(⚠ Enshitification warning: The linked article has a cookie wall; just click “reject” and the article appears)
Google is ending the public access to the cache of sites it indexes. AFAICT, these are the consequences:
- People getting different treatment due to their geographic location will lose the cache they used as a remedy for access inclusion.
- People getting different treatment due to having a defensive browser will lose access.
- The 12ft.io service which serves those who suffer access inequality will be rendered useless.
- Google will continue to include paywalls in search results, but now consumers of Google search results will be led to a dead-end.
- The #InternetArchive #WaybackMachine will take on the full burden of global archival.
- Consumers will lose a very useful tool for circumventing web enshitification.
Websites treat the Google crawler like a 1st class citizen. Paywalls give Google unpaid junk-free access. Then Google search results direct people to a website that treats humans differently (worse). So Google users are led to sites they cannot access. The heart of the problem is access inequality. Google effectively serves to refer people to sites that are not publicly accessible.
I do not want to see search results I cannot access. Google cache was the equalizer that neutralizes that problem. Now that problem is back in our face.