The 512 byte limit is interesting because Internet Explorer will also replace any server-supplied error page with its own built-in version if it's "too small". I forget what the limit is but it's similar. So in this respect Google is only following in Microsoft's footsteps.

Doesn't IE when it sees a 404 less than 512B it gives you a user friendly error page. So how is that different from Google?

If you don't like your ISP, you can simply move to another one?

This is also the normal behaviour of Internet Explorer - if the error page is too small, it too displays its own page.

(Though whether or not it's 'right' for either to do this is a matter of debate - on the Microsoft side, the page displayed is intended to help. On the Google side, the page is intended to help, and make money for Google.)

It may be different in detail but it's fundamentally still the same. Yes, people have a choice to remove the toolbar. They have a choice to change ISP; there's a lot of hassle involved in the latter but the choice is there most of the time. The problem isn't whether there's a choice or not, the problem is Google assuming that they have the right to alter what the user is seeing without informing them of what they're doing. Without information there is no way to presume consent. It's as simple as that.

What's the difference between this and MSIE displaying custom error pages under the same conditions? It's been doing this for years, and not just for 404 responses.

I'd actually consider installing the google toolbar for this....

> If you don't like your ISP, you can simply move to another one?

Not always. The choices are often limited based upon where you live, what kind of service you want, how far you live from the nearest telephone exchange and so on. Some might have a wide choice of various cable / adsl and maybe even a few other high speed options. But often, to get broadband speeds, some have to use whatever single service happens to pass their house.

That said, if it's called "rogers" then perhaps you have to expect you're going to get shafted by it?

Besides, the difference is between (a) running a piece of software on your computer, that you install and use by choice, for which the functionality is open and known about and which you can disable and remove at any time and (b) a third party modifying the data, man-in-the-middle style, that you sent or received over a communications channel over which [I'm presuming here] you have no choice or control.

The latter should be illegal [and probably is in a few places]. The former should only be illegal [and probably is] if the code were nefariously doing this in some way [i.e like Sony or virus / trojan authors]

Just flicking through the prior article, Rogers' provide a "I dont want to receive these messages" option which seems pretty comparable to Google's philosophy. I would go a step further and say that an ISP arbitrarily attaching content to the beginning of web content is a little less intrusive than a company inspecting your web content, analysing it, and sending some part of that content on to it's swarm of search-o-mat machines with their bottomless bins of archived logs and their penchant for using one users input to value-add another users experience...

Your search for "Nesmith offlington bengay cooking cough freetrade" returned 0 results.

Did you mean "ben smith of islington being gay is looking for a wee bit of rough trade" ?*

I opt in and out of all sorts of services with my ISP that benefit me or benefit them or benefit us both, and much of that might be considered spam or intrusive in the eyes of the right beholder. I have an advantage with my ISP as we have a contractually defined relationship focussed primarily on the delivery of network services and if I am not satisfied I can kick up a stink or move on. The wunderkind at Google, on the other hand, seem to be doing backflips trying to find new ways to turn my searches for supportive underwear and soft pornography into the next Web 2.0 meme.

* yes, I know it doesnt work this way.. yet..

And NO, I do not know a Ben Smith - of Islington or anywhere else - and if such a person exists I am in no position to make statements on their sexual preference or subsequent peccadillos and I am certainly neither inclined nor empowered to cast judgments on another person's personal life! Live free, and be the best you that you can be, Ben Smiths of the world!

I haven't seen the "land grabbing" message yet, but I think Google should clearly inform the user that they are being redirected, and provide them with a link in the redirected message to disable this "feature", and include the original 404 message.

Toolbars are evil things, who knows what they might also be hiding. I wouldn't install one on my machines and I discourage friends and family from such stupidity as well. But then I can cope with a command prompt.

Isn't this basically what Amazon's recently approved 404 patent is about?:

'A client component runs on a user computer in conjunction with a web browser and detects errors, such as but not limited to "404: page not found" errors, in which a requested web page or other object cannot be displayed. In response to detecting the error, the client component notifies an error processing server, which uses the URL of the failed request to identify an alternate object to display.'

That lawsuit would be interesting.

We must assume that end users are idiots.

They will not know that the toolbar from the company that has promised to do no evil, will be manipulating the content of the requested page.

It will be hard to explain to grandma, why she can not trust the links on "her favorite site", because the links and pages on her favorite site, may not be coming from her favorite site.

This is going to open up a whole new avenue for spam. People could send spam that reads "check out www.theregister.co.uk/my_credit_card_offer", then buy the key words or phrase of "my credit card offer". This will allow spammers to use the reputation of popular or trusted sites, to sell their goods on those trusted sites.

I wonder if google is going to do this with their own site too. I wonder if a person visited http://www.google.com/app, could they be shown a page full of Office live adverts? If not, then why should my site's reputation be stolen by google's advertisers?

This should definitely be an opt in type of system. Can you think of any legit site that would want their traffic stolen in this way? I can't. This seems like a tool for the spammers and advertising engines

I'm with you on this one:

Google is just replacing a microsoft feature with a Google one*.

Its application specific, and you can use the "Uninstall programs" to get rid of it

It only works on people for windows, on IE, so install Linux, Firefox, or Safari, ...

- Joel

*bye-the-bye I hate that Microsoft gets to claim "30%" of search from people typing what they want into the address bar. People who use live search don't know what it is.

..is that I have yet to come across a PC, owned by one of my customers or a family member, with a tool bar that the owner could recall having deliberately installed. In fact some of them have row upon row of badly laid-out crud at the top of their browser, seriously diminishing available screen area. Generally they are not even used, the numerous jolly icons just sit there cluttering up the view like gargoyles on a roof, whilequietly ushering in various creepy 'features'.

