ACAP sees signs of support from Google CEO

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 19 March 2008 15:20

Your IT - Home IT

Developers of the Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) being promoted as an industry standard by the publishing industry to enable permissions information to be added to content published on the World Wide Web have seized on remarks made by Google CEO, Eric Schmidt as an endorsement of their technology.

Schmidt told iTWire yesterday that ACAP was presently incompatible with Google's search technology, saying: "We have some people working with them to see if the proposal can be modified to work in the way our search engines work." He added that: "It is not that we don't want them to be able to control their information."

In a press release issued in response to the iTWire report, ACAP chairman, Gavin O'Reilly acknowledged that there were still technical hurdles to be overcome. "We are pleased that Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said that they would be willing to implement ACAP if it were not for some technical incompatibility issues. As Mr. Schmidt knows, we have worked very closely with Google at a technical level throughout the past year in the ACAP project phase. Naturally, we are disappointed that we have yet to overcome their remaining technical barriers to 'live' implementation, but we have always stressed that we will do whatever is necessary to make ACAP work technically and seamlessly for all search engines."

He described Schmidt's statement that 'It is not that we [Google] don't want them [publishers] to be able to control their information' as being "hugely reassuring...We really look forward to continuing to work with Google to do the necessary work to match our business requirements with their technical specifications and thus, make it possible for Google to immediately adopt the ACAP protocol for the benefit of digital publishing worldwide."