Google Complies with Belgian Courts

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Google Complies with Belgian Courts

koen

6:04 pm on Sep 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

System: The following 4 messages were cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/goog/3087094.htm [webmasterworld.com] by brett_tabke - 8:55 am on Sep. 24, 2006 (cst -5)

Google has published the verdict on its google.be homepage and on the bottom of news.google.be. Also there's a link from google.be to google.com now.

Car_Guy

6:11 pm on Sep 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

My preference would be for no search engines to cache any of my site's pages at all. Whenever someone visits any of the pages on my site, I want to be sure that they see them in their most-current form.

europeforvisitors

7:47 pm on Sep 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

My preference would be for no search engines to cache any of my site's pages at all. Whenever someone visits any of the pages on my site, I want to be sure that they see them in their most-current form.

How many people (other than SEOs) are likely to prefer the cached copy to the live page?

As a user, I like the Google Cache because it lets me see what's on a page if the site's server or Web connection is down.

As a publisher, I like the Google cache because, in the unlikely event that a user can't get to my live page, the cache shows the user what my site has to offer. It's a win-win situation for me and for the user.

FromBelgium

8:07 pm on Sep 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

Google's cache saved me a lot of work when I lost data form my data base.

jessejump

2:36 pm on Sep 24, 2006 (gmt 0)

>>>>> prefer the cached copy to the live page?

I like the cached page because it highlites the search terms.

viggen

2:54 pm on Sep 24, 2006 (gmt 0)

With the Google Toolbar you get highlighted search terms without cache...

cheers
viggen

julinho

6:14 pm on Sep 24, 2006 (gmt 0)

I still see my pages cached on google.be

What was the order? To prevent caching of Belgium pages? Or to prevent Belgium surfers from seeing the cache? Or something else?

moTi

7:44 pm on Sep 24, 2006 (gmt 0)

With the Google Toolbar you get highlighted search terms without cache

yeah, but who wants to install the google toolbar.

i always search through caches because of keyword highlighting and i honestly can't believe how you guys work without if you want to do some serious online research. sometimes keywords are buried in a 10000 words or 200 KB article.

although my websites have caching turned off. but that's ok for the user, if you have a built-in search keyword highlighting script. i recommend to do it server-side, not with javascript.

europeforvisitors

8:53 pm on Sep 24, 2006 (gmt 0)

yeah, but who wants to install the google toolbar.

Quite a few people do, apparently. I'm one of them. The Google toolbar is a great timesaver. Try it--you might actually like it. :-)

swa66

10:10 pm on Sep 24, 2006 (gmt 0)

Google's cache saved me a lot of work when I lost data form my data base.

That's what backup is for.

I still see my pages cached on google.be

The courts in their wisdom ordered GOOG only to not cache content from the French and German speaking press in Belgium (the plaintiffs).

Facts remains that the search engines (not just Google) and archives alike do violate copyright, but it's only Google that's been prohibited not to violate the rights of a section of the press in one country. A more global approach is needed.

There might be more permissive laws in other countries, but it's clear that the caching as done by a.o. Google isn't considered fair use out here. Still the cached pages and probably even worse the archives continue to violate basic copyright law.

yeah, but who wants to install the google toolbar

It's about your only way to have even an idea of the PR of a page. Unfortunately it does not include an adsense preview.

garyr_h

4:16 am on Sep 25, 2006 (gmt 0)

A lot of times with blogs and forums, the homepage/first page of the forum shows up in the results, but when you click on the link it's not there anymore. So you click on the cache and you get it right away instead of searching through pages and pages of stuff you don't want.

Harry

4:30 pm on Sep 25, 2006 (gmt 0)

I like Google's cache, as a surfer and a Webmaster. Many time when investigating spammers and dubious sites that link spam my stats, I check the cache version because of safety issues and because I don't want to leave a trace on a known bad guy's site.

I'd like to thank all the folks who are defending my copyrights, but fact is, I didn't ask any of you to step in for me. Thank God I'm not from Belgium. If I have an issue with Google archiving my pages, I'll take it directly to them. I don't need people talking about protecting my copyrights when I genuinely want Y!, MSN and G to archive my sites for me. Read this, I WANT THEM TO ARCHIVE MY SITES.

I want them to refer to my news sites, they provide me many new visitors and revenue - not from Adsense, but from people who would have never stumbled upon me and discover what I have to offer.

This is not a black and white issue and I'd like all the copyrights freaks to stop assuming that they represent every Webmaster. They don't.

With scrappers, you lose out completely. But with the Big Three, it's a give and take and you can benefit from this. And it's quite obvious that they are archiving an entire site and not just scrapping for Adsense. They never act as if the contents is theirs.

I usually care very much about copyrights, but we all know that the only way to fully protect one's contents online is not to post it at all anywhere on the Web or offline.

The Belgian decision reminds me of an old story where a baker wanted a beggar to pay for smelling the scent of his freshly baked breads. The beggar said, "no problem." He took his only coin and threw it on the ground a couple of time so the the baker could here the sound of the pennies. Then he said, I think you're all paid up now.

Here, the baker actually wants real money instead of noise...

alexdino1

11:07 pm on Sep 25, 2006 (gmt 0)

How cool would it have been if Google stopped doing business in Belgium? I would have loved to see them do that.

mimmo

1:39 am on Sep 26, 2006 (gmt 0)

By default search engines *must not* cache pages, because it is *NOT their content* and they *do NOT know* if you want them to.

If a webmaster likes pages to be cached by a search engine he/she should be able to indicate that in a robot.txt-like file.

Caching pages is different from "indexing" pages and this decision in Belgium could be the start of more to come.

Car_Guy

4:08 am on Oct 3, 2006 (gmt 0)

Something on CNN today brought this thread to mind, by illustrating the importance of caching pages.

A CNN reporter was talking about the latest scandal in Washington, and said something to effect that, "The government's official Web page (that is most directly related to the victim in the scandal) has been taken down, but we were able to find cached versions going back to 2004, and this is what was being said."

By displaying the cached versions of the pages to viewers, CNN showed that years ago there was knowledge of a problem that some politicians (and the attorney for the rehab-bound man at the center of the scandal) were today continuing to deny.

It was pretty neat.