6 ms·

This isn’t entirely evil. They give you a full HTML dump to host elsewhere, or if you like what they did with the migration, you can just click a button to sign

by easton 6y ago

This isn’t entirely evil. They give you a full HTML dump to host elsewhere, or if you like what they did with the migration, you can just click a button to sign off and they publish it. Just have to hope people notice before their sites go offline.

sp332 6y ago
No one is looking at most of these old sites. The email addresses are defunct or the authors are dead. Google is deciding to remove huge amounts of web history, again.
- jhrmnn 6y ago
  Turning off a server on its own isn’t removing web history. Even google cannot be forced to host websites for free indefinitely.
  - LunaSea 6y ago
    I thought that this was what AMP was about. Huh, must have been about something else.
  - sp332 6y ago
    Google is still offering to host the sites though. They are just deciding to delete a bunch of them. And while they have a legal right to remove the sites, we can still hold them accountable for how they use that power. Turning off a web server on its own isn't removing web history When Google targets sites that are least likely to have a backup anywhere else, least likely to have active admins, least likely for an admin to notice an email notification in an old inbox, I'm pretty sure that's deleting web history.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
irontinkerer 6y ago
Sounds good, but I don’t know a lot of “active” Google Sites admins. Is Google going to offer a searchable cache? When I google search a hard question, many times I’m brought to Google Sits We’re going to lose a valuable source of old data if former admins don’t show up, do the work, and rehost
andybak 6y ago
They could host the static dumps in perpetuity at the same urls. The cost would be a rounding error for them. Any idea if Google donates to The Web Archive Project? I hope so. That would absolve them to some degree. I know a company shouldn't be responsible for storing people's content indefinitely but I hate the fact that human culture has become so transient.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Human culture has always been so transient. How many diaries, family photos, letters (even/especially email), etc. from even 30 years ago have been preserved? Much less 100 years. What has been passed down, especially publicly, are pretty rare exceptions.
  - minimuffins 6y ago
    I don't know. In the past a lot of material culture survived for thousands of years by total accident. A lot of objects survived just because nobody ever bothered to destroy them, and could be found later. It's a different situation here. A lot of cultural objects' survival is now contingent on whether their continued existence happens to be profitable for whatever tech firm happens to be maintaining their material infrastructure.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Certainly digital information has to be deliberately preserved and doing so has challenges relative to anything physical. That said, with a few exceptions (e.g. papyrus in very dry conditions), pretty much anything on paper/parchment needs to be deliberately preserved as well. And, as you get to wetter climates e.g. Britain, there is very little preserved from post-Roman Medieval times. But I won't really argue that preserving the public web should probably be done by public institutions rather than depending almost solely on one non-profit organization. Because it's not reasonable to expect, for example, a website that's been hosted on some provider to be saved forever by that provider once the monthly bill stops being paid. (And that provider will probably go out of business sooner or later anyway.) Do you even want to bet on Google or Facebook being around in 50 or 100 years?
caiobegotti 6y ago
That migration click is far from working okay. I tried in a very simple-page-text-only-with-paragraphs-one-uploaded-image I had using a Web Font, an embedded Spreadsheet and an embeeded Maps area, all owned by Google. The layout got so broken that I didn't publish it and it's in the draft state after the migration. It looks really shitty.
- iso1210 6y ago
  "all owned by Google" There's your problem
JaggedJax 6y ago
I just went in to migrate a site of mine as a test and it broke every single image and most or all of the internal links. If they can't even migrate the basics like images and internal links, then they really didn't put much effort into this at all and most people will have lots of work to actually migrate their site.
gtfoutttt 6y ago
How did you get the full HTML dump? They only gave me a "converted site" in my gdrive when I downloaded from the migration manager.

by easton 6y ago

sp332 6y ago

No one is looking at most of these old sites. The email addresses are defunct or the authors are dead. Google is deciding to remove huge amounts of web history, again.

jhrmnn 6y ago
Turning off a server on its own isn’t removing web history. Even google cannot be forced to host websites for free indefinitely.
- LunaSea 6y ago
  I thought that this was what AMP was about. Huh, must have been about something else.
- sp332 6y ago
  Google is still offering to host the sites though. They are just deciding to delete a bunch of them. And while they have a legal right to remove the sites, we can still hold them accountable for how they use that power. Turning off a web server on its own isn't removing web history When Google targets sites that are least likely to have a backup anywhere else, least likely to have active admins, least likely for an admin to notice an email notification in an old inbox, I'm pretty sure that's deleting web history.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

irontinkerer 6y ago

Sounds good, but I don’t know a lot of “active” Google Sites admins. Is Google going to offer a searchable cache? When I google search a hard question, many times I’m brought to Google Sits We’re going to lose a valuable source of old data if former admins don’t show up, do the work, and rehost

andybak 6y ago

They could host the static dumps in perpetuity at the same urls. The cost would be a rounding error for them. Any idea if Google donates to The Web Archive Project? I hope so. That would absolve them to some degree. I know a company shouldn't be responsible for storing people's content indefinitely but I hate the fact that human culture has become so transient.

ghaff 6y ago
Human culture has always been so transient. How many diaries, family photos, letters (even/especially email), etc. from even 30 years ago have been preserved? Much less 100 years. What has been passed down, especially publicly, are pretty rare exceptions.
- minimuffins 6y ago
  I don't know. In the past a lot of material culture survived for thousands of years by total accident. A lot of objects survived just because nobody ever bothered to destroy them, and could be found later. It's a different situation here. A lot of cultural objects' survival is now contingent on whether their continued existence happens to be profitable for whatever tech firm happens to be maintaining their material infrastructure.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Certainly digital information has to be deliberately preserved and doing so has challenges relative to anything physical. That said, with a few exceptions (e.g. papyrus in very dry conditions), pretty much anything on paper/parchment needs to be deliberately preserved as well. And, as you get to wetter climates e.g. Britain, there is very little preserved from post-Roman Medieval times. But I won't really argue that preserving the public web should probably be done by public institutions rather than depending almost solely on one non-profit organization. Because it's not reasonable to expect, for example, a website that's been hosted on some provider to be saved forever by that provider once the monthly bill stops being paid. (And that provider will probably go out of business sooner or later anyway.) Do you even want to bet on Google or Facebook being around in 50 or 100 years?

caiobegotti 6y ago

That migration click is far from working okay. I tried in a very simple-page-text-only-with-paragraphs-one-uploaded-image I had using a Web Font, an embedded Spreadsheet and an embeeded Maps area, all owned by Google. The layout got so broken that I didn't publish it and it's in the draft state after the migration. It looks really shitty.

iso1210 6y ago
"all owned by Google" There's your problem

JaggedJax 6y ago

I just went in to migrate a site of mine as a test and it broke every single image and most or all of the internal links. If they can't even migrate the basics like images and internal links, then they really didn't put much effort into this at all and most people will have lots of work to actually migrate their site.

gtfoutttt 6y ago

How did you get the full HTML dump? They only gave me a "converted site" in my gdrive when I downloaded from the migration manager.