Google researchers are working on SPDY (pronounced SPeeDY), a new application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web that may one day replace the http protocol. The SPDY protocol is designed for minimizing latency, according to Google the new protocol can can deliver page load time gains of up to 55 percent compared to http.

HTTP has served the web incredibly well. We want to continue building on the web's tradition of experimentation and optimization, to further support the evolution of websites and browsers. So over the last few months, a few of us here at Google have been experimenting with new ways for web browsers and servers to speak to each other, resulting in a prototype web server and Google Chrome client with SPDY support.

So far we have only tested SPDY in lab conditions. The initial results are very encouraging: when we download the top 25 websites over simulated home network connections, we see a significant improvement in performance - pages loaded up to 55% faster. There is still a lot of work we need to do to evaluate the performance of SPDY in real-world conditions. However, we believe that we have reached the stage where our small team could benefit from the active participation, feedback and assistance of the web community.
More info can be found at Google.