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Google Cache is fully dead

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Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#91

Post by progmetaldev »

xnx wrote: post #16

Any solid evidence on why, or why now? I have to assume the additional interest in crawling/scraping data for AI precipitated this. Why deal with all the messiness of crawling the web at large when you can use a Google search and cache: results as your RAG?

The answer could be to push users to their AI offerings, or possibly due to bots scraping up the cached data for their own AI models, where Google wasn't making a profit off providing the data. Most likely the feature wasn't used enough for them to care, and they couldn't find a way to monetize it to make it worth keeping around.

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#92

Post by naet »

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.

It adds up over time. I used and liked Google domains for a bunch of websites, and was disappointed when that was axed and all my domains moved to squarespace (and have since transferred them all out). I used the Google podcast app on my phone, and that was killed and replaced by YouTube music which is a horrible replacement.

I used to buy in heavily to the Google ecosystem and trust it as a pretty solid go to option for anything they offered, now I'd be really hesitant to use it for anything critical. I have even been wondering if my longstanding gmail email address will someday be a liability.

Those two examples were probably smaller services but had their effects on different populations. When you add up all the things that have been ended by Google it can really contribute to their overall brand image. Some things can trickle down from more technical users to less technical. I think chrome was first adopted by a highly tech literate population before breaking into the mainstream, and if that population starts to mistrust Google it could hurt them in the long run.

I think there has been a pretty major shift in Google culture and product strategy and I'm not a fan of it.

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#94

Post by sharkjacobs »

jsheard wrote: post #77
quink wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

_Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn_ was released in 2019, same year that the YouTube app was killed by Google. Also, one is a release, which means that's the point in time it started working, while one is the exact opposite, the point it stopped working. Not only were you off by two years, you're talking about literal opposites there. And surely the most popular video service no longer being available on the second most popula…

My mistake, I was going by the release of the Switch (2017) but I forgot their support overlapped for a while before the 3DS was officially EOLed. Nonetheless if Google Toolbar gets a spot for being killed in 2021, long past it having any relevance whatsoever, I don't doubt that YouTube 3DS would be guaranteed a spot no matter how long Google kept it on life support.

I don't know why this is your hill to die on, but there's not really any ambiguity that Google killed Youtube 3DS. They issued an update so that it stopped working[1]. New 3DS software updates were still being issued up until April 20, 2024, and new 3DS hardware was still being sold when Google killed Youtube for Nintendo 3DS in September 2019.

Obviously there are good reasons why they did it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't belong on this list

[1] https://support.nintendo.com/jp/information/2019/0730.html

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#95

Post by fuzztester »

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…

bro, do yourself a favor, and go meditate in the google graveyard.

https://killedbygoogle.com/

for how to do it, see:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara%E1%B9%87asati

make sure to read it fully, including all the links, recursively.

and

https://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?t=17516&start=20

https://damsara.org/interesting-new-findings/solitary-night-...

just kidding.

but really, do you seriously think that people in companies do things for any reason rather than their own benefit? do you? nope. nyet. nahi. nada. coz everyone is that way.

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#97

Post by arp242 »

readyplayernull wrote: post #65
dageshi wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am tired of having this argument with people. Google's search engine requires there to be content for them to index and send people to in order for their service to be useful. Google wants useful websites to exist, websites want google to send them traffic. LLM's don't send traffic to websites, as LLM's supplant google there will be fewer and fewer websites because they don't get enough traffic anymore. There is a…

> send traffic to websites Yup, mostly sponsored websites, thus killing the Internet. We have complained about this for at least a decade, we are tired too, thus moving to a better knowledge provider like the LLMs is a natural step.

A huge amount of links on HN are just the personal websites of some person expressing their views. Not infrequently these people show up in the comments to engage with people.

Bringing on HN specifically as an example is not serious.

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#98

Post by 0x_rs »

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.

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#99

Post by homebrewer »

crazygringo wrote: post #89
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.

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.

Not just HN. In my autocracy every housewife knew about Google cache — it was the easiest way to read information the government doesn't want you to read, and it was free and always available unlike many blocked VPNs (and what shady proxy companies call "VPNs").

Re: Google Cache is fully dead

#100

Post by 8organicbits »

fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #21
8organicbits wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't that NOARCHIVE? https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/679/how-do-i-...

I'm not so familiar with this area but my guess is that if you turned used noarchive, Google would not cache the page at all and therefore would not be able to use the text in your page as keywords for search results. So most sites therefore did not use noarchive because it improved discoverability/SEO to allow Google to cache your site. This is just a guess though and what I always assumed to be the case. This seems…

Nah, it's not a Google thing although Google honored it. Here's a reference to the Internet Archive using it:

https://archive.org/post/31561/robots-archive-noarchive-meta...

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