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I'd be fine with that if they didn't let search engines crawl their content. If they want to be on the web, they have to play by the rules of the web. Instead w

I'd be fine with that if they didn't let search engines crawl their content. If they want to be on the web, they have to play by the rules of the web. Instead what they want is to reap the benefits of the web while refusing to participate in the open web.

wrs 5y ago
What the heck are the “rules of the web”? Only valueless information is allowed to be indexed? Are you offended that when you search for a book on Amazon you have to pay to read the whole thing?
- dfee 5y ago
  > Are you offended that when you search for a book on Amazon you have to pay to read the whole thing? You don’t. ;) And, those are the rules of the web.
  - dfee 5y ago
    Don’t understand the downvotes. There are legal ways to read books (https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby/ https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby/) and the ability to straight up not read the books but read summaries instead. The internet has provided this free flow of ideas and repackaging of thoughts. There are also ways to read books that circumvent copyright, but in the spirit of this discussion, that’s not necessary to dive into.
- deleted 5y ago
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- rhinoceraptor 5y ago
  It's a bait and switch. They give the search engines full text to crawl, and then nothing when a user clicks that link from their search. They got the tangible monetary benefits of having a high Google search ranking, without giving access to the actual content, which is how the web is supposed to work. It's not my fault that news websites have continually debased their users with horrible advertising and tracking, to the point where ad-supported news is pretty much no longer viable. There are plenty of examples of smaller content offerings like podcasts which do quite well being ad-supported, because they have the trust of their audience, and they only accept quality advertisers so they can charge a premium for their ad space. Books are different, they are not the web. I find things like Google Books very helpful, even for things like when I'm reading a physical book and want to look up which page I read something, even though I can't read the full book through it.
  - Someone 5y ago
    > They got the tangible monetary benefits of having a high Google search ranking, without giving access to the actual content, which is how the web is supposed to work. That’s an opinion. Another opinion is that the web is a hypertext system and that Ted Nelson, who defined that term, included a royalty mechanism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu#Original_17_rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu#Original_17_rul...)
mdoms 5y ago
You seem to have the misinformed belief that Google and search engines generally somehow make up the fundamental fabric of the web? Google is just a company that has a pretty good catalogue of what they've been able to piece together of what's available on the open web. Crawlers are no more a fundamental part of "the open web" than anything else.
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  GP's complaint is that these publishers are serving different content to Google than they serve to people, and Google knows this but pretends that people will get the indexed page. This is the search engine's fault. If it knows I will get a different result because I neither have nor want an account, it should let me hide that result, so I won't waste my time.
cranberryturkey 5y ago
Chances are even if google crawled 12ft.io it wouldn't show in the results because it'd be duplicate content.
deleted 5y ago
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wrs 5y ago

What the heck are the “rules of the web”? Only valueless information is allowed to be indexed? Are you offended that when you search for a book on Amazon you have to pay to read the whole thing?

dfee 5y ago
> Are you offended that when you search for a book on Amazon you have to pay to read the whole thing? You don’t. ;) And, those are the rules of the web.
- dfee 5y ago
  Don’t understand the downvotes. There are legal ways to read books (https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby/ https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby/) and the ability to straight up not read the books but read summaries instead. The internet has provided this free flow of ideas and repackaging of thoughts. There are also ways to read books that circumvent copyright, but in the spirit of this discussion, that’s not necessary to dive into.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rhinoceraptor 5y ago
It's a bait and switch. They give the search engines full text to crawl, and then nothing when a user clicks that link from their search. They got the tangible monetary benefits of having a high Google search ranking, without giving access to the actual content, which is how the web is supposed to work. It's not my fault that news websites have continually debased their users with horrible advertising and tracking, to the point where ad-supported news is pretty much no longer viable. There are plenty of examples of smaller content offerings like podcasts which do quite well being ad-supported, because they have the trust of their audience, and they only accept quality advertisers so they can charge a premium for their ad space. Books are different, they are not the web. I find things like Google Books very helpful, even for things like when I'm reading a physical book and want to look up which page I read something, even though I can't read the full book through it.
- Someone 5y ago
  > They got the tangible monetary benefits of having a high Google search ranking, without giving access to the actual content, which is how the web is supposed to work. That’s an opinion. Another opinion is that the web is a hypertext system and that Ted Nelson, who defined that term, included a royalty mechanism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu#Original_17_rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu#Original_17_rul...)

mdoms 5y ago

You seem to have the misinformed belief that Google and search engines generally somehow make up the fundamental fabric of the web? Google is just a company that has a pretty good catalogue of what they've been able to piece together of what's available on the open web. Crawlers are no more a fundamental part of "the open web" than anything else.

lern_too_spel 5y ago
GP's complaint is that these publishers are serving different content to Google than they serve to people, and Google knows this but pretends that people will get the indexed page. This is the search engine's fault. If it knows I will get a different result because I neither have nor want an account, it should let me hide that result, so I won't waste my time.

cranberryturkey 5y ago

Chances are even if google crawled 12ft.io it wouldn't show in the results because it'd be duplicate content.

deleted 5y ago

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