After Netflix’s Fast.com, Google building its own speed test tool

We use the internet on a daily basis—at home, at office—and many times we don’t get the speed promised to us in the internet pack. There are plenty of sites that offer free speed test tools, but when Google comes out with its own internet speed test tool, you wouldn’t need any other. Yes, that’s right, tech giant Google is now working on a speed test feature, which will be embedded right into its search.

All you need to do is search the phrase ‘speed test’ on Google, and you can double check your Mbps rate. This comes precisely a month after Netflix unveiled its speed test website called Fast.com, which lets you check your internet speed by just typing in the URL. Microsoft’s Bing also has a similar feature built into its search results. On searching ‘internet speed test’ or ‘speed test,’ the first result shows a tool with a meter, IP address and start button to being the test. Once completed, the results show up right there.

The search engine test was first noticed by Twitter user Pete Meyers, who posted a screenshot of the feature and unearthed a Google Support webpage detailing how it works. The speed test feature performs with the help of Google’s Measurement Lab tools, which was founded in 2009 and studies global internet performance, is composed of academic researchers, industry professionals, and Google employees Vint Cerf and Stephen Stuart. Although the tool, which aims to test upload speed, download speed, and latency, doesn’t seem to have rolled out in India. So, we could not test it out ourselves.

Google’s support webpage does lay down details on how the tool works, but the company has warned that the tool transfers ‘less than 40MB’ of data. However, on a faster connection, it may transfer more.