davidbgk
/
larlet-fr-david-cache


			
							123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100101102103104105106107108109110111112113114115116117118119120121122123124125126127128129130131132133134135136137138139140141142143144145146147148149150151152153154155156157158159160161162163164165166167168169170171172173174175176177178179180181182183184185186187188
							<!doctype html><!-- This is a valid HTML5 document. -->
<!-- Screen readers, SEO, extensions and so on. -->
<html lang="en">
<!-- Has to be within the first 1024 bytes, hence before the `title` element
  See: https://www.w3.org/TR/2012/CR-html5-20121217/document-metadata.html#charset -->
<meta charset="utf-8">
<!-- Why no `X-UA-Compatible` meta: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6771584 -->
<!-- The viewport meta is quite crowded and we are responsible for that.
  See: https://codepen.io/tigt/post/meta-viewport-for-2015 -->
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1">
<!-- Required to make a valid HTML5 document. -->
<title>Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are dead (archive) — David Larlet</title>
<meta name="description" content="Publication mise en cache pour en conserver une trace.">
<!-- That good ol' feed, subscribe :). -->
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Feed" href="/david/log/">
<!-- Generated from https://realfavicongenerator.net/ such a mess. -->
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="180x180" href="/static/david/icons2/apple-touch-icon.png">
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32" href="/static/david/icons2/favicon-32x32.png">
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="16x16" href="/static/david/icons2/favicon-16x16.png">
<link rel="manifest" href="/static/david/icons2/site.webmanifest">
<link rel="mask-icon" href="/static/david/icons2/safari-pinned-tab.svg" color="#07486c">
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/static/david/icons2/favicon.ico">
<meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#f7f7f7">
<meta name="msapplication-config" content="/static/david/icons2/browserconfig.xml">
<meta name="theme-color" content="#f7f7f7" media="(prefers-color-scheme: light)">
<meta name="theme-color" content="#272727" media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)">
<!-- Is that even respected? Retrospectively? What a shAItshow…
  https://neil-clarke.com/block-the-bots-that-feed-ai-models-by-scraping-your-website/ -->
<meta name="robots" content="noai, noimageai">
<!-- Documented, feel free to shoot an email. -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/static/david/css/style_2021-01-20.css">
<!-- See https://www.zachleat.com/web/comprehensive-webfonts/ for the trade-off. -->
<link rel="preload" href="/static/david/css/fonts/triplicate_t4_poly_regular.woff2" as="font" type="font/woff2" media="(prefers-color-scheme: light), (prefers-color-scheme: no-preference)" crossorigin>
<link rel="preload" href="/static/david/css/fonts/triplicate_t4_poly_bold.woff2" as="font" type="font/woff2" media="(prefers-color-scheme: light), (prefers-color-scheme: no-preference)" crossorigin>
<link rel="preload" href="/static/david/css/fonts/triplicate_t4_poly_italic.woff2" as="font" type="font/woff2" media="(prefers-color-scheme: light), (prefers-color-scheme: no-preference)" crossorigin>
<link rel="preload" href="/static/david/css/fonts/triplicate_t3_regular.woff2" as="font" type="font/woff2" media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" crossorigin>
<link rel="preload" href="/static/david/css/fonts/triplicate_t3_bold.woff2" as="font" type="font/woff2" media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" crossorigin>
<link rel="preload" href="/static/david/css/fonts/triplicate_t3_italic.woff2" as="font" type="font/woff2" media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" crossorigin>
<script>
    function toggleTheme(themeName) {
        document.documentElement.classList.toggle(
            'forced-dark',
            themeName === 'dark'
        )
        document.documentElement.classList.toggle(
            'forced-light',
            themeName === 'light'
        )
    }
    const selectedTheme = localStorage.getItem('theme')
    if (selectedTheme !== 'undefined') {
        toggleTheme(selectedTheme)
    }
</script>

  <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
  <meta content="origin-when-cross-origin" name="referrer">
  <!-- Canonical URL for SEO purposes -->
  <link rel="canonical" href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/google-search-kills-off-cached-webpages/">

<body class="remarkdown h1-underline h2-underline h3-underline em-underscore hr-center ul-star pre-tick" data-instant-intensity="viewport-all">


<article>
  <header>
    <h1>Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are dead</h1>
  </header>
  <nav>
    <p class="center">
      <a href="/david/" title="Aller à l’accueil"><svg class="icon icon-home">
        <use xlink:href="/static/david/icons2/symbol-defs-2021-12.svg#icon-home"></use>
      </svg> Accueil</a> •
      <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/google-search-kills-off-cached-webpages/" title="Lien vers le contenu original">Source originale</a>
      <br>
      Mis en cache le 2024-02-03
    </p>
  </nav>
  <hr>
  <figure class="intro-image intro-left">
  <img src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/google-800x523.jpg" alt="A large Google logo is displayed amidst foliage.">
      <figcaption class="caption"></figcaption>  </figure>

<p>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 <a href="https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1753156161509916873">X post</a>, 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."</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://arstechnica.com/">Ars Technica</a> seems to still work. All of Google's support pages about cached sites have been taken down.</p>
<p>Cached links used to live under the drop-down menu next to every search result on Google's page. As the Google web crawler scoured the Internet for new and updated webpages, it would also save a copy of whatever it was seeing. That quickly led to Google having a backup of basically the entire Internet, using what was probably an uncountable number of petabytes of data. Google is in <a href="https://arstechnica.com/google/2024/01/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-promises-another-year-of-google-layoffs/">the era of cost savings</a> now, so assuming Google can just start deleting cache data, it can probably free up a lot of resources.</p>

