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Google Cache is fully dead

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Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#81

Post by skybrian »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #51
skybrian wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an original Chromecast and it still works, though pairing it with a new TV is a bit of a pain. The new Google TV is more like a smart TV without the TV. It has apps you install. It's much more complex and not the same thing at all. I was disappointed. But then again every company discontinues products. I don't see that as a breach of trust. It's making up a promise they never made and criticizing them for it.

I think you can just ignore the apps and cast like you’re used to, if you don’t care about the extra functionality. (But in that case, I don’t see why you bought one in the first place.)

Yes, casting from your phone still works. However, it requires a Google login to set up and automatically downloads a bunch of apps you probably don't want if all you care about is playing movies and YouTube videos from your phone. I suppose you could create an account just for this, but you really shouldn't need an account at all.

It was a gift for a relative: a "Chromecast with Google TV." I didn't know what it really was when I bought it. Taking "Chromecast" out of the name makes sense.

The original concept was great, but I guess it doesn't sell anymore?

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#82

Post by DaoVeles »

b112 wrote: post #78
kelnos wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure people who used google's web cache comprised a tiny fraction of one percent of their entire user base, and this move doesn't even put the tiniest ding in their brand.

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.

Death by thousand paper cuts in action.

I love Firefox (fork) it is my only browser but you can see the long term trend and I do wonder if it will even be a thing in a decades time. Unless there is a sudden shift towards it, is will eventually be relegated to the last of the most devoted geeks as we watch it wither away at the hands of the tech giants running the net.

A big thing was when they cut the Servo team that was when I knew they had sort of given up on trying to push forward but merely follow.

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#83

Post by DaoVeles »

runxel wrote: post #68

Very sad to see it gone. It was always some kind of last resort. Internet Archive is lovely, don't get me wrong, but it relies mostly on people actively queueing up sites to save. So most of the time for more obscure sites where the bitrot was already in place and they aren't loading anymore you could use the Google cache to get something out of it – where IA had nothing.

I do worry about the future of IA. Simply because of some of their reckless moves with their book lending policy, they have opened themselves up to being bleed dry financially. That plus the amount of copyright infringement openly available on the site is just waiting to be attacked.

I am waiting for Nintendo to get wind of the huge ROM dumps on there, it is not going to pretty. No manner of 'moral high ground' will defend against lawyers.

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#84

Post by skinnymuch »

DaoVeles wrote: post #82
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.

Death by thousand paper cuts in action. I love Firefox (fork) it is my only browser but you can see the long term trend and I do wonder if it will even be a thing in a decades time. Unless there is a sudden shift towards it, is will eventually be relegated to the last of the most devoted geeks as we watch it wither away at the hands of the tech giants running the net. A big thing was when they cut the Servo team that…

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

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#85

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

jjbinx007 wrote: post #5

Is anyone at Google even aware how much this hurts their brand? I received an email from Google today with the subject line "Meet the new Google TV Streamer (4K)" The sender was Google Chromecast. Apparently it's some sort of streaming hardware they are selling for £99. I won't even consider buying one. How long until it's an obsolete brick? And when it's a brick, what are the chances I can wipe it and install my own…

> Is anyone at Google even aware how much this hurts their brand?

Their finance bros don't care about anything they can't measure. Mission accomplished as far as they're concerned.

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#86

Post by skinnymuch »

Alupis wrote: post #35
heyoni wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Treat it like you do customer support and automate it. Or is that not allowed?

Do you actually want automated take-downs? Isn't that what people already complain the most about on YouTube?

It’s a cache. Relatively speaking, who cares

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#87

Post by mattigames »

Many years ago Google Cache once saved a site I used to maintain/own, classic funny story, I accidentally deleted the production database when I was trying migrate it, but luckily all the data to recreate the latest posts (the most important for this japanese music-downloads-links WordPress site) was stored all in HTML attributes and some tags, so I created a script to scrap it all from Google Cache and recreated the DB as best as I could.

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#88

Post by kibwen »

b112 wrote: post #78
kelnos wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure people who used google's web cache comprised a tiny fraction of one percent of their entire user base, and this move doesn't even put the tiniest ding in their brand.

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 installers to use dark patterns to automatically install Chrome and set it as the default browser without the user's consent, and then because they optimized all of Google's popular properties to work best in Chrome and only begrudgingly in other browsers, and then because they shipped it as the default browser on the OS that Google controls. There's not a single thing that Mozilla could have done to stop Chrome, short of making their own phone OS where they could ship Firefox as the default, which they did in fact attempt.

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#89

Post by crazygringo »

kelnos wrote: post #71
jjbinx007 wrote: post #5

Is anyone at Google even aware how much this hurts their brand? I received an email from Google today with the subject line "Meet the new Google TV Streamer (4K)" The sender was Google Chromecast. Apparently it's some sort of streaming hardware they are selling for £99. I won't even consider buying one. How long until it's an obsolete brick? And when it's a brick, what are the chances I can wipe it and install my own…

I'm pretty sure people who used google's web cache comprised a tiny fraction of one percent of their entire user base, and this move doesn't even put the tiniest ding in their brand.

Exactly this.

It was a fairly hidden piece of functionality that a tiny proportion of people ever used -- of course, a higher proportion of HN users, but still.

Their brand is unchanged.

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#90

Post by Minor49er »

skybrian wrote: post #43
jjbinx007 wrote: post #5

Is anyone at Google even aware how much this hurts their brand? I received an email from Google today with the subject line "Meet the new Google TV Streamer (4K)" The sender was Google Chromecast. Apparently it's some sort of streaming hardware they are selling for £99. I won't even consider buying one. How long until it's an obsolete brick? And when it's a brick, what are the chances I can wipe it and install my own…

I have an original Chromecast and it still works, though pairing it with a new TV is a bit of a pain. The new Google TV is more like a smart TV without the TV. It has apps you install. It's much more complex and not the same thing at all. I was disappointed. But then again every company discontinues products. I don't see that as a breach of trust. It's making up a promise they never made and criticizing them for it.

I have several Chromecasts in my TVs. Keeping them paired with mobile devices has become a nightmare. They frequently disconnect, often immediately after queuing videos. They never used to behave this way

The silver lining is that I have been finding some better alternatives to both Chromecast and YouTube. I have some Amazon Firesticks with Kodi installed that are pointed at my media-filled NAS, including videos I fetched previously with yt-dlp

I am also considering moving everything over to something like Intel PC sticks and possibly running Kodi off of those eventually. Then I can have all of the smart features I need without any ads or without any of the devices obsoleting themselves beyond my control

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