As far as I can tell, their business model relies on crawling the entire Internet, then downloading it to their servers and presenting that content within their websites, then linking to these sites.
So my question is: How is this legal? Some sites explicitly forbid crawling in their TOS.
Is it just that no one has sued yet?
2006-09-06 09:13:40 · 5 answers · asked by Ejsenstejn 2 in Politics & Government ➔ Law & Ethics
Think of Google like a library. If you don't want your book there, ask to have it removed.
2006-09-06 09:19:36 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Goggle doesn't actually d/l the site or it's content to there website. They do offer a link to the site but the way it works is that it takes a Snap Shot of the site. Then it offers a preview of the site. This doesn't include updates or any changes made to the site since the indexing.
Many sites strive to be on Google's top two pages. You can actually see the people who pay to be on the Googles web all around the edges with paid advertisements. It's not illegal cause they aren't steeling anything or declaring rights. They simply took a snapshot and offered a link too it. That is why you have the cached offer below the search link. If you notice sometimes the cache will be much different from the updated page.
As for the crawling yes, some websites don't approve of such things but that is usually only because they get bogged down with useless no-named search engines that take up there bandwidth. But they can set up deterrents and Google's will remove your site if you ask them too.
2006-09-06 09:29:12 · answer #2 · answered by x0zx 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If sites forbid then they get a firewall and passwords, or move sensitive information over to the intranet. There business is just an search engine. Just like the yellow pages. So no one will sue. They actually want google to notice them. They want to be on the 1st or 2nd page of google searches. They strive for this and people pay alot of money for search engine optimization to get it.
2006-09-06 09:18:53 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
And the sites that do not want crawling can implement the internet standard notice to crawlers to say don't index my site.
Check out the link below for one of the most common standard ways to inform an automated crawler not to index a site.
2006-09-06 09:16:33 · answer #4 · answered by coragryph 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Who wants to sue Google when they are backed by US and foreign intelligence agencies?
2006-09-06 09:19:32 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