Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/05/google-cache-rip.html
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What’s sadder, this isn’t really about eliminating an onerous cost centre from the bottom line to increase the sacred shareholder value, as is usually the case with enshittification. I’m sure it’s still chugging away in the background. It’s just that it’s not new and shiny in the eyes of the Google techbros, even if it’s still useful to the public.
[Why, yes, I am still bitter about their shutting down Google Reader]
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Undoubtedly. The cache is almost certainly still there – how else would Google track the page contents and snippets? – but now it’s just hidden from view.
I suspect this is actually trying to protect Google from some kind of liability more than wanting to shed “older” features, but I can’t quite figure out what the angle is. I know that there were many pages in the past where the cache was simply not available, but I couldn’t ever figure out why.
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Some sites complained about their content being mirrored on Google Cache, but that issue was solved years ago.
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I can’t say I’ll miss it. I never did use it much, and on the occasions I tried it was only sometimes available (which probably contributed to my not using it more).
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archive.today can mostly do the same thing. It’s not as automatic as Google Cache, but it works if you want to preserve something you think is going to vanish soon, or to get around most paywalls.
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The answer is also enshittification. Google knows one of the primary uses is to bypass a paywall.
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It will be missed at the most when there’s a “hug of death” occurring. So some nominally popular site says: “Check out this site which gives a method to restore your retro encabulator to full turbo mode!” annnd…the site is thus overwhelmed and not loading, so it was to the google cache (we’ll take you). alas.
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Website alterations will now be less verifiable, so misinformation and propaganda will be harder to track, but I’m sure Google didn’t know that.
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one thing mentioned in ars’ coverage is the cache shows, to an extent, how google’s scanner works and what it can recognize about a page.
if so, one possibility might be that they’re trying to hide upcoming changes to their crawlers.
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Not so much “it’s bad to do X” , but far more “it is good to launch new things, it is ok to make profitable things continue to work, and it is entirely neutral to make unprofitable things continue to work” plus “you need at least N good things in your perf package to get a promotion”. So you can totally keep unprofitable stuff running as long as you don’t want to be promoted. (Er, or it was as of very early 2023, beats me how the big layoffs changed anything like that)
That isn’t compete disagreement because I’m basically saying if you had wanted to keep some random Google project alive past whatever internal technology changes and other bitrot killed it you totally could, but you were giving up on getting promoted by doing so.
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This is the second worst google sunset for me (RIP, Google Reader, you were too good for this world)
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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.
Riiiiiight… pages never fail to load anymore. It just doesn’t happen! /s
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If I search for something and Google says the following page has info… ok, I click the link but it will lead to a forum page that says “Must log in, or page not found” … well, Google at one time found the search info here, so… look for cache but that option is gone. Suppose I could go to Internet Archive. it’s all a PITA.
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As of this moment, the operator still works.
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good to hear it, that’s my go-to for getting around paywalls
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Arguably, a nobler choice. It’s not as if Google has been historically known as a place where people get underpaid. The perpetual urge for power/wealth/prestige is a tremendous evolutionary weakness, but it seems that there’s severe cult-think about never, ever even so much as acknowledging this, let alone saying it. Moments like this serve to demonstrate that reality.
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Archive.today is a useful site indeed, but it’s also a very sketchy and largely unethical one that I try to avoid unless absolutely necessary. It doesn’t have a good reputation for transparency or trustworthiness. Simply finding the people behind the site has been a challenge for investigative journalists.
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All true, but if enshittification has legal protections (removal from internet archive/wayback machine, etc…) the only way to preserve that content is going to be services that operate in a legal grey area.
Just like piracy is still the only answer if you want to keep DRMd media forever.
