Following our story yesterday on reports that the new beta version of Google’s Toolbar hijacks 404 pages, Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed the story.
Unsurprisingly Cutts suggested that the hijacking was a helpful measure and that it only takes place where the 404 page is under 512 bytes. I have to admit that it does sound warm and fuzzy, Google being helpful and all, but still, when Verisign started hijacking similar non page results, there was a mighty uproar.
I get Google’s argument, and the vast majority of web pages will not be affected by this, but it seems to be the thin edge of the wedge to me. Google hijacking any pages, no matter what the argument, is not a positive step forward. What do you think?
- No
- Yes
- Maybe
Total Votes: 4185
Started: February 13, 2008
(image credit: TechRepublic)
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If you have some meaningful information you would liked to have displayed in cases of 404 under your domain, you can ad a picture that is 513 kb?
The one, who got the power, doesn’t need to ask us, what to do. Personally I don’t agree nor disagree.
It is official strategy, all behemoth’s do it
According to Wikipedia Internet Explorer 6 behaves the same way, replaces 404 error responses smaller than 512 bytes with its own error page. Internet Explorer 6 has more than 40% of the market, so if you are a webmaster and you are serious about showing your custom error page you should be already sending a page that is larger than 512 bytes or you will be missing 40% of your audience.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/404_error
@Mads Gorm Larsen
Note that its 512 bytes, not 512 KB
A bad precedent but what can you do?
Both IE and FF have atleast an offline 404 page… But this google thing will always load a page from the web… Unnecessarily wasting the bandwidth..
This matters for the limited bandwidth options in India!
I must say I didn’t like it when I first heard it, but as someone on RWW I think mentioned: the situation would be completely different if Google offered to share revenue created by hijacked 404’s with the developers. So to be precise, again just like Facebooks beacon, it’s not the idea that is bad but rather PR and execution of it. Just like beacon this thing is opt-out rather than opt-in and was introduced without proper PR note from google.
I don’t see what the big deal is. Google is not really “officially hijacking” 404 pages. They are adding a service to their optional tool which will then hijack the page. If you don’t agree with this practice then don’t use their tool! This is way different than IE hijacking 404 pages. I wouldnt also be surprised if there is an option to turn this feature off.
It’s absolutely silly to compare this to the Verisign “SiteFinder” situation:
a) it only happens when you (voluntarily) install the Google toolbar
b) it’s an option that can be switched off (and according to what I’ve read isn’t even on by default)
c) all it does is replace meaningless non-customized 404 pages - if people want that, why not?
In comparison, the Verisign function affected everyone because it was built into the internet infrastructure and there was no way to opt out of it, it broke anti-spam measures by making all domains valid, etc… totally different story.
It is not good because some super busy servers may not handle high traffic or have some server issues. And all visitors will go to Google .
Especially if site is competing with Google in some areas.
404 pages appear when changing DNS settings as well.
Looks like Google promotes its brand in monopolistic way through other sites’ trouble :((
There’s such a massive distinction between what Verisign and Google are doing that comparing the two makes you look a) ignorant or b) trollish. Google’s technique is exactly what Internet Explorer already does, requires the user to install their toolbar, and is an option only.
I voted Yes! The hijack helps retain site visitors if you don’t have a custom 404 page… it is a good thing.
Hi,
I think you got it wrong here.
I have a website, where i use 404 error page, to have SEO friendly url’s and Google toolbar does not give any error or we can say does not hijack it.
The 404 request is first handled by the Webserver, so if webmaster wants to handle 404 pages in some way he can do it without bothering about Google Toolbar.
If in case the 404 bad request is not handles by Webserver (Webmaster) then it’s gonna show that 404 page in IE anyways, and its always good to have a clean error message with some suggestions rathar then simple 404 page not found kind of thing.
In case it’s still unclear, a webmaster can add the following line in .htaccess file
ErrorDocument 404 /redirect.php
to redirect any 404 page (missing page on the host) to redirect.php page.
So there is nothing to worry and webmasters won’t have any knock on affect of this thing.
