Google has decided to abandon one of the search engine’s oldest features, the ability to show copies of sites stored in the Google cache. This was confirmed by Google search service expert Danny Sullivan in a publication in his magazine. Blog on social network X (formerly Twitter).
“Yes, the feature has been removed. I know it’s sad. I feel sad too. This is one of our oldest features. However, previously this was difficult so caching was needed to help load pages. Today the situation has improved significantly. So they decided to abandon the cache,” Sullivan explained.
The expert suggested that in the future, Google search may begin to provide links to archived versions of pages stored on the resources of the Internet Archive service.
The functionality to show the version of a page in Google’s cache disappeared for some users in December 2023. Access to deleted or modified materials was also allowed.
Cached links to older versions of pages were available in the menu next to each result on the Google search page. Since the system’s search robot saves copies of literally every resource, Google now has an archive of almost the entire Internet, the size of which is probably calculated in petabytes (1 petabyte – 1 thousand terabytes) of data.
Previously on Google promise Stop collecting users’ geolocation data and providing that information to law enforcement.