Steve Souders

Steve works at Google on web performance and open source initiatives. His book, High Performance Web Sites, explains his best practices for performance; it reached the top of the Amazon computer and Internet bestseller list. His follow-up book, Even Faster Web Sites, provides performance tips for today's Web 2.0 applications. Steve is the creator of YSlow, the performance analysis extension to Firebug, with over 1.7 million downloads. He also created Cuzillion, SpriteMe, and Browserscope. He serves as co-chair of Velocity, the web performance and operations conference from O'Reilly, and is co-founder of the Firebug Working Group. He taught CS193H: High Performance Web Sites at Stanford, and frequently speaks at conferences including OSCON, The Ajax Experience, SXSW, and Web 2.0 Expo.

Steve previously worked at Yahoo! as the Chief Performance Yahoo!, where he blogged about web performance on Yahoo! Developer Network. He was named a Yahoo! Superstar. Steve worked on many of the platforms and products within the company, including running the development team for My Yahoo!. Prior to Yahoo!, Steve worked at several small to mid-sized startups including two companies he co-founded, Helix Systems and CoolSync. He also worked at General Magic, WhoWhere?, and Lycos.

In the early 80's Steve caught the Artificial Intelligence bug and worked at a few companies doing research on Machine Learning, including several publications and conference appearances. He received a BS in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia and a MS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.

Steve's interests are varied. He's on the council of First Lutheran Church of Palo Alto. He's played basketball with several NBA and WNBA players. He was a member of the Universal Studios Internet Task Force. He participated in setting a Guinness world record. He rebuilt a 90-year-old carriage house. He has a wonderful wife and three daughters.