Minify & Gzip vs Google CDN

Question

Should I minify/gzip my Jquery with my other scripts on my page, or use Google CDN for Jquery & JQuery UI and gzip my own stuff.

From what I can see its more likely to be faster to deliver from Google and there is a better chance the files will be cached already on the users machine, however its a couple of extra http request and at least I know it will always be available.

related question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2746075/whats-faster-for-including-scripts-using-cdn-google-or-store-them-locally-in-w — Brian Clozel, Oct 01 '10 at 14:01
http://cachedcommons.org/ is also offering a couple of files on github cdn — hellvinz, Oct 01 '10 at 14:22
The only way to know for sure is to **measure** on your site — Day, Nov 13 '10 at 15:40

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 01 '10 at 13:59

You got it right. For widely-used librairies, using Google CDN is a good idea:

uses less bandwith on your server
resources availability is great
servers location is good too (it's a CDN after all!)
like you said, better chances these resources will be cached already on the user's side

The only downside:

adds a DNS query, because you're hosting resources on an additional domain. Reducing DNS lookups is quite important.

So the anwser is "use Google CDN".

Minify & Gzip vs Google CDN

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