[COLUG] How to boycott Microsoft (or at least MSN search)

[Wade Pinkston]

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Scott Merrill wrote:
| Joshua Kramer said:
|
|>So here's what I have to say: from now on, the Microsoft search
|>bot will be specifically excluded from my web sites via the
|>robots.txt file. The following entry should accomplish this:
|>
|>User-agent: msnbot/*
|>Disallow: /
|>
|>What that means is that I won't allow Microsoft's search engine
|>to index my websites. Google can, yahoo can... but Microsoft
|>can't. It's the website owner's version of an invisible boycott.
|>And if enough people do it, the Microsoft search engine will find
|>itself unable to search large segments of the web. And that means
|>that people who notice this won't want to search using
|>Microsoft's search engine.
|
|
| More likely Microsoft will either start using alternate user-agent strings
| for their bots or simply start ignoring the robots.txt altogether.

Most likely very true.  But it feels good to at least say "NO" even if
you are using a gate with tissue paper bars.
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- --
Wade Pinkston

Ipsa scientia potestas est

Windows,a
32 bit graphical interface for a
16 bit patch to an
8 bit operating system internally coded for a
4 bit processor written by a
2 bit company that can't stand
1 bit of competition

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