Google "Search Liaison" Danny Sullivan confirmed the feature removal in an X post, saying the feature "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."
okay but... has it? this seems like an unfounded premise, intuitively speaking
"What excuse could we use for this cost-cutting measure?"
"Uh, we could just say that people don't need it anymore."
Yea I've been using it more and more recently, although part of that is sites like Twitter or Reddit randomly hiding content
Bingo. When I read that part of the article, I felt insulted. People see the web getting increasingly enshitified and less accessible. The increased need for cached pages has justified the existence of 12ft.io.
~40% of my web access is now dependant on archive.org and 12ft.io.
So yes, Google is obviously bullshitting. Clearly there is a real reason for nixing cached pages and Google is concealing that reason.
okay but... has it? this seems like an unfounded premise, intuitively speaking
"What excuse could we use for this cost-cutting measure?"
"Uh, we could just say that people don't need it anymore."
"Johnson, get that man a promotion!"
Yea I've been using it more and more recently, although part of that is sites like Twitter or Reddit randomly hiding content
Bingo. When I read that part of the article, I felt insulted. People see the web getting increasingly enshitified and less accessible. The increased need for cached pages has justified the existence of 12ft.io.
~40% of my web access is now dependant on archive.org and 12ft.io.
So yes, Google is obviously bullshitting. Clearly there is a real reason for nixing cached pages and Google is concealing that reason.