Google Please Don’t Crawl This Server

For some reason the Googlebot has found it necessary to crawl a development server of mine, I suspect that one of the users uses Google Chrome which probably snarfs urls browsed.

Google tells us that one way to do this is to return the 410 HTTP  status code , and the way to enforce this in httpd.conf is:

# Tell crawlers to go away   

RewriteEngine On    

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Googlebot|bingbot|Validator|MJ12bot|Baiduspider)    

RewriteRule ^.* - [G]

 

I have included other crawlers in the list just to make sure.

 

Chromium OS X

Came across the Chromium OS X browser for Mac, guess it is an open source version of Google Chrome.

Can’t really much difference between the two, but I will try it out for a while and see.

 

French Court Fines Google $660,000 Because Google Maps Is Free

I am so glad I escaped France and that I am no longer French. Only in France could this happen, protecting a business whose model has been disrupted by a competitor. The sad thing is that this only benefits the incumbent, not its customers who could cut costs by shifting to a cheaper (free!) product, or the consumers at large for the same reason. So whatever friction was removed from the system has now been artificially reintroduced. Sucks to be a French consumer.

 

French Court Fines Google $660,000 Because Google Maps Is Free:

Google faces a $660,000 fine after a French court ruling that the company is abusing its dominant position in mapping by making Google Maps free.

According to The Economic Times, the French commercial court “upheld an unfair competition complaint lodged by Bottin Cartographes against Google France and its parent company Google Inc. for providing free web mapping services to some businesses.”

Bottin Cartographes provides mapping services for a cost, and its website boasts several business clients such as Louis Vuitton, Airbus and several automobile manufacturers.