Google has always been about speed. They think the Internet should be faster, and that this will improve our quality of life. On their own site, they have almost always kept user interfaces to a functional minimum. They design for utility. Their search engine even blatantly ignores some web standards for the sake of code size reduction.
It is not just their speed they care about. They want the whole web to be faster, from the client side to the server and the website code. It isn't just talk, Google has developed a good variety of tools to make this happen. Google Chrome is reputed to be the fastest browser around and has been since day 1. Their Javascript processer, V8 is lightning fast. They have browser extensions to help website developers clock and improve their site performance. mod_pagespeed is their attempt to make the Apache server work toward this end.
Finally, they have released a list of free tools created by themselves and others that help make the web faster. If you are involved with any aspect of a website this list is worth a look. A slow site has an impact on everyone, even the marketing guys.
This list of tools is part of a larger section of their website all focused on making the web faster. It also contains articles and a community area.