Google Search is losing its 'cached' web page feature

They really have just given up on being a good search engine at this point huh?

Well that really sucks because it was often the only way to actually find the content on the page that the Google results "promised". For numerous reasons - sometimes the content simply changes, gets deleted or is made inaccessible because of geo-fencing or the site is straight up broken and so on.

Yes, there's archive.org but believe it or not, not everything is there.

That's bs, it's one of the best features Google has and they've been ruining it. Wayback machine wished it could be that comprehensive.

of course it is. why have anything good on there, no point reminding me of the old days when the internet was actually fucking useful

Without getting into too much detail, a cached site saved my ass in a court case. Fuck you Google.

At this rate Search will end up in the Google graveyard

Google is the king of giving bullshit reasons to hide their true intent.

We that's some shit. I often use that to get info off of pages that I won't be clicking on normally.

there are half a dozen still very good reasons to keep this feature and one not to: lost ad revenue

assholes

The enshittification will continue until quarterly reports improve.

Just kidding, it will continue regardless.

These days, things have greatly improved.

Websites will never change their URLs today.

By they way, I just found out that they removed the button, but typing cache:www.example.com into Google still redirects you to the cached version (if it exists). But who knows for how long. And there's the question whether they'll continue to cache new pages.

Time to donate to the internet archibe.

It was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading,” Google's Danny Sullivan wrote. “These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it."

They still go down, Danny. And fairly frequently at that. Y'all are fuckin' stupid.

How has no one worked on a new search engine over the last decade or so where Google has been on a clear decline in its flagship product!

I know of the likes of DDG, and Bing has worked hard to catch up, but I'm genuinely surprised that a startup hasn't risen to find a novel way of attacking reliable web search. Some will say it's a "solved problem", but I'd argue that it was, but no longer.

A web search engine that crawls and searches historic versions of a web page could be an incredibly useful resource. If someone can also find a novel way to rank and crawl web applications or to find ways to "open" the closed web, it could pair with web search to be a genuine Google killer.

I find this very useful to read paywalled articles that Google has managed to index!

OK, I see why they might want to get rid of it.

Ironically just yesterday I needed Google Cache because a page I needed to read was down and I couldn't find the option anymore.

Are we going to need to go back to personal web crawlers to back-up information we need? I hate today's internet.

In a shocking turn of events, google decided once again to make their namesake service worse for everyone.

Legitimately baffling, keeping this feature doesn’t really seem like it would impact anyone except those that use it, while removing it not only impacts those people that already use it, but those who would potentially have reason to in the future.

Cannot think of a single benefit to removing a feature like this.

Absolute cunts

I stopped using Google late last year and it's pretty eye opening how much freer I feel now. Previously, any searches I made would follow me around. Make a one time search for something I'd see that being advertised later on. As a result I started searching more using private browsing. I'd often forget though and end up being tracked.

Ultimately switching to Firefox and DuckDuckGo I no longer have to do private searches. No more being followed around the internet.

Also I'm not convinced private browsing works. For example I still use it for YouTube but I noticed despite YouTube not knowing who I am, the videos on the home page include some that are very related to my usual videos. I guess they are using IP's to still deliver relatable videos.

Ironically, the link to this as article is offline for me. "Cached" surely would solve my problem.

Finally, an excuse to use the Wayback Machine for all of my searches!

didn't that happen like years ago? or maybe because I am using Firefox, but I haven't seen the button for the cached website for a while now

It has barely existed for years anyway. Anyone can remove the Google caching from their website and most major websites and many small ones do.

Now I just have an archive.org extension to do the se thing basically.

Has Elon secretly bought Google too?

Fuck. I sometimes use the text-only version to access sites with too many moving elements or when the site is geoblocked or doesn't respect cookies choices and denies access. So far, it has been the most reliable one for me.

That is BS, a site can be down at any time, did we fix downtimes for good? Those down detector sites might just shut down as well then ಠ_ಠ

Google well on their way on their uber-dick speedrun

This is the search engine equivalent of aiming a carbine at your feet and shooting yourself with a .50 cal round.

Cached pages were something I found myself using quite a bit and them going may be the push needed for me to use an alternative search engine.

Enshitification strikes again. Cached doesn't make money and maybe reduces adclicks so it's gone. This benefits Google but not users in any way whatsoever.

Such bullshit.

Internet Archive is essential now. I used to use Google Cached for when IA failed. All researchers are now losing that resiliency.

Cached pages haven't worked on many sites for several years already.

And for specific types of sites, it 100% still is needed and a great tool.

Was it even still around? I can think of a few times in the past few months where I've tried to find the cached link to a google result and failed. Most recently just two days ago, when a site I wanted to use was down for maintenance.

Google is spelled Kagi now. :)

I haven't seen that available for literally years. I thought they killed it long ago.

Google sucks.

No, there are still use cases for it. I usually use it to retrieve web pages from sites that get incorrectly blocked by the firewall at work.

I tried using it three days ago and had to resort to the Wayback Machine instead. Thanks Google!

JFC...at this point I may as well stand up a self hosted search engine.

Sounds like someone's after storage savings.

No need. Sundar is bad enough as is.

Never used it/realized its use. Lament for others who did.

Seeing many comments here shitting on this decision by google, is this really that big of a deal? I've personally never used the cached feature of Google and if I ever needed to see a page that is currently down, it'd be via wayback machine. If nobody used the feature, why have it waste a ton worth of storage space? Feel free to prove me wrong though.