I have been known to demonstrate the joy of hitting F11 to give a nice big screen to them - to exclamations of joy. Then the next time I see them they ask 'what was that trick for making the screen go big you did - I forgot...' or a panic phone call describing how they can't put an address in as all the stuff at the top of the screen has vanished when they open their browser.

I don't do that anymore, just mumble something about be careful what boxes you tick next time you update Acrobat reader and leave it.

If you voluntarily install a piece of trojan malware like Google Toolbar, you have to expect the people who convinced you to do something so stupid to use said trojan to their own ends. That is, after all, its intended behaviour. If I don't want said behaviour, I don't need to install their piece of invasive crap.

However, when I pay my ISP, I expect them to leave my bitstream the hell alone, and not insert or delete things at their whim. To do so is NOT expected or intended behaviour, and if I caught my ISP doing it I'd be very tempted to emulate the BOFH and his EtherKiller and make sure their isolation was up to spec.

As for IE, they do it in their browser already, and you CAN'T uninstall their piece of trojan malware if by some unfortunate circumstance you're stuck using their crap.

Yes, there is a huge difference.

why google toolbar is being bundled into every and any other bit of software going.

The latest version of daemon tools now asks you if you want to install that trash and has recently knocked itself from my usual list of installed applications because it tries to make a grab at being your default search provider (why? you are an iso mounting software, not a bloody search company!!) regardless of if you select yes or no.

also, on a side note tiscali was in the habit of hijaking typo'd domain addresses and showing you their "did you mean" page, littered with web ads. I a user argue with them demanding to be taken off the service, they claimed he wasn't on it. After about an hour he got a frustrated "oh ok, we'll take you off it then". hold on, you said he wasn't on that service not long ago... within a week of opting out, he was put back onto the service.

Whose fault is it if the webmaster isn't technical enough to monitor their own logfiles, and then not have a custom 404 file just on the offchance a link doesn't work? Its a stupid shame to make a site to attract visitors and make it pretty, while forgetting to take care of the basic themes

If google are displaying genuine 'did you means' and not sneakily disguised Sponsored Ads, then I don't see a problem.

Once it leaves you home network it is no longer yours. You are the bitch of every router, ips, load balancer, qos shaper, inspector, and rejecter between you and the destination you think you are going to. Your packets get rewritten, rerouted, proxied and cached. And most of it is done for your benefit.

Likewise with google, except they are being snaky in your turf - your system, your data - and sure you can disable it (just like you can disable the Rogers' ISP thing) but they know very well that the majority of lay users couldnt considering the implications of their "service" even if they wanted to.

You know your ISP (and others) can frig with your traffic so you TOR'ify or VPN but your search toolbar shouldnt suddenly start trapping your returned pages and pumping your data into google central's data-sump...

I've not read everything terribly carefully, IANAL (and other excuses, yada yada), but... Isn't this covered by a patent recently awarded to Amazon?

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=7,325,045

The issue is not if I track 404, but what I do with them, if my page is <512, then google assume there page is more worthy with their nice sponsored links.

Legal responsibility for any alterations in the bitstream from a site surely lies with the owner of the device that makes the alteration.

If the spooks have a wiretap on your pipe and are altering the stream as well as snooping on it, they need a warrant.

If my ISP wants to alter that bitstream, they need to get their lawyers to sign off on a piece of paper that takes full editorial responsibility for every byte that enters my home. If they insist that their interference is part of the T&Cs, they should be challenged on "unfair contract terms". (I can't see how snooping my private conversations is a requirement of how they do business.)

However, if I install, or allow to be installed, some software on the PC, that's my fault. I own the machine. I have physical access to it. No-one else does. If I can't manage it, that's no-one else's fault. ("Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this...")

Of course, all this is much easier if you have the notion of common carrier protection in your legal system, because then you can mention that phrase and remind your ISP why they *need* its protection. It's even easier if your constitution bangs on about personal privacy rights.

Dear CadeMetz,

This aticle would've read much better if you'd precluded your bias.

Google's "suggestions" are useful and may evolve into something more useful later depending on usage. Regardless of the fact that they have a business intention ultimately, as long as they are trying to SERVE THE USER in first place and then trying to derive some mileage out of it, I don't mind the ulterior motive (branding or otherwise). It's not morally repungent - it's give and take. Only problem might be if the website's 404 had something useful in it - which is never the case. If you claim that google is denying the website that 404'd a chance to do get some weblicity - IMO you are absolutely wrong!

However, what the ISP-you-mentioned did was plain ho*ing - Selling it's sweet spot for money.

Al.

Good point.

Google for some reason feel qualified to offer advice about "unsafe" websites, through both their searches and the regular updates the firefox will search for, and yet they are incompetent at web security. How many times must gmail be broken into before they stop pretending to be security experts?

Yet another google "feature" I'll have to fix on my websites, just like their crappy precache. Maybe they could stop breaking our sites and try branching out into other crappy services for a change, like email...scripting...voice...data...errr. Ah well, at least when they run out of things to do we can get back to life without google.

10.4 Client Error 4xx

The 4xx class of status code is intended for cases in which the

client seems to have erred. Except when responding to a HEAD request,

the server SHOULD include an entity containing an explanation of the

error situation, and whether it is a temporary or permanent

condition. These status codes are applicable to any request method.

User agents SHOULD display any included entity to the user.

It only says "SHOULD", not "MUST" - although I've found this annoying, developing/debugging web applications (as I do), which send diagnostic information with 404 messages. We had to work around this with MSIE, by padding the page.