With the present-day data-guzzling smartphones and tablets creating exasperating digital traffic jams, largely because of the ever-increasing downloads, Google and other bigwig tech companies are now competing with one another on the `speed' front - each looking to outdo the other and emerge the quickest!

The tech companies' latest quest for speed is apparently a result of the discovery by Google engineers that Internet users apparently search less if they have to wait for even a few seconds for their computer to respond to their click on a website or a tap on the keyboard.

According to the Google engineers, even a hardly perceptible delay of 400 milliseconds - which literally is the time taken for the blinking of the eye - is seemingly `too long', as it leads to lesser search by the Web users.

Noting that "every millisecond matters" in the present-day search scenario, Google engineer Arvind Jain - who is the company's resident speed expert - said that the need for speed during Web searches is all the more significant in the wake of the psychological fact that "Subconsciously, you don't like to wait."

With people's expectations of speedy Internet searches ever on the increase, bigwig search engines and websites have virtually been pushed into a situation of fierce competition to emerge as the `fastest.'

Stressing that people's visits to a commerce or news website will largely be determined on account of speed, Harry Shum, a computer scientist and speed specialist at Microsoft - said: "Two hundred fifty milliseconds, either slower or faster, is close to the magic number now for competitive advantage on the Web."