Google Cache is fully dead • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#241

Post by account42 » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 1:13 PM UTC

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #161

0x_rs wrote: post #98

Too bad. It was a great complement to the increasingly unreliable IA, whose list of blacklisted websites just keeps skyrocketing for opaque reasons. I'm guessing it's still available internally, along with snapshots going far, far back in time.

> Too bad. It was a great complement to the increasingly unreliable IA, whose list of blacklisted websites just keeps skyrocketing for opaque reasons This could be due to site owners contacting the IA and requesting their site be permanently removed from the archive. It's not as easy as pressing a button, but it's not difficult to have your site removed. I don't think that the IA itself makes editorial decisions as t…

> I don't think that the IA itself makes editorial decisions as to which sites to include and which to blacklist.

They do: https://archive.org/post/1126216/kiwi-farms-removed-from-way...

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#242

Post by account42 » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 1:57 PM UTC

kibwen wrote: post #88

b112 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla via Firefox thought the same thing. They removed feature after feature, each feature only used by a tiny fraction of a percent. But all those features were what drew users, power users especially. And users each had their own featured reasons to love Firefox. Now look at them. Most used browser to nothing. There are other reasons too, but what Firefox did was remove what was special about them.

> Most used browser to nothing. Feel free to criticize Mozilla all you like, but this is a prime example of myopic tech-bubble thinking that is being decried elsewhere in this thread. Firefox market share declined first because Google used their market position to advertise Chrome for free on what was then the most valuable web real estate in the world (the Google home page), then because they paid software installer…

That's just pure copium. Sure, google's tactics helped speed things along but remember that Firefox was originally able to gain marketshare against a browser that didn't even need to pull those tricks because it was already preinstalled on every PC.

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#243

Post by rwmj » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 2:01 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #235

rwmj wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back over here in the real world, there is no possible way the IA will win this fight through the courts. It has to be dealt with by legislation.

So far no one has won the fight by legislation. Or even a single battle. In fact, copyright terms have only gotten worse over the years - FAR worse.

That doesn't contradict what I said.

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#244

Post by account42 » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 2:04 PM UTC

DaoVeles wrote: post #214

skinnymuch wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The saddest day will be when Firefox switches to a blink engine

I had not thought of that. That is probably very likely. They can keep their public mantra of "privacy" to keep people coming to them but without the burden of tech development. Higher ups like that equation. It is probably inevitable, I mean if even Microsoft couldnt fight off Googles browser dominance, what hope does Mozilla have long term.

I am hoping that Mozilla goes down that route. It might be the kick needed to get another more reponsible party to take over the stewardship of Gecko and the browser built upon it.

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#245

Post by Anamon » Fri, Sep 27, 2024, 11:11 AM UTC

AbstractH24 wrote: post #172

Do any other search engines have an equivalent feature? IA is great, but doesn’t always crawl things like news articles as frequently as Google does.

Bing has it. The "Cached" link is in a little dropdown arrow menu behind the result's title.

Agreed that the Wayback Machine is not a replacement. There is a long delay before things show up there, if they do at all. If a page was going through technical difficulties and was unreachable, Google Cache was usually the only way to still access it.

I also don't understand where Google Guy gets this from:

"[…] it was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn't depend on a page loading. These days, things have greatly improved."

It can't only be me who feels that website reliability has dramatically crashed over the past decade or so, and it keeps getting worse.

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#246

Post by dang » Fri, Sep 27, 2024, 5:31 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #223

Apocryphon wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

You guys both broke the site guidelines in this tit-for-tat spat. Please avoid those in the future. It's not what this site is for, destroys what it is for, and is tedious.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#247

Post by dang » Fri, Sep 27, 2024, 5:31 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #224

renewiltord wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

You guys both broke the site guidelines in this tit-for-tat spat. Please avoid those in the future. It's not what this site is for, destroys what it is for, and is tedious.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#248

Post by Apocryphon » Fri, Sep 27, 2024, 5:37 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #247

Apocryphon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You guys both broke the site guidelines in this tit-for-tat spat. Please avoid those in the future. It's not what this site is for, destroys what it is for, and is tedious. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Happy to comply even if the other party does not

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#249

Post by neop1x » Sun, Sep 29, 2024, 2:57 PM UTC

iamleppert wrote: post #182

Google Cache was useful because you could sometimes not find a term or keyword in the web site, but it would be in the cache. Or for sites that have gone offline, or no longer have the item. "It's still in the Google Cache!" you can't say that anymore. I use Google less and less these days. What's the point when you can just ask an LLM, and it gives you an answer within seconds, with no ads? You can ask for reference…

Google index sometimes also contain content which is under paywall or cookiewall. Two major sites in Czechia started implementing cookie walls, which is against GDPR but our local office for data privacy is not acting so it seems they are probably paid by those websites...