<pre><code>
</code></pre>
<p>Cached links were great if the website was down or quickly changed, but they also gave some insight over the years about how the "<a href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/googlebot">Google Bot</a>" web crawler views the web. The pages aren't necessarily rendered like how you would expect. In the past, pages were text-only, but slowly the Google Bot learned about media and other rich data like javascript (there are <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/overview-google-crawlers">a ton</a> of specialized Google Bots now). A lot of Google Bot details are shrouded in secrecy to hide from SEO spammers, but you could learn a lot by investigating what cached pages look like. In 2020, Google switched to <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/03/announcing-mobile-first-indexing-for">mobile-by-default</a>, so for instance, if you visit that cached Ars link from earlier, you get the mobile site. If you run a website and want to learn more about what a site looks like to a Google Bot, you can still do that, though only for your own site, from the <a href="https://t.co/KWIuvy51Zi">Search Console</a>.</p>
<p>The death of cached sites will mean the Internet Archive has a larger burden of archiving and tracking changes on the world's webpages.</p>
</article>


<hr>

<footer>
  <p>
    <a href="/david/" title="Aller à l’accueil"><svg class="icon icon-home">
        <use xlink:href="/static/david/icons2/symbol-defs-2021-12.svg#icon-home"></use>
      </svg> Accueil</a> •
    <a href="/david/log/" title="Accès au flux RSS"><svg class="icon icon-rss2">
        <use xlink:href="/static/david/icons2/symbol-defs-2021-12.svg#icon-rss2"></use>
      </svg> Suivre</a> •
    <a href="http://larlet.com" title="Go to my English profile" data-instant><svg class="icon icon-user-tie">
        <use xlink:href="/static/david/icons2/symbol-defs-2021-12.svg#icon-user-tie"></use>
      </svg> Pro</a> •
    <a href="mailto:david%40larlet.fr" title="Envoyer un courriel"><svg class="icon icon-mail">
        <use xlink:href="/static/david/icons2/symbol-defs-2021-12.svg#icon-mail"></use>
      </svg> Email</a> •
    <abbr class="nowrap" title="Hébergeur : Alwaysdata, 62 rue Tiquetonne 75002 Paris, +33184162340"><svg class="icon icon-hammer2">
        <use xlink:href="/static/david/icons2/symbol-defs-2021-12.svg#icon-hammer2"></use>
      </svg> Légal</abbr>
  </p>
  <template id="theme-selector">
      <form>
          <fieldset>
              <legend><svg class="icon icon-brightness-contrast">
                <use xlink:href="/static/david/icons2/symbol-defs-2021-12.svg#icon-brightness-contrast"></use>
              </svg> Thème</legend>
              <label>
                  <input type="radio" value="auto" name="chosen-color-scheme" checked> Auto
              </label>
              <label>
                  <input type="radio" value="dark" name="chosen-color-scheme"> Foncé
              </label>
              <label>
                  <input type="radio" value="light" name="chosen-color-scheme"> Clair
              </label>
          </fieldset>
      </form>
  </template>
</footer>
<script src="/static/david/js/instantpage-5.1.0.min.js" type="module"></script>
<script>
    function loadThemeForm(templateName) {
        const themeSelectorTemplate = document.querySelector(templateName)
        const form = themeSelectorTemplate.content.firstElementChild
        themeSelectorTemplate.replaceWith(form)

        form.addEventListener('change', (e) => {
            const chosenColorScheme = e.target.value
            localStorage.setItem('theme', chosenColorScheme)
            toggleTheme(chosenColorScheme)
        })

        const selectedTheme = localStorage.getItem('theme')
        if (selectedTheme && selectedTheme !== 'undefined') {
            form.querySelector(`[value="${selectedTheme}"]`).checked = true
        }
    }

    const prefersColorSchemeDark = '(prefers-color-scheme: dark)'
    window.addEventListener('load', () => {
        let hasDarkRules = false
        for (const styleSheet of Array.from(document.styleSheets)) {
            let mediaRules = []
            for (const cssRule of styleSheet.cssRules) {
                if (cssRule.type !== CSSRule.MEDIA_RULE) {
                    continue
                }
                // WARNING: Safari does not have/supports `conditionText`.
                if (cssRule.conditionText) {
                    if (cssRule.conditionText !== prefersColorSchemeDark) {
                        continue
                    }
                } else {
                    if (cssRule.cssText.startsWith(prefersColorSchemeDark)) {
                        continue
                    }
                }
                mediaRules = mediaRules.concat(Array.from(cssRule.cssRules))
            }

            // WARNING: do not try to insert a Rule to a styleSheet you are
            // currently iterating on, otherwise the browser will be stuck
            // in a infinite loop…
            for (const mediaRule of mediaRules) {
                styleSheet.insertRule(mediaRule.cssText)
                hasDarkRules = true
            }
        }
        if (hasDarkRules) {
            loadThemeForm('#theme-selector')
        }
    })
</script>
</body>
</html>