3 ms·

Wow. What is this and why does it exist?

by rattray 11y ago

nostrademons 11y ago
It is the old rendering path for Google Custom Search Engines: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/overview?hl=en https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/overview?hl... Way back when Google first got VC, before they invented AdWords and got profitable, they explored a lot of custom business partner opportunities. So there were a number of specialized Google search endpoints like /linux, /bsd, /unclesam (search over Federal government websites). These were maintained until about 2013 - they go through a different rendering path than the one that serves mainstream Google Search. /linux, /bsd, /unclesam, and a few others were decomissioned in 2013, soon before I left Google, but it looks like /custom got a reprieve for whatever reason. It's actually been deprecated by the Custom Search Engine functionality linked above, but nobody's gotten around to removing it. Incidentally, you can also get a similar page (slightly different, its last update was around 2007 and it shows no ads) by setting your user agent to "Mozilla 3.0".
- kuschku 11y ago
  But, the advantage of /custom: It uses less personalized results, and it returns exactly 20KiB of data – which is why it still loads so fast. There was a day when I just wrote a small script to open all sites mentioned in Google’s robots.txt (which did not return 404) in a separate tab. That’s how I found it. As far as I know, some partners actually still embed /custom (I’ve only seen it at a newspaper a few months ago), so removing it might be problematic.
  - justinator 11y ago
    > As far as I know, some partners actually still embed > /custom (I’ve only seen it at a newspaper a few months > ago), so removing it might be problematic. An ISP local to here does. [0] http://centurylink.net/search/index.php?context=search&tab=Web&q=something http://centurylink.net/search/index.php?context=search&tab=W... I see it every so often if a domain doesn't get resolved - they'll hijack the request and show you their own page. I was pretty surprised that that still happens.
  - SarahofGaia 11y ago
    I love you for using binary prefixes. <3
- staplung 11y ago
  Ahh, heirloom. (That's the name of the system that renders Google for ancient user-agents). Takes me back. It actually got a small set of updates in 2010 when we wrote Heirloom+ and it appears that someone has collapsed the two systems into one since I left in 2011. I'm strangely gratified to see that no one has come up with a better layout solution than putting the results in a table.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

Wow. What is this and why does it exist?

by rattray 11y ago

Wow. What is this and why does it exist?

It is the old rendering path for Google Custom Search Engines: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/overview?hl=en https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/overview?hl... Way back when Google first got VC, before they invented AdWords and got profitable, they explored a lot of custom business partner opportunities. So there were a number of specialized Google search endpoints like /linux, /bsd, /unclesam (search over Federal government websites). These were maintained until about 2013 - they go through a different rendering path than the one that serves mainstream Google Search. /linux, /bsd, /unclesam, and a few others were decomissioned in 2013, soon before I left Google, but it looks like /custom got a reprieve for whatever reason. It's actually been deprecated by the Custom Search Engine functionality linked above, but nobody's gotten around to removing it. Incidentally, you can also get a similar page (slightly different, its last update was around 2007 and it shows no ads) by setting your user agent to "Mozilla 3.0".

kuschku 11y ago
But, the advantage of /custom: It uses less personalized results, and it returns exactly 20KiB of data – which is why it still loads so fast. There was a day when I just wrote a small script to open all sites mentioned in Google’s robots.txt (which did not return 404) in a separate tab. That’s how I found it. As far as I know, some partners actually still embed /custom (I’ve only seen it at a newspaper a few months ago), so removing it might be problematic.
- justinator 11y ago
  > As far as I know, some partners actually still embed > /custom (I’ve only seen it at a newspaper a few months > ago), so removing it might be problematic. An ISP local to here does. [0] http://centurylink.net/search/index.php?context=search&tab=Web&q=something http://centurylink.net/search/index.php?context=search&tab=W... I see it every so often if a domain doesn't get resolved - they'll hijack the request and show you their own page. I was pretty surprised that that still happens.
- SarahofGaia 11y ago
  I love you for using binary prefixes. <3
staplung 11y ago
Ahh, heirloom. (That's the name of the system that renders Google for ancient user-agents). Takes me back. It actually got a small set of updates in 2010 when we wrote Heirloom+ and it appears that someone has collapsed the two systems into one since I left in 2011. I'm strangely gratified to see that no one has come up with a better layout solution than putting the results in a table.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]