[Cialug] Google Rankings

[Morris Dovey]

Dave Crouse wrote:

> If you don't want Microsoft products to automatically generate smart tags 
> on your web pages, then simply include this tag. It must be included on 
> each page of your site for which you do not desire this feature. "

<quote snipped>

> So, "supposedly", M$ has abandoned this line of invasion into your work 
> for now, but I'll keep my tags in place just the same. Besides, it's kind 
> of like thumbing your nose at M$ ;)

M$ has earned the nose-thumbing; but I've reached a point where I 
just don't think they're worth even that much effort from me.
> 
> Basically it was M$'s attempt to control more of the end users browsing 
> because they have a monopoly on the browser market (for all intensive 
> purposes anyway). They finally relented under pressure, and thats where 
> the
> 
> <meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true" />
> 
> tags came into play. Webmasters the world over started adding these tags 
> to their webpages to keep M$ from hijacking their visitors away from their 
> websites with the so called "smart tags".

Sounds a lot like M$ saying: "Trust me." Yeah sure, Bill. My log 
from about a month ago showed a M$ bot fetching my robots.txt 
file, then grabbing a bunch of denied C source code. Frankly, I 
wasn't very surprised. I doubt that my copyright notice in any of 
the modules survived the grab.

I suppose this means that I should begin now to put a facility in 
place to check server and browser info before delivering HTTP 
files; and to deliver a pretty 401 or 403 error page if there's 
reason to believe the content/presentation might be munged - 
perhaps suggesting that an alternative operating system and/or 
browser should be considered. [-8

Come to think of it, that might even be a viable software product 
with interesting commercial side-effects. (-8

> Just one more reason to hate the monopolistic company imho.

IMO, M$ is like flies in the summertime. Put up screens and swat 
'em when they get too close - but they're just not worth the 
energy it takes to hate...

Thanks! I'll add the tag to my files.

-- 
Morris Dovey
West Des Moines, Iowa USA