400 Milliseconds, or the Blink of an Eye

“Wait a second,” – we say that all the time, but according to a recent New York Times article, waiting a second for a web page to load is just too long. Subconsciously, human beings don’t like to wait and according to Google, load speeds longer than a blink of an eye – or 400 milliseconds is too long.
Google says speed matters – 4 out of 5 users will click away if a video stalls while loading. Google also notes that users have different expectations for, say video load times (are willing to wait longer) than for search results. As well as the fact that visually rich content is usually a trade off for ultra fast response times.
I find this interesting because of the new “retina display” technology Apple is developing. Higher quality screens means larger images, which means slower load times. Are microscopic pixels really worth the wait? Google also says that if your competitors website is 250 milliseconds faster than yours that you can kiss that visitor goodbye.