Gavin O’Reilly responds to Google on ACAP
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 13 March 2008 at 07:00
Tags: ACAP, Google
The consortium of publishing groups behind the Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) has responded to comments made about the project yesterday by Google’s head of media and publishing partnerships for Europe, Rob Jonas.
ACAP seeks to establish a new technical standard for allowing website publishers to specify different levels of access they wish to grant search engines’ indexing software. The group argues that the existing standard, known as the Robots Exclusion Standard (or “robots.txt”) is insufficient.
Jonas told yesterday’s MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit that “the general view within the company is that the robots.txt provides everything most publishers need to do.
Gavin O’Reilly, the chairman of the World Association of Newspapers and COO of Independent News & Media responded in a statement:
It’s strange for Google to be telling publishers what they should think about robots.txt when publishers worldwide across the sector have already very clearly told Google that they disagree. If Google’s reason for not supporting ACAP is that they think publishers should have a different view then we would ask Google to respect the fact that after considerable consideration and work we have identified not only the inadequacies of robots.txt but also come up with a practical and open solution. We call upon Google to adopt ACAP as soon as possible and respect the right of content owners to determine how their content is used.
Last November, Times Online became the first newspaper website to adopt ACAP.
