Friday, May 06, 2005

O'Reilly Radar > Google Web Accelerator considered overzealous

O'Reilly Radar > Google Web Accelerator considered overzealous:
"The difference lies in just who is doing the the clicking.

Web-dwelling spiders are typically locked out of a web application's personal view: the view with all those administrative links like 'Delete Entry,' 'Add Item,' and 'Drop Table.' The Google Web Accelerator, on the other hand, sees the web as you do -- administrative warts and all. As an example, take a gander at a sample phpMyAdmin view (a web application for managing your MySQL database) and notice all those red Xs. If you clicked, for instance, 'Drop,' you'd be dropping the entire database table at hand. But not without a popup JavaScript confirmation: 'Do you really want to DROP TABLE...' which would send most people into shock, followed by a quick click of the 'Cancel' button, if they'd not meant to click the 'Drop' button. The Web Accelerator summarily ignores this warning (actually, it most likely doesn't even notice it, nor could it likely be taught to understand such confirmations in any reliable automated fashion). And this spider is doing all this clicking preemptively, prefetching anything within your purview you might actually chance to click on in the near future."


uh-oh.... looks like google did not think through with this one!

Mozilla and hypocrisy

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