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Web Caching: Google vs. The New York Times

Posted by timothy on from the right-to-be-annoying dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Google cache is a popular feature among karma fetishists. Many stories with links to the NY Times attract comments pointing to Google's copy of the article. This gives readers access to the content without registering. C|Net reports that Google is in talks with the NY Times to close this backdoor. The article raises some general concerns regarding the caching of webcontent. Shouldn't the NY Times simply tell Google not to cache their site?"

8 of 518 comments (clear)

  1. Free registration by Zog+The+Undeniable · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd love to see their user database, just to count the number of Mickey Mice and Elmer Fudds on there. Apart from giving the NYT your e-mail addy for spam purposes, what real point is there to free registration?

    --
    When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
    1. Re:Free registration by presroi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Maybe we can agree that the NYT is a well-written, serious and interesting newspaper. Not just for New Yorkers but also for people from Sweden, Japan or New Jersey.

      Where would the the limit? How would you feel if you had to register for every web page which is linked to at /. (I confess, I usually click on every /.-story link)?

      hmm, to answer your question:
      maybe the point in registration is the signing of a contract how to use this contact. Dunno.

    2. Re:Free registration by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And on top of everything else, it annoys users more than just about anything else aside from spam. Can't recall exactly how many other people I know who go to see a NYT article, find the rego page, and ignore it to go find a better news source without the hassle.

      If they're tracking what their users are do, they're affecting their user pool in a pretty negative way just by using this method.

    3. Re:Free registration by NexusTw1n · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I always find it ironic when people on slashdot complain about being "tracked" on NYTimes webpages or other sites that require registration.

      Most people have registered to use /. , and have therefore provided a valid email address. So you can't have a moral objection to giving your email addy to websites you frequent.

      Even if you don't register, your IP address is logged and monitored , via the sophisticated anti troll system. Try and post more than 10 times in one day as an AC, or post as an AC in reply to a post you modded and slashcode will react.

      So even as an AC you aren't really totally anonymous on slashdot, yet I don't see anyone who complains about NY Times links complaining about that. The only people who complain are the trolls that forced these features to be added to the code.

      So why do we have this tedious bitching about the NY times every time a link is posted?

      I registered a couple of years ago. I've never recieved a single spam to NYTimes@mydomain.com which was the email addy I used. I've never had to login because the login cookie has remained in Opera since I registered. How hard is it login and then forget about it forever more?

      The only reason I haven't forgotten I've registered is the continual complaints on slashdot from people who are obsessed with privacy on the net unless karma is involved. NY Times doesn't spam registered users, and any user tracking is less sophisticated than slashcode's vital anti troll features. So bear that in mind when tommorrow's NY Times story appears and the same old complaints are dragged out yet again.

      --
      It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
  2. There's no such thing as free registration by pslam · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Apart from giving the NYT your e-mail addy for spam purposes, what real point is there to free registration?

    That's the thing - it's not free depending on your definition. By my own definition, you're giving them valuable information, and they get to keep it and use it as they will, including spamming if they feel like it (or spam from any company which buys them out, they sell it to if they're feeling bankrupt, etc). It's practically misadvertising of a service, but it's accepted now, so everyone gets away with it.

    If it really were free, why would you need to register in the first place?

  3. Re:Erm...cache? by Neophytus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was thinking the same thing. I cann't recall seeing a NYT article linked from here with the google cache banner across the top, what I do see alot are the partner links. Google already provides for register-only news sites (financial times?) by putting a [reg only] tag beside the article. Why the NYT has chosen not to use this up until now is a tad strange, and it looks like someone has picked up the wrong end of the stick.

  4. Free registration and the RIAA by mike_mgo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's articles like this that make me think that the recording and movie industries are right to go after online piracy with everything they've got.

    Here we have the NYT, one of the premier news organizations in the world, offering its articles for free on the same day that they are published. Yet a large number of people, of this online community at least, refuses to provide even a minimal amount of information (and no money) so that the newspaper can try to make its online presence profitable.

    I think the spam fears are a red herring, I've been registered with the times for over 2 years. I've never gotten spam that I think is traceable from them. I get a daily email of the day's headlines (and with the click of a box I could discontinue this).

    Why should the RIAA change its business model to a pennies per song method when there is such a blatant example of the online community refusing to go directly to the source for even free material?

  5. No pity for the NYT... by qtp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The NYT needs to call off the lawyers and seriously think about how they brought this on themselves.

    There are so many models for running a news site that avoid this problem (Salon) that calling out the lawyers is just childish and inapropriate. If a site wants to be indexed by a search engine, then they should be aware of what that means, and if they don't like how a particular search engine functions, then they should take measures to change thier own site to prevent what they don't want indexed, or cached, from being accessed.

    I know that finding pages on google that I cannot access would be infuriating, and I hope that Google realizes that many of thier users would agree.

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    Read, L