At a briefing last week, Google’s head of mobile engineering, Ann Mei Chang told us: “Even on the desktop, shaving milliseconds off search times makes an appreciable difference to usage”.

So why, I wonder, has a progress bar started appearing every time I log into my Gmail account? It may not be any slower than it was previously and it’s good to have visual reassurance that the browser’s not crashed and Gmail is actually doing something, but for the first time I’ve begun to notice just how long Gmail takes to kick in.

From millisecond search to loading bars: not exactly progress, is it?