What is firefox prefetching?
One reason many of us insist on using free software is its relative lack of surprises. Free programs rarely contain features which cause them to behave in a way which is contrary to the interests of their users. Unlike many proprietary programs, free applications tend not to phone home without permission, unnecessarily restrict what their users can do, or perform unexpected operations behind users’ backs. As Lauren Weinstein recently discovered, however, the Firefox browser can be made to behave in a way which is surprising indeed – and Google, in the name of faster browsing, is taking advantage of that behavior. In particular, Firefox will, at times, “prefetch” the contents of a web page which it thinks you might want to see soon. If a page is marked as being the “next” page in a series, Firefox, by default, will prefetch that page’s contents. (And, yes, for those who have asked for “next” tags for the LWN Weekly Edition, it will happen when we get a chance). When the user hits the li
