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Example:

Because all that progress has been made in baby steps. All science progress is 99% incremental – a tweak in design here, a bump in power there, a goose to speed over here, all occasionally given a huge, mind-bending boost by a theory of evolution, the unraveling of DNA, or the invention of the laser. The big developments might pull in the headlines like a black hole, but it's the constant small, day-to-day improvements that have the most immediate impact on what we do. In this chapter we'll look at some less-than-monumental ways in which computer storage – always the laggard in computing speed – has constantly improved by tids and bits.

What do you think this expression means? Searched in the dictionaries and couldn't find anything that at least remotely talked about the word goose as it's used in the example above.

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Goose can be a verb, which means (among other things)

to increase the activity, speed, power, intensity, or amount of : spur (an effort to goose newsstand sales)

(scroll down to where it defines the verb)

In this passage, goose is the noun form of this verb. One of the incremental improvements made by science is a jolt of extra speed in this or that application.

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    +1 This is an informal expression. I would expect to hear it used by someone describing a tweak they made to their soap-box derby race car: She's running pretty well now. I tightened up the steering and goosed the engine a little bit, and now she should be able to beat Joe Blow and his team.
    – Adam
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 15:52
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    @Adam Stock car, I think; soap-box derby cars have no engines. :0
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 17:16
  • Good point - I was thinking of competitive go-kart racing, not SBD. worldkarting.com
    – Adam
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 17:29
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    @StoneyB - That's quite a goose, putting an engine in a soap-box car!
    – J.R. ♦
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 21:51
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The expression "a goose to speed over" probably is a metaphor that describes an obstacle to be overcome. Converted to a more understandable form, it's

A goose over which to speed (when driving a vehicle)

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    This is totally wrong, but I really wish it wasn't, because that would be an awesome derivation :-)
    – Adam
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 15:54

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