I have a feeling this has to do with AI and all the lawsuits regarding content and copyright, storing and displaying the contents of a third party website to the end user might not be the best idea right now (I know the way back machine exists but they’re not a for profit company like google).
"AI is doing a thing which we have already been doing for most of the internet's existence; this thing is central to the internet as we know it works today."
Versus
"AI is doing a thing that we stopped doing proactively because we thought it might be illegal, which also means it's clearly not that important to the web, please let us keep doing it for AI training."
Probably more to do with google hating maintaining stuff and they probably lose money showing you stale websites with stale ads instead of a live one with live ads
It could also be security related. I know occasionally companies accidentally make things public they didn’t intend to be public due to misconfiguration. Once this happens, those pages are available in the Google cache even when they’re no longer accessible. You can request the cached results be removed, but this takes time.
That's really too bad. I have a keyword for that search, because I have blocked this site at work in my hosts file so I can't browse, and only look at specific links via the cache.
I went to the google search page and put in the URL with the cache: prefix. Eg "cache:http://archive.org/". This is now broken. Existing cache entries still exist, but unfortunately unless you know the URL it is inaccessible.
Just noticed it missing recently , frustratingly enough. So many times I'd search for something very specific and get a hit on a comment on a page or forum, often with tens if not hundreds of pages. Using the cached link always worked.
If confirmed, what a shame. Cache was a great resource. But one thing that already bothered me it was it didn't work on mobile, at least for me. Only while using a desktop browser.
I've had to use Google's cache maybe twice in the last year: the first time I was very surprised that they had hidden it one or two clicks deeper than it used to be; the second time was earlier today, and this time I couldn't find the button anywhere. I guess this confirms it's gone for real!
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.'”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"Our telemetry shows that many people don't use the brakes often in an electric car, so we've moved them to a sub-menu of the dashboard. We've removed the brake pedal, saving $32 per car."
I used to use it on some sites that would show different results to Google vs people. LinkedIn cache was disabled years ago, I guess it was just time until the rest would be.
on a similar topic, does anyone know how to view LinkedIn without an account?
Yes instead of making improvements to their product like removing spam sites like Pinterest, etc - they are actually killing the good features which gives Google edge over chatgpt. Not sure what the gameplan is here.
Right now, the focus seems to be on margin expansion.
Give them a few years at this rate, and they'll move to financialization.
A decade after that, they'll divest most of their assets and switch to providing services, like IBM, except they'll probably try doing it without adding a service team, which should make for some fun satire from The Register.
Readit News
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp...
"It's a good thing copyright law exists to prevent AI from doing anything useful because I'm fearful of AI."
"Hey, does anyone know why the web has become so boring and useless???"
Who knows – maybe Google Search won't even show page descriptions in the coming years.
"AI is doing a thing which we have already been doing for most of the internet's existence; this thing is central to the internet as we know it works today."
Versus
"AI is doing a thing that we stopped doing proactively because we thought it might be illegal, which also means it's clearly not that important to the web, please let us keep doing it for AI training."
Dead Comment
Deleted Comment
First: "We should move the cache link one menu click deeper, we don't have room here"
(No one can easily find it now)
Later: "Wow, no one uses cache, guess we should remove the link!"
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.'”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Deleted Comment
Please take me back to Google 10 years ago when they actually had working products instead of experimenting with Ai.
Give them a few years at this rate, and they'll move to financialization.
A decade after that, they'll divest most of their assets and switch to providing services, like IBM, except they'll probably try doing it without adding a service team, which should make for some fun satire from The Register.