ACAP Blog
Google quote misleading
Our Google contact, Josh Cohen, has been recently quoted by Mark Sweney in the Guardian as saying:
"We continue to speak to people at WAN [World Association of Newspapers] about Acap. Acap only addresses the small minority of content owners and [it has] major technical issues. We can't accept it in its current form. There are a number of challenges with Acap."
This statement is, I'm afraid, misleading.
- Google hasn't spoken to anyone at WAN or ACAP about ACAP since September 2008 - a gap of around 6 months now. We remain entirely open to talking to Cohen, or indeed anyone else at Google, but that is only useful in the context of a proper dialogue.
- The idea that "Acap only addresses the small minority of content owners" is perhaps a useful mantra but it means nothing. This is like saying that the Robots Exclusion Protocol only addresses the minority of content owners, or that Creative Commons only addresses the minority of content owners. Both are true, but this tells us nothing. More than 800 sites including a growing number of very substantial content owners are now expressing their support for ACAP, and Google cannot continue to ignore this in perpetuity (however much Cohen continues to suggest that this is an insignificant minority).
- This is not the first time that Google has suggested that there are "major technical issues" with ACAP. We are happy to repeat the invitation that we have made to Google repeatedly on this subject - we have no commitment to a specific technical implementation, and will be happy to work with Google to resolve any outstanding technical issues. Google was involved in the ACAP's Technical Working Group from the outset, and provided invaluable technical input which strongly influenced the technical direction of ACAP specifically to simplify its implementation by search engines. We will be happy to continue this work with them, to resolve any technical issues, major or minor but remain slightly confused as to how a technical solution largely designed around their requirements in the first place could now have such, unspecified, "major issues".
Of course, there are "challenges" with ACAP - but these can be resolved by a determined effort to work collaboratively with that end in mind. We would welcome a resumption of substantive discussion with Google.
Mark Bide
ACAP Project Director
Posted: 24/03/2009 11:08:29 by
Tessa Thier | with 0 comments
Comments