A timeline of speed :

May - Communications Workers of America (CWA) reports that the average download speed in South Korea is 20.4 megabits per second (mbps) – four times faster than the US average of 5.1 mbps. It’s predicted it will take the US fifteeen years to catch up to South Korea.
Febuary - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission submits a national plan to Congress. The FCC says that expanding US internet service will require subsidies and investment of as much as $350 billion – much higher than the $7.2 billion President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package set aside for the task.
July - Finland becomes the first country in the world to declare broadband Internet access a legal right.

April 9th - Google announces their start of using page speed as a ranking factor on desktop
May 2nd - Google states their expectation that websites should ideally load in 0.5 seconds or less. And also cites Akamai’s claim that 2.0 seconds as the threshold for ecommerce site acceptability..

March 31st - Google announces their PageSpeed Online Tool to assist webmaster improve performance.
August 8th - Google’s Matt Cutts states that only 0.1% of the web sites have site speed issues that are at such a degree where it impacts how well the site ranks.

June 11th - Google’s Matt Cutts announced that slow-performing mobile sites would soon be penalized in search rankings.

November - Google starts labeling sites as "mobile-friendly" to denote pages optimized for phones.

February - Google tests a Slow badge for websites in SERPs.
April 21st - Google increases usage of mobile-friendly label. Starts using it as a ranking signal. Webmasters and Marketers refer to this event as "Mobilegeddon"
April - Mobile searches surpass Desktop searches.
May - Google webmaster trends analyst Gary Illyes strongly hints that page speed will probably become part of the "mobile-friendly" signal group
May 12th - Facebook announces launch of Instant Articles format.
Sept 16th - Apple announces Apple News format.
Oct 7th - Google announces the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) format.
Year end - Mobile ad spend overtakes desktop for the first time.

May - Google increases usage of mobile-friendly label.
May 18th - Netflix launches Fast.com internet speed benchmarking site.
June 1st - Google webmaster trends analyst Gary Illyes confirmed that the next mobile algorithm update from Google would use page speed as a ranking factor.
June 2nd - Google launches the mobile testing site Test my site.
June 16th - Lighthouse auditing tool for Chrome released.
August - Google discontinues the "mobile-friendly" label noting that most pages had become mobile-friendly.
October - Worldwide mobile traffic surpasses desktop traffic for the first time.
November 4th - Google announces begining of testing its Mobile-first indexing.

January - Google audits 900,000 Mobile pages for speed and releases their grim findings.
March - Search engines Baidu, Sogou and Yahoo Japan announce support for AMP.
May 25th - Facebook announces SDK support for the Apple News format.

January - Google announces the search algorith change dubbed the “Speed Update" coming in July.
April - Google publishes "Why Performance Matters"
July - Google starts ranking sites based on their Mobile speed

A timeline of speed Print