White Hat Works Conclusion for 2010 and 2011:

Host your website on a super fast Internet Service Provider
Use CSS as much as possible and comply with website usability
Write quality content, not quantity content
Convert your a Flash website to a HTML website
Export your Flash animations where possible – more SEO Tips
Keep images and their size to a minimum without loosing the quality
Test your website in various browsers and mobile phone devices
Make your website Google Friendly
Get free guidance from a reputable SEO E-marketing Company

Faster websites means Google can keep up with the growth of the Internet without the need to keep buying and installing new servers. Many have asked, how many servers does Google have? This is a well kept secret, but if you do your maths and calculations the number of servers could be around 700,000 and growing. These servers are spread over 100 data-centres around the globe and makes Google the largest IT producer of (Co2) carbon emissions on Earth.

Google is in the business of providing a top notch service and encouraging growth, but at the same time be profitable by keeping their costs and carbon emissions down.

Hence the need for this new factor that will be included in the updated Google 2010 Algorythm. Maybe the main reason Google is focusing on speed is because what they really are trying to do is to reduce their carbon foot print and we (SEO guys and website owners) all need to help them achieve this.