On Tuesday, Google for Apache that will allow servers to send Web pages to browsers using the company's SPDY protocol. In some cases, using SPDY it takes to deliver a Web page by more than 50 percent, Google engineers claimed in a blog posting .

For Google, the release is a big step in an ongoing effort to streamline the Internet's HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), a decades-old standard for delivering Web pages to the browser. Google has been working on (pronounced Speedy) , but recently the protocol has enjoyed more attention from the IT community. Last month, Twitter began using SPDY to any browser that supports the protocol.

The SPDY protocol speeds up basic HTTP in a number of ways, the engineers explained. SPDY allows servers to send all the different elements of a requested Web page at once, that have to be sent back and forth under plain HTTP. It also allows the server to make assumptions about what additional elements a browser would need to complete rendering a Web page, without receiving an explicit request from the browser -- another time saver. Those additional elements are also delivered at the same time. And SPDY allows the server and the browser to compress HTTP, which cuts the amount of data that needs to be communicated between the two.

In order to get SPDY widely used, Google will need to have support for the protocol on both browsers and servers. Providing a module for Apache will help in this regard, given that Apache is the . Amazon uses SPDY to speed communications between its Silk browser and the company's proxy servers. Nginx, the company behind the , is also developing a plug-in for Nginx, according to Andrew Alexeev, who heads up business development for the company.

On the browser side, Google's Chrome supports SPDY, and Firefox will support it . Getting SPDY on Microsoft's Internet Explorer might be a tougher sell, however, given that the company is working on its own SPDY variant .