I am currently using a font from the google font directory on my website. I don't fully understand how it works, but it seems like when someone opens my site, their browser is told to go and fetch the font from Google. (correct me if I'm wrong).

Now, what I'm wondering is, what are the pros and cons of this over just specifying a font family the old-school way? Presumably doing it the google font directory way has the advantage that they'll definitely see the font I want them to. (as long as the font directory is up).

But does this way have disadvantages? Maybe using fonts that are stored locally speeds up the site loading?