The Wayback Machine is under threat as major publishers and social media platforms increasingly block its crawlers.

For more than 30 years, the Internet Archive, the nonprofit behind the Wayback Machine, has quietly served as the unofficial chronicler of all things on the web. Since it got its start, it has archived over a trillion pages.

It works by using web crawlers, specifically ia_archiverbot, to scour the web and capture snapshots of sites at different points in time, saving them as a record that internet users can return to.

According to a recent report from WIRED, several legacy and social media companies have begun restricting the Internet Archive’s crawler. That automated retrieval mechanism allows the Wayback Machine to function as the Internet’s memory bank. Organizations named by WIRED include The New York Times and Reddit. Continue reading “Media Companies’ Efforts to Block the Wayback Machine Spur Calls for a Transparent Internet” →

For the better part of three decades, we’ve used web browsers as passive windows into the online world, but Google envisions a more dynamic and collaborative future.

From early Netscape adopters in 1995 to the billions using Chrome in 2025, the routine has remained basically the same. We open a website, read what’s there, compare tabs, and ultimately need to piece everything together ourselves.

Most importantly, we’ve always been left to our own devices to figure out what matters and what to do next.

Continue reading “Google Chrome’s New “Skills” Feature Shows Where Web Browsers Are Headed Next” →