White space in the HTML source code, is it bad for SEO?

It is said that white space in your html has a negative affect on SEO. You sometimes see websites with the HTML in one continuous string without white space, the theory is that it makes your file smaller and therefore quicker to download.

This has as much affect on download speed as breaking wind while running has on your times over 100 meters. If you open a txt file in notepad and add some white space you will see that it has such a very small affect on the files size. If you hold down the spacebar and file the page with spaces that’s another thing. Google have stated they do not care if you have white space.

It may true that it can make your page download a fraction faster but it also makes your code harder to debug and edit. I would say that there are much better things to be doing with your time.