a Web page's code to improve its performance and applying other related tricks.

The service improves on previous offerings from Google. Page Speed began as a diagnostic tool and then as software that developers could install and configure for free. With every step, Google has increased the ease and automation of the service. This is in keeping with the strategy the company described to me when we discussed Google's Make the Web Faster Initiative. I sat down with Richard Rabbat, a product manager for the initiative, and Arvind Jain, its technical lead:

The best solutions of all, Rabbat and Jain realized, would spread with as little human intervention as possible. As Rabbat puts it, "Instead of telling people what the problems are, can we just fix it for them automatically?"

In fact, Ram Ramani, an engineering manager for the Bangalore team that worked on Page Speed Service, emphasizes that Google is primarily interested in seeing faster websites, however that's achieved. If people want to steal tricks from Page Speed Service, they're more than welcome to it, Ramani says. The service is there, however, because in reality many developers have trouble maintaining good Web performance as sites grow and change.

Jain says, "Making your site faster should not become a burden to a developer."

According to Joshua Bixby, president of Strangeloop, a Web optimization company, the service is important, but probably insufficient for enterprise customers. He wrote in a blog post:

Page Speed will be a handy resource for smaller sites with little to no complexity, whose owners don't have developer time to pour into hand-tuning their sites, or the money to put into investing in an advanced performance automation solution. It fills an important gap in the market, and while it may not solve every performance pain, it should solve some — hopefully giving small business owners a chance to level the playing field by speeding up their sites enough to remain competitive in an increasingly brutal online marketplace.

Choosing a broadband provider is a little like shopping blind folded: you rarely know what speed connection you'll actually get until you've handed over your first month's subscription. Also, marketing material carefully uses the phrase "up to", so consumers tend to only know about the best case scenario speeds of different providers.

To address the problem, Ookla, the company behind Speedtest.net, has just released data that shows what speed different ISPs deliver. The company's NetIndex site already ranks cities, U.S. states, and countries by their average connection speeds. The new data comes from a questionnaire that appears after someone uses speedtest.net to test their connection. In the last 30 days or so, around 100,000 people have responded.

Scroll to the bottom of this page to see the ranking of all ISPs across the U.S. At the time of writing Comcast comes out top, followed by less well known providers Charter, Optimum Online, MidContinent Communications and Road Runner. You can drill down to see the list for individual states, for example Massachusetts, and cities.

"This is the kind of data that people haven't been able to see before," says Ookla co-founder Mike Apgar, also revealing plans to have speedtest.net tell you how your connection compares to the average in your state or local area. He's also working on a "value index" that compares ISPs based on the price you pay for each Mbps you get.

"It gets a little more interesting when we get into what people are paying," says Apgar. For example, preliminary data shows that the average monthly cost of broadband in the U.S. is $47.32, at a cost of $5.06 per Mbps. Comparing states is more interesting: Washington residents pay $3.89 per Mbps, those in California $4.24 and inhabitants of Idaho $8.80. "The ultimate vision is that we'll have a site where you can compare ISPs from across the globe," Apgar adds. Given South Korea's clear lead in the global speed stakes, 26 places ahead of the U.S., it's likely the country will also dominate that list.