With ACAP and Google Now Discussing How Their Systems Can Communicate It Begs The Question Why All Of This Wasn’t Worked Out Before ACAP’s Launch

Philip Stone March 26, 2008

Is Google supportive of the new ACAP protocol developed by various media groups that enables web sites to block indexing of specific pages, or an entire site? There seem to be different answers depending whom in Google is speaking, but CEO Eric Schmidt has told Australia’s ITWire that the issues are only technical. “At present it doesn’t fit with the way our systems operate. It’s not that we don’t want them to be able to control their information.”

Now that’s a bit at odds with what Rob Jonas, Schmidt’s European head of media and publishers partnerships,  told a media meeting in London earlier this month. He said  Google really saw no reason to adapt the newly developed Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) and that robots.txt was good enough. No talk of technical issues there. And that in turn brought a blast from the World Asssociation of Newspapers (WAN), ACAP’s primary sponsor, that lashed out, “If Google’s reason for not (apparently) supporting ACAP is built on its own commercial self-interest, then it should say so, and not glibly throw mistruths about.”

As Matthew Bukcland posted on Poynteronline, “Either Jonas’s comments on ACAP were misconstrued, or WAN’s initital response was an overreaction. Or perhaps this is a case of Google’s senior executives not singing from the same hymn sheet?”

Now that Schmidt has said the issues are just technical, WAN is out with another statement welcoming Schmidt’s clarification with WAN Chairman Gavin O’Reilly adding, “We are disappointed  that we have yet to overcome their remaining technical barriers to ‘live’ implementation, but we have always stressed that we will do whatever is necessary to make ACAP work technically and seamlessly for all search engines.”

And the two sides are talking. As Mark Bide, ACAP project director, told ftm via email, “We are in continuing discussions with Google as with the other major search engines.” And why weren’t the technical issues resolved before the software was released?  “Google were (as they have said) represented on our technical working group throughout the process and were highly influential over the technical direction which ACAP ultimately adopted. If they have subsequently run into problems, we are more than happy to work with them to help resolve them.” Bide said.

It all seems rather strange. Google was part of the technical process, they were apparently very influential in agreeing what the software should do and how and yet once the software is issued Google then, according to Bide, seemed apparently to run into subsequent technical problems.

There was no testing by Google before the software was released? Obviously Google didn’t accept the software before it was released so why was it released  without it and other major search engines technically on board?  To put added pressure on them to accept?

One can’t help but have the feeling that Jonas told the media group the way it really is – perhaps he was being overly frank. Schmidt may have been more diplomatic and says the issues are technical which could translate into ‘if they do things the way we want them to do things then all these problems go away.’

Surely if there were just technical issues these all should have been resolved within the technical working group before ACAP’s release? Project Manager Bide admits Google was influential  within the technical meetings, but now Schmidt says technical issues remain. It’s all rather murky.

Schmidt told ITWire, “ACAP is a standard proposed by a set of people who are trying to solve the problem [of  communicating content accerss permissions]. We have some people working with them  to see if the proposal can be modified to work in a way our search engines work. At present it does not fit with the way our systems operate.”

So, where is the brinkmanship? ACAP came out with a system it knew Google couldn’t use, or Google, even though it participated in the technical discussions didn’t particpate “enough” for reasons best known to itself?

Jonas is high up enough within the company to understand what is going on. He told the media conference, “The general view within the company is that the robots.txt provides everything most publishers need to do.” So, either Google executives are not singing from the same hymn sheet or Schmidt was engaged in some damage control.

Google really doesn’t like the ACAP process. It would much rather strike individual commercial deals with publishers – it has done so with the AP, AFP, PA in the UK among others, but ACAP discounts all of that saying “Business relationships on the Internet should not be about deals  done between very large corporations. It will not be possible to manage the very large number of business relationships in the absence of much greater automation. ACAP aims to enable the majority of smaller publishers, smaller search engines, and other innovative intermediaries to enter the growing market for online content with confidence.”

But for all that the uptake of the ACAP system seems to be slow. It is being used in 16 countries but in the UK, for instance, only Times Online of all the national newspapers is using it on its web site and that may have been influenced by Saturday Editor George Brock who is also President of the World Editors Forum (affiliated with WAN).

Project Manager Bide doesn’t accept the uptake is slow. “Frankly, I don’t see the current rate of take-up as slow. It takes time for any large company to move; and to turn policy into its technical expression... We are expecting to add a number of names to the list over the next few weeks, but we don’t add until we know that they have actually done the necessary work.” While ACAP’s web site lists members behind the project and various endorsements, it doesn’t list actual users.

Thus far only Exalead, the fourth largest search engine, has implemented ACAP. But the project got as big boost Tuesday from Atex  that said it would support ACAP within future releases of its content management systems.