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Google blocked my Chrome extension so I created a website to host it

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Re: Google blocked my Chrome extension so I created a website to host it

#71
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and if they post their content to the public, the public can read it. Giving content to journalists is not the same as giving your content to Google to index in their search engine and caches. The later is not private.

> Giving content to journalists is not the same as giving your content to Google to index in their search engine and caches. It’s exactly the same. You give access to an entity that serves to promote your content. The fact that Google’s cache is accessible is a technical implementation detail; Google could remove access to that cache tomorrow and that wouldn’t change anything.

> The fact that Google’s cache is accessible is a technical implementation detail;

It's intentional to fix the kind of abusive behavior you are engaging in. If you serve content to a search engine, that search engine will reproduce the content.

Search engines are for publically available content.

If you want to advertise, pay for it.

Re: Google blocked my Chrome extension so I created a website to host it

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publishers are subverting users' reasonable expectations that the information they search and receive hits for on Google is publicly accessible—why else would it appear in search? It's actually everyone's business because this creates a web that is less usable for everyone. If publishers were willing to commit and make their paid content server-side for customers only, they would have a stronger case against infringe…

Since when are Google results 100% clearnet? This has never been the case, ever. Search "login" in Google and you'll get a lot of content that is not publicly accessible.

What? Those login pages are publicly accessible in their entirety.

Re: Google blocked my Chrome extension so I created a website to host it

#73
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and if they post their content to the public, the public can read it. Giving content to journalists is not the same as giving your content to Google to index in their search engine and caches. The later is not private.

> Giving content to journalists is not the same as giving your content to Google to index in their search engine and caches. It’s exactly the same. You give access to an entity that serves to promote your content. The fact that Google’s cache is accessible is a technical implementation detail; Google could remove access to that cache tomorrow and that wouldn’t change anything.

Publishers give books to journalists with the expectation that the journalists will immediately put an electronic copy of the book in a publicly-available CDN and then spend nearly-unlimited resources promoting the free copy?

Re: Google blocked my Chrome extension so I created a website to host it

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that relevant? They've created their content - if they want to share it with a search engine that's none of your business. The technology does not allow them to do this without sharing it with you as well. But that is ethically irrelevant. (Of course, we also deserve a good search engine allowing us to remove paywalled sites and seo spam from our results.)

Publishers are subverting users' reasonable expectations that the information they search and receive hits for on Google is publicly accessible—why else would it appear in search? It's actually everyone's business because this creates a web that is less usable for everyone. If publishers were willing to commit and make their paid content server-side for customers only, they would have a stronger case against infringe…

That's just your definition of "reasonable".

They provide users with an expectation of what information they will receive if they pay for the content.

The fact that this "glimpse" of the content pollutes your web searches is a search engine problem.

It would be trivial to filter sites with paywalled content. But Google refuses to let you do that. Hope someone else will come along and help with that.

Re: Google blocked my Chrome extension so I created a website to host it

#75
post #44

From the description, it sounds like this extension just puts " https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache :" in front of the current url? If so, you can also do this via a simple bookmarklet: javascript:location.href='https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:'+location.href;{} If you don't know what bookmarklets are: Edit any old bookmark and put the above line into the url field. Next time y…

That doesn't seem to work well.

For example, take this NYT article https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/health/life-expectancy-co...

Google cache:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:... -- 404

OP's service

https://cfworker-beatthatwall.jayass.workers.dev/?url=https:... -- works.

However, one can adopt your bookmarklet to use OP's service when needed instead of installing extension/userscript that seem to match all the sites.

Re: Google blocked my Chrome extension so I created a website to host it

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publishers are subverting users' reasonable expectations that the information they search and receive hits for on Google is publicly accessible—why else would it appear in search? It's actually everyone's business because this creates a web that is less usable for everyone. If publishers were willing to commit and make their paid content server-side for customers only, they would have a stronger case against infringe…

Since when are Google results 100% clearnet? This has never been the case, ever. Search "login" in Google and you'll get a lot of content that is not publicly accessible.

They are serving different content to Google than users, and are then upset the version they served Google is available to users.

Re: Google blocked my Chrome extension so I created a website to host it

#77
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't give a free copy to the local library to drive sales and be upset when people borrow the book and read it from the local library.

> You can't give a free copy to the local library to drive sales Nobody does that. The comparison doesn’t hold.

You are doing that when you let Google past the paywall.

Re: Google blocked my Chrome extension so I created a website to host it

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that relevant? They've created their content - if they want to share it with a search engine that's none of your business. The technology does not allow them to do this without sharing it with you as well. But that is ethically irrelevant. (Of course, we also deserve a good search engine allowing us to remove paywalled sites and seo spam from our results.)

"FREE VACATIONS! (you have to sit through a timeshare presentation and there are catches" We widely regard the above as unethical. Adding content to a search engine literally says "you can come read this content!". That is the purpose of search engines. Even Google penalizes paywall behavior and will downrank them - which forces the paywall people to get more clever. Sorry but don't abuse search engines and users to…

They're doing something bad - so it's okay to steal their stuff. Did I get that right?
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