I posted 2 days ago about connections problems to Google.com and more major websites. The reason was broken pipes from my country to the USA.
While this connection problem occurred I noticed that when I accessed other websites, that were easily accessible, the Google toolbar slowed down the connection speed. After disabling the toolbar all was ok and the speed was good again.
I thought the toolbar didn't affect the speed of accessing other websites except from checking the PR, but it actually caused a long delay for each page to appear. I don't how much of a problem this is but I got a feeling that the toolbar plays a bigger role in the surfing experience than I previously thought.
I know this may reveal my little knowlegde of the technology behind the Google Toolbar but that's ok, maybe you will teach me a little about this stuff.