When Google hosts the font, a user visiting your site likely already has the Roboto.woff2 cached from the last site they visited (because everyone uses Google's CDN). When you self-host, you lose that shared cache. The user downloads the font fresh from your server. This is a performance regression .
Here is the deep dive into what actually happens when you hit "download" on Google Fonts. Most developers never download fonts. They use the <link> tag. This is the "Google-Hosted" method. When you do this, the user’s browser pings Google’s servers to grab the font file (WOFF2, TTF, etc.). google web fonts free download
The answer is nuanced. While the fonts are indeed free, the act of downloading them introduces a split in the web development community: the vs. the Privacy Camp vs. the Licensing Purist . When Google hosts the font, a user visiting
Before you hit "Download family," ask yourself: Am I doing this for privacy, performance, or offline use? If the answer is just "because I want the file on my hard drive," use the official zip. If the answer is "to speed up my site," you are likely making a mistake. This is a performance regression
On the surface, the request seems trivial. Google Fonts are free. They are open source. So, downloading them should be a simple, legal, and risk-free endeavor, right?
Google Fonts is a service, not just a library. When you download the font, you are opting out of the service. Make sure you are ready to run that service yourself.
