Does Google distinguish between core content and accessory, 3rd party widgets when considering how slow or fast a site is?

[etruvian]

Our site's Facebook Plugin is really slowing page speed down.  As far as users are concerned, the page loads fast enough and they can already start interacting with the page before the last sidebar widget has loaded.  But the FB widget is really slow to load and is dragging the performance down in Google Analytics Page Speed for example.  Any thoughts on whether this should be an SEO concern, and whether Google differentiates between different elements of the page when deciding whether a page is a bad user experience?

Thanks!

[Chris.Menke]

Just like your browser knows when all the components of a page have finished loading, It's my understanding that the bot knows too.  How long is it taking and are there any other widgets you could use in it's place?  Has anyone else commented on the slowness of that widget?

[etruvian]

Hi Chris, thanks a lot for taking the time to respond.  It almost doubles our page load time (again, 95% of the page is loaded, but the FB friends widget takes just as long again).  Our programmers are blaming slow page speed on the FB widget.  If we think about Google's goal of creating good user experiences, one would think they care more about the core content than a widget that appears on every page on the site.  But I'm not sure if they're accounting for that.  Our page speeds are bad (often 5-7 sec or more), but its hard to know if that is having an SEO impact.  I couldn't find any concrete answers online.  We're going to opt for a simpler version of the widget and hopefully that has a positive effect.