Google Confirms Bugs in Web Accelerator
Matt Hicks confirms that Google Accelerator does indeed have a bug that can cause users to see web pages under other users' logins.

Google officials Friday confirmed that the company was aware of as many as five sites where Web Accelerator was returning users cached pages under other people's user names.

"It is an unfortunate problem, but it looks worse than it is," Mayer said. "We are caching those pages on the server side with the user name on them…You see it, but it's important to point out that you are not logged in as user and you do not have the session cookies needed to perform operations as [that] user."

So Google launched a product with a bug in it. Happens to the best of companies, but if you break it, you should fix it. Not so, says Google...

Google plans to notify the Webmasters of the affected sites about the need to fix their cache-control headers...

Personally, I'm removing Accelerator for the time being. I've not noticed any measurable increase in speed (despite the little graphic suggesting I have saved 7 minutes since install) and some pages actually freeze a little before loading.

I guess this serves as a reminder that Google launches these products in "beta" for a reason. They know they may contain bugs and as a "beta" you need to understand that you are not using a finished, polished product.

Unfortunately, Google still makes "beta" products available to too many users, most of which don't fully understand the concept of a beta product. They might be best served if they start being more restrictive on the download of "beta" tools (a la Gmail) otherwise they run the risk of harming their reputation by having lots of un-finished products in wide-spread use.

Update: It appears that Google is on the ball. They've stopped allowing downloads of Accelerator, while they fix the bugs. From the download site:

Thank you for your interest in Google Web Accelerator. We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support.
Andy Beal | permalink | +marktd |