Tech Cruch has gone anti Google as Micheal arrington was not let on the google Plane last month.
Period.
I have senese that Google is doing “evil” long time ago, and this is just to prove my thought! ^^
I guess Google has grown past the whole “don’t be evil” phase.
@Bhangu
That was a lame ass comment. MA is a big boy in a big boy world. Apparently you just don’t understand how monopolistic this appears.
that is evil…
Google is the most potent company in the http://WWW... why should they care?
Isn’t google already doing something similar with their mobile search? They reformat existing web pages to work with mobile browsers and keep the views on google’s server…
just use customised 404 page and don’t let your server send 404 header to the browser. keep in mind taht you have to send 404 to search bots or you would be penalised
It REALLY depends. First, what does this 404 page look like? Second, if all they have is the default 404 page, this might give a bit more user friendly look.
I normally support what Google does. I think that their balancing act of expansion, $$$ and corporate ethics (DO NO EVIL) is tested all the time. In this case, I am not sure it is evil but definitely bad taste. They should not do it “period”.
On the other hand, and in no way I am justifying the action, I rather get a Google search page than an unmanaged 404 page. I stand by my comment above, however.
@webdigr: If you’re so concerned about bandwidth, you shouldn’t be installing the Google Toolbar in the first place. Not to mention you can easily turn off the feature.
I don’t consider this hijacking so I can’t answer the poll.
Truth be told, all of these “toolbars” are as much (if not more) useful tools for the company that provides as they are to the end users. I don’t use Google toolbar so it doesn’t really affect me.
Speaking as a web developer, they’d better have an option to turn this off, or I’ll have to uninstall the toolbar. I need my error messages unmolested.
Umm, really? We care about this. It’s a f’n 404 page. Get over it. Waaaaaah!
Hi Duncan,
Technically speaking i really don’t think it is any issue at all.
There is a setting in IE which say, “Enable Friendly HTTP error pages”. Which is enabled by default, would give a IE page” There is an error or something like that” when there is a HTTP 500 error message.
Similarly Google Tools bar is setting for HTTP 404 response code. When the browser can do it, why can’t an extension to the browser do this ?
No offense just my thoughts.
Cheers, Nag
Similarly to War-N, I don’t consider this hijacking and I’m not surprised that when framed through Riley’s breathless paranoia, the results tilt so much against Google.
More on this? Come on. Using words like hijacking next to an “Evil google” image?
A bit too “yellow press”-ish maybe?
I support google showing something useful where the webmaster didn’t.
Google is adopting a progressively more nannying approach to its role on the internet. There’s a fine line between its original mission and a form of benign (or otherwise) despotism. It worries me that there is no effective check on its ambitions in the information discovery space. It’s unbalancing the internet.
I’m OK with this. If you’ve installed the Google toolbar, then you’re going to use Google to search. Why not make it easy to search from the 404 page? By hitting a 404 page, you’re obviously in search of something.
Perhaps they should have left the 404 page unbranded and just added a search box?
This is precisely why I refuse to use third party tool-bars. Besides the fact that they’re generally useless to me, I’m incredibly sick of toolbar providers changing base functionality without my asking them too. Google is the most recent, but pretty much all of these toolkits have this junk in them. grrrrr.
404 or 500 HTTP (infact all of them) error pages should be handled by the browser. Period. Google will benefit through ad revenue especially with third option where the user searchs…and they might not return! Google has grown too big now that is starting to abuse its position..remember microsoft how they turned “evil”?..whats next?
i don’t use third party toolbars of any kind, but as a web designer this makes me a little angry when i go out of my way to style even the 404 pages of my sites. i dont really want my users to be taken away from my sites if they encounter a 404.
At least you have the option to install Google’s toolbar. My ISP Verizon has hijacked my invalid DNS requests, and forces a search based off the request. Slowing down correcting a misspelled domain because the browser then follows a tunnel of domain redirects to arrive at the final search results 5-6 seconds later. Completely removing the ability to simply edit the address bar.
