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  • [LINK] Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are

    From Computer Nerd Kev@21:1/5 to All on Wed Feb 7 07:24:30 2024
    Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are dead
    By Ron Amadeo - Feb 2, 2024
    - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/google-search-kills-off-cached-webpages/

    "Google will no longer be keeping a backup of the entire Internet.
    Google Search's "cached" links have long been an alternative way to
    load a website that was down or had changed, but now the company is
    killing them off. Google "Search Liaison" Danny Sullivan confirmed
    the feature removal in an X post, saying the feature "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."

    The feature has been appearing and disappearing for some people
    since December, and currently, we don't see any cache links in
    Google Search. For now, you can still build your own cache links
    even without the button, just by going to
    "https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:" plus a
    website URL, or by typing "cache:" plus a URL into Google Search.
    For now, the cached version of Ars Technica seems to still work.
    All of Google's support pages about cached sites have been taken
    down." ...

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  • From Scott Alfter@21:1/5 to Computer Nerd Kev on Wed Feb 7 04:26:28 2024
    In article <65c2a38e@news.ausics.net>,
    Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
    "Google will no longer be keeping a backup of the entire Internet.
    Google Search's "cached" links have long been an alternative way to
    load a website that was down or had changed...

    Was anybody still using this feature of theirs? If I need a cached copy of
    a webpage, the first place I'd usually look would be either archive.org or archive.is, depending on the site. archive.is is especially useful for bypassing paywalls, while archive.org is better at pulling up sites that
    have gone offline or for which you want to call up an older version that has things that have gone missing. The Google cache hasn't really been on my
    radar for a long time.

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    (IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
    \_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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  • From D@21:1/5 to Scott Alfter on Wed Feb 7 11:29:22 2024
    On Wed, 7 Feb 2024, Scott Alfter wrote:

    In article <65c2a38e@news.ausics.net>,
    Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
    "Google will no longer be keeping a backup of the entire Internet.
    Google Search's "cached" links have long been an alternative way to
    load a website that was down or had changed...

    Was anybody still using this feature of theirs? If I need a cached copy of
    a webpage, the first place I'd usually look would be either archive.org or archive.is, depending on the site. archive.is is especially useful for bypassing paywalls, while archive.org is better at pulling up sites that
    have gone offline or for which you want to call up an older version that has things that have gone missing. The Google cache hasn't really been on my radar for a long time.

    Ahh, good point! I always thought they were part of the same project. Archive.is as you say, is great for free newspaper articles!

    I even created a rss to email script that fetches articles through rss (or
    just regular web scarping if they don't offer rss) and I thought about
    adding archive.is support as well to give me the article without paywall.

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  • From Julieta Shem@21:1/5 to Spiros Bousbouras on Wed Feb 7 10:26:06 2024
    Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:

    [...]

    I use it regularly to access a copy of a page with w3m when the page itself won't display due to cloudfare stupidity.

    Lol. I also really dislike these cloudflare nonsense.

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  • From Computer Nerd Kev@21:1/5 to Scott Alfter on Thu Feb 8 07:11:17 2024
    Scott Alfter <scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us> wrote:
    In article <65c2a38e@news.ausics.net>,
    Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
    "Google will no longer be keeping a backup of the entire Internet.
    Google Search's "cached" links have long been an alternative way to
    load a website that was down or had changed...

    Was anybody still using this feature of theirs? If I need a cached copy of
    a webpage, the first place I'd usually look would be either archive.org or archive.is,

    Archive.org can be extremely slow at times, and sometimes parts are
    broken. Archive.is rarely seems to have pages that I want to view
    archived so I gave up even checking there years ago (maybe it has
    improved?).

    The main reason I _have_ been using Archive.org instead of Google
    Cache for viewing websites that are down or Cloudflared is that I
    prefer not to be telling Google which web pages I'm looking at. It
    also doesn't rewrite links to on the page to point to the cached
    versions, like Archive.org does. But it's a handy fall-back for
    when Archive.org isn't working.

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  • From Computer Nerd Kev@21:1/5 to Spiros Bousbouras on Thu Feb 8 07:15:01 2024
    Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
    I use it regularly to access a copy of a page with w3m when the page itself won't display due to cloudfare stupidity. In fact I have in my shell start-up files the function

    gca () {
    echo "http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:$@"
    }

    to easily create a Google cache link from a general link. I guess I will
    have to find out whether it's equally easy with archive.org or archive.is .

    This should do it, but often more slowly:

    echo "http://web.archive.org/web/$@"

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  • From Rich@21:1/5 to Computer Nerd Kev on Thu Feb 8 19:24:25 2024
    Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
    Archive.is rarely seems to have pages that I want to view archived so
    I gave up even checking there years ago (maybe it has improved?).

    You can request it archive the page you are looking for but it does
    not yet have.

    Then it will be archived, you get to view it, and the next person who
    might ask for it should then also find it archived.

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