But it is not just a cold start problem. Check your network tab on a "warm" search.
Here is what I get:
2 seconds to load and 1.12MB transferred, all on "warm" start.
Re:The Google home page is 500K
by PragmaticPulp on Friday December 24, 2021 @09:08AM
(#29673679)
Using Chrome Dev Tools I'm seeing around 150-200KB actually transferred on each search page result (2MB resources, though most are cached).
I'm also seeing content loaded happen in under 1 second.
Can't tell from your UI screenshot, but quite often loading a page with devtools open will disable the cache. I forget if this is the default behavior or not.
You’re looking at cold start download sizes, but that’s not what people actual see after everything is cached follow the first load.
Google pages load plenty fast on every device I’ve used recently, including some very old android tablets. Most page loads don’t transfer much data at all due to caching. Combined with the high speeds of both browsers and devices today, there wouldn’t be much real change in a highly stripped down Google page relative to what they’re serving up today.