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why is Google doing this? They're helping everyone else build a spider that could easily serve as the front end to a new search engine. Is this their way of fig
by throwasehasdwi 9y ago
why is Google doing this? They're helping everyone else build a spider that could easily serve as the front end to a new search engine. Is this their way of fighting back against the internet closing off? Give everyone a spider so perfect that walling in your content becomes impractical? I like the idea of Google lighting the match that burns down the walled gardens, but if not this than why?
It could be anything, but I feel like there's definitely another motive to Google unleashing something that could bite their core business.
- skybrian 9y agoYou're looking for strategy everywhere. People at big companies do a lot of things and not every feature is high-level strategic. I don't know their motivations, but the first use that comes to mind is to make automatically testing your own web app using Chrome easier. Most teams working on web apps could use better testing, whether they work for Google or not.
- IshKebab 9y agolol no. Nobody building a search engine would use this, and very similar alternatives (e.g. PhantomJS) have been available for years. This is just a useful tool. They probably use it internally for automated testing and research.
- bdcravens 9y agoSpidering is a tiny part of building a search engine, and this piece is a tiny piece of a spider. Headless Chrome helps someone compete with Google as much as Basecamp's work on Rails helps someone compete with Basecamp.
- tyingq 9y agoIf I was trying to control scraping and get a view into it, offering the best scraping tool might be good start. I'm pretty sure headless mode exposes something you could fingerprint it with, server side.