<
https://gizmodo.com/google-teams-with-the-internet-archive-to-revive-cache-feature-2000497624>
"What was once dead now lives again through the power of the Internet Archive.
Seven months after killing the ability to see old versions of websites through
Google, the search engine has partnered with the archive and is directly
linking to its cached versions of websites on the Wayback Machine.
Websites change over time. The information on a URL constantly evolves. News
stories are changed, blogs are stealth-edited, and sometimes stuff just stops
working. For more than 20 years, Google offered a way for users to view into
the past and see stripped-down and archived versions of old sites.
Back in February, it killed off the feature. “Yes, it’s been removed,” Google
search liaison Danny Sullivan said on X at the time. “I know, it’s sad. I’m sad
too. It’s one of our oldest features. But it was meant for helping people
access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading. These
days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.
Personally, I hope that maybe we’ll add links to @internetarchive from where we
had the cache link before, within About This Result.”
It was a throwaway comment made on X, not a promise. Miraculously, however,
it’s come to pass. According to a blog on the Internet Archive, users can see
Wayback Machine links by doing a search as normal and then clicking the three
dots next to the URL in the results. This will open up a new tab on the
browser. Click “more about this page” to see a link to the Wayback archives.
“Through this direct link, you’ll be able to view previous versions of a
webpage via the Wayback Machine, offering a snapshot of how it appeared at
different points in time,” the Archive said.
In a statement about the change, Google said it knew how important old versions
of websites were. “We know that many people, including those in the research
community, value being able to see previous versions of webpages when
available. That’s why we’ve added links to the Internet Archive’s Wayback
Machine to our ‘About this page’ feature, to give people quick context and make
this helpful information easily accessible through Search,” it said."
Via Susan ****
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
