Google flushes cached search results forever
- Reference: 1707118273
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/02/05/google_cache_flushed/
- Source link:
A Friday [1]Xeet from the Google Search Liaison Twitter/X account, which is run by a chap named Danny Sullivan, responded to netizens' queries about the absence of links to cached results, confirmed they've gone, and offered an explanation.
"Yes, it's been removed," the account stated. "I know, it's sad. I'm sad too. It's one of our oldest features. But 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. So, it was decided to retire it."
[2]
He's right: cached links made a valuable difference in the dialup age. They remain useful today – The Register often consults them as tech companies often overwrite or delete pages. We sometime enter the string "cache:" into Google search specifically to do so, as that syntax produces cached results. Sadly that's going away, too.
[3]
[4]
Happily, if Sullivan has his way, historical results will still appear in Google searches.
"I hope that maybe we'll add links to @internetarchive from where we had the cache link before, within About This Result. It's such an amazing resource. For the information literacy goal of About The Result, I think it would also be a nice fit – allowing people to easily see how a page changed over time," he wrote.
[5]What Big Tech's balance sheets this week said – and didn't say – about real-world AI adoption
[6]Brit watchdog thinks Google's tweaked Privacy Sandbox still isn't cricket
[7]Google settles with Singular Computing over claims of stolen AI chip tech
[8]Google building datacenter campus on the outskirts of London
Sadly, that arrangement is just a dream for now.
"No promises. We have to talk to them, see how it all might go – involves people well beyond me. But I think it would be nice all around," Sullivan wrote, before adding further caveats to the effect that "To be clear, it's something I personally think would be a nice thing to do but not something we'd do if we didn't have an agreement that they also found valuable in some way."
[9]
For what it's worth, the Internet Archive doesn't list Google or Google.org among its list of [10]generous donors . But it did recently link to an [11]article critical of Google's decision to end availability of cached links that points out the Big G hasn't stopped caching content – just stopped making that cache available.
Sullivan noted that anyone with a Search Console account can use URL Inspector to see what Google's crawler saw looking at their own page, with a visit to [12]this page . Which isn't very useful unless you have a short recovery point objective for your web content. ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1753156161509916873
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZcC-2k-sXZ8HhC9tuKDmVQAAAYg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZcC-2k-sXZ8HhC9tuKDmVQAAAYg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZcC-2k-sXZ8HhC9tuKDmVQAAAYg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/03/kettle_ai_results/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/01/google_privacy_sandbox_concerns_remain/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/25/google_settles_singular_lawsuit/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/22/google_building_datacenter_campus_on/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZcC-2k-sXZ8HhC9tuKDmVQAAAYg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://archive.org/about/
[11] https://tedium.co/2024/01/31/google-cache-removal-search-results/
[12] https://t.co/KWIuvy51Zi
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Don’t Use URL Shorteners, Please
It is nice being able to hover over a link to see where it will go, before actually clicking on it.
It figures
They went evil years and years ago, it's actually kind of amazing that the couple cents per year they were spending on cached pages lasted till 2024.
Re: It figures
And it's not as if they're not going to need cached data, they do need so they can actually offer search results... so they're just hiding it.
Re: It figures
But, but, but... it's not users' data, it's ours!
Re: It figures
They no longer offer search results, so it is understandable they want to get rid of it...
Re: It figures
This. Probably too many important (read: "rich and powerful") entities were being embarrassed when their attempts at web-based historical revisionism failed due to Google's cached copies being used by journalists, lawyers, etc., to uncover and display-to-the-world that attempted revisionism.
Consequently those entities bribed and/or threatened (current mealy-mouthed euphemistic terminology: "influenced") Google into removing that feature.
Re: It figures
This. Probably too many important (read: "rich and powerful") entities were being embarrassed when their attempts at web-based historical revisionism failed due to Google's cached copies being used by journalists, lawyers, etc., to uncover and display-to-the-world that attempted revisionism.
Convenient timing is convenient. The UK's Online Censorship Act has just got Royal Assent and is now law-
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cyberflashing-epilepsy-trolling-and-fake-news-to-put-online-abusers-behind-bars-from-today
Abusers, trolls, and predators online now face a fleet of tough new jailable offences from today (Wednesday 31 January), as offences for ‘cyberflashing’, sending death threats, and ‘epilepsy-trolling’ are written into the statute book after the Online Safety Act gained Royal Assent.
These new criminal offences will protect people from a wide range of abuse and harm online, including threatening messages, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images known as ‘revenge porn’, and sending fake news that aims to cause non-trivial physical or psychological harm.
So given there's up to 5yrs in jail now for 'fake news' and 'misinformation', publishing cached pages may have been seen as a liability by AlphaGoo. This however is a new Act of insanity-
179 False communications offence
(1)A person commits an offence if—
(a)the person sends a message (see section 182),
(b)the message conveys information that the person knows to be false,
(c)at the time of sending it, the person intended the message, or the information in it, to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience, and
(d)the person has no reasonable excuse for sending the message.
So I guess 'climate anxiety' would come under that category. But wait, there's more-
180 Exemptions from offence under section 179
(1) A recognised news publisher cannot commit an offence under section 179.
(2)An offence under section 179 cannot be committed by the holder of a licence under the Broadcasting Act 1990 or 1996 in connection with anything done under the authority of the licence.
(3)An offence under section 179 cannot be committed by the holder of a multiplex licence in connection with anything done under the authority of the licence.
(4)An offence under section 179 cannot be committed by the provider of an on-demand programme service in connection with anything done in the course of providing such a service.
(5)An offence under section 179 cannot be committed in connection with the showing of a film made for cinema to members of the public.
So the MSM and the biggest providers of misinformation can carry on providing 'fake news'. Well, mostly ok given Ofcom becomes the arbiter of truthiness. AlphaGoo doesn't seem to have any of those exemptions available, so by only showing current pages can pass the buck. But as a PR guru once said-
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. ”
Re: It figures
They also influenced Google to remove or severely limit call recording functionality from Android...
What they really mean.
...but not something we'd do if we didn't have an agreement...
Or, in other words. "Not if we have to pay much if anything, for this service."
You know Google remind me of ticks. Fat, blood sucking parasites who contribute nothing and are very hard to get rid of.
Bing
Bing has cached results -- and they aren't hidden. Donno how long it will last but it's still useful for me -- MS and Cloudfare sometimes get confused by my IP address and block access.
Taking the ...
The suggestion to link to the internet archive from Google Search is, shall we say, cheeky (harsher words spring to mind)
That would be a potentially massive uptick in server load for the internet archive - and, as the article pertinently mentions, Google give them no funding.
Re: Taking the ...
The Internet Archive should charge Google per click-through.
To be honest, I thought that had gone long ago, when the cached result link stopped being shown right under the search results. I never knew it had moved to the "about this result" screen.
I suppose so few people knew about it that the utilization was very low, and that's why it's going away? I can't imagine it costs a lot to maintain...