The early-stage plans were announced at the company's Chrome Dev Summit in San Francisco and will see Google start to identify and "badge" websites that take longer to load than usual.

Axar.az reports citing the Inquirer.

"In the future, Chrome may identify sites that typically load fast or slow for users with clear badging," explains a blog post from the Chrome team. "This may take a number of forms and we plan to experiment with different options, to determine which provides the most value to our users."

The feature could manifest itself in different ways, according to Google. This could include the shaming of sluggish websites with a dedicated splash screen, or a colour-changing progress bar that would appear green if the site is fast and, presumably, red if it's slow.

Google says in order to identify snails-pace websites it will look at whether sites are authored in a way that makes them slow generally, looking at historical load latencies. Going forward, it also plans to sniff out when a page is likely to be slow for a user based on their device and network conditions.

"Our plan to identify sites that are fast or slow will take place in gradual steps, based on increasingly stringent criteria," Google adds. "Our long-term goal is to define badging for high-quality experiences, which may include signals beyond just speed."

It's not clear when Google will roll out speed badging as a feature, and there's a chance it might never see the light of day; the firm's blog post fails doesn't fully commit to bringing the feature to Chrome.

Google also this week revealed plans to make web apps as fast as their desktop counterparts: "Our vision is that applications shouldn't require heavyweight downloads or updates," it said. "The web should be more than enough for any user experience." µ