By Hiawatha Bray

Nobody thinks the Internet is fast enough. But the online search company Google Inc. is doing something about it. In fact, many of the company's 100 engineers in Cambridge think about little else.

Google engineers are striving to wring more performance from the network. They're working on a new Internet browser that will display text and images faster, and a new operating system that's supposed to boot up a computer in seconds instead of minutes. They're designing tools for website creators to help build faster-loading pages, while modifying the Web's basic communications protocols so computers will download pages more quickly. It's all about making the Internet faster for Google users, and for the rest of us.

"Of course our business benefits when people find the Web more useful,'' .... "We have a chance to make money when people do searches or browse sites that run our ads. But it's deeper than that. This goes right to the core of Google's mission, which is to make information more readily accessible and useful.''

Since every online business stands to gain from a faster global network, Google's got plenty of allies. At Intercontinental Hotel Group, a British company that owns Holiday Inn, Google website design tools helped reduce page download times at the chain's site by more than two seconds, or 40 percent faster. "A higher performing website is not just a better user experience,'' ... "but translates into happier customers who actually book more.''