"How do I set the User-Agent string in Java?" - L. Page (1996)

Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for cellular phone is "The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", a study which explains in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a cell phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its high importance as judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the web [Page, 98]. It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.

Looks like they solved the problem by turning it on its head.

technomancy• 17 years ago

The hilarious bit is that they dropped Java for Python, probably due to the massive levels of frustration encountered when trying to do simple things like this.

litewulf• 17 years ago

In practice, almost all core code is C++/Java (vast majority is C++, though its slowly shifting), with Python relegated mainly to scripting glue.

qw• 17 years ago

It was simple. This is the code he had to use (assuming he used URLConnection)

connection.setRequestProperty ("User-agent", "GoogleBot/0.01");

I had never done this before and found it out by looking at the javadoc. I don't see how switching to Python would have made this easier.

simplegeek2• 17 years ago

May be older versions of Java didn't support this or didn't document it properly--just saying?

cdr• 17 years ago

You did that in 1996?

axod3• 17 years ago

Setting a user-agent isn't exactly a core language thing. HTTP is an add-on library, of which there are many to choose from.

I know you saw the title and thought "ahahaha easy time to bash Java again", but it's really ignorant to do so.

jhancock2• 17 years ago

It is reasonable to recall that Java was being promoted in 1996 as the "net" language, yet lacked basic mature libraries for being so. Java only became a decent language with mature libs after many years of front running this position. Some of us that used Java early on, mainly because business drivers forced it on us (Sun/IBM/BEA wouldn't lie to corporate America?), don't have fond memories.

sown• 17 years ago

The internet has a neat ability to remember things.

wlievens• 17 years ago

This is magnificent. I imagine decades from now, web archeology will be a true academic discipline.

borism3• 17 years ago

yes, but allow me to point out that Usenet is not exactly Web.

pavel_lishin• 17 years ago

You should read "A Deepness In The Sky" and "A Fire Upon The Deep"; the topic is actually covered fairly well.

yupbank• 17 years ago

with the eclipse u'll never worry about such question~

"How do I set the User-Agent string in Java?" - L. Page (1996)

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