Alexeev noted, in an email, that Google has progressed in its work on SPDY so quickly that third-party vendors and browser makers must struggle to accommodate the successive waves of changes.

"We can adjust, but having a real, stable, solid, mature standard would be key to further improvements of HTTP protocol," Alexeev wrote. "There's definitely the need for a modern Web protocol that is well suited for today's and tomorrow's Internet infrastructure, web architectures, applications, server and client software."

The working group will also continue to refine the current version of the protocol, HTTP 1.1, which underlies the entire World Wide Web. According to , there are currently about 8.45 billion Web pages.

The IDG News Service