In the end because of the controversy over the 404 hijack, Google will most likely remove the feature or make it controllable as an option. I’m not so sure why everyone and their mothers are up in arms over this, its not like the page is popping up fifteen ad windows and forcing you to buy the privilege of uninstalling the toolbar. Now that would be evil.
While I don’t support this, I’d certainly like it as a Opt-In Feature I could install without using the crappy Google Toolbar.
Has anyone noticed that they have also taken over the IE find option - you have to opt out of this one!
@Ben Beltran
You’re surprised? This is Facecrunch. Not Googlecrunch. Google isn’t Facebook and in the Zuckerberg fantasy (he’s so dreamy) fueled framework created here at Facecrunch is a competitor for Facebook… so anything Google does = bad.
not a bad move… developers can assert their pages to override the 404 (albeit forcing us to increase filesize, in many cases superfluously, but nonetheless this is a far cry form verisign’s mistake… this is good and actually it’s nice for users.
The people who are indeed the most passionate about this type of behavior, are not likely to have the toolbar installed in the first place… but other people, like my mom, DO have it and will get use out of this feature. (Not everyone is responsible enough to have a custom 404 error page anyway, this is much nicer than the default of any browser…)
though google should also prevent this action by looking for piece of meta-data… they should allow an explicit single line of meta-data (supplied only with custom 404 pages) to tell the toolbar to show the page and not “hijack” it. Then that would please the developers who don’t want to bloat their markup just to accommodate a “feature”… (feels a lot like having to markup for MSIE… hehehe, but the meta tag would make me 100% on board, as it is.. im about 85% in favor… )
should it be opt in?
IE already does this, and has for several years. So nothing really changes.
Other, much crappier toolbars do this and it comes off as creepy. Funny that people are fine with Google emulating 4th and 5th tier player’s toolbar features. Not a good sign.
@Micheal
>ISP Verizon has hijacked my invalid DNS requests, and forces a search based off the request.
That’s because you installed their horrible software. You don’t need it!
I particularly hate it when Google reccomends that the page may harm my computer and gives me no link or button to continue. Come on Google, be objective!
Internet Explorer already does this.
A small, text-only web page (Example “Page Removed. Return to Homepage.”) will be replaced with their error page.
To get around this you must add a bunch of useless code (”program Microsoft-style”?).
Not a big deal. You can design your own 404 page that bigger than 512b.
IE already does this - BUT - they have an option to turn it off. Annoyingly, this is one of the many DEFAULTS in Windows that set the wrong way, in my opinion.
I am visiting a web site in order to interact with THAT web site - not to interact with Google (or IE). Any interference with that interaction is potentially disruptive. In the case of IE - I turned this feature off after spending an hour trying to figure out what was wrong with a web site I was using … only to find a very helpful 404 message displayed by the web server, but masked by IE. That’s evil.
If Google wants to do this “right” they should:
a) Make it an opt-in feature
b) Only replace “content-free” 404 pages (those for which they have a static template and to ensure there are no user-directed messages contained in them).
Some early employees crafted Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto to lock them in to good behavior. The management now wants to get past that–their stock is down and they need earnings growth. So, they’re doing it piecemeal: Store search history for 18 months here, replace people’s pages there.
In a year, it will be 1024 bytes, and in a few more they’ll start proxying all your pages and inserting new ads. Google is going evil, but they’re doing it quietly.
The wording for the poll is extremely biased, given the context of the article and use of the word “hijack”. While I respect the right to write opinionated articles, I think the poll really adds nothing, except promoting knee-jerk reactions.
What a terribly biased poll question.
@47:
If Google wants to do this “right” they should:
a) Make it an opt-in feature
b) Only replace “content-free” 404 pages (those for which they have a static template and to ensure there are no user-directed messages contained in them).
Then, they did it “right.”
To be honest, if you haven’t bothered putting a custom 404 up, this might be *helpful* to your website. Imagine that a blog linked to a story on your website, and then you restructured your link. Previously, they would just get a 404 page. Now they get some easy means to try to find that page, for instance they type what the link was about in google, and get your page in its new location.