While I can see the plus side of being able to identify bots, I don’t think the WEI is the right way to do it, and Google definitely isn’t the right company to be handling it
Plus how do you spot the difference between a good bot and a bad bot? Web crawlers from search engines are for example inherently good, so they should still be able to operate, but if it is easy to register a good bot in WEI, it is also easy to register a bad bot. If it is hard to register a good bot, then you’re effectively gatekeeping the automated part of the internet (something that actually might be Google’s intention).
While I can see the plus side of being able to identify bots, I don’t think the WEI is the right way to do it, and Google definitely isn’t the right company to be handling it
Plus how do you spot the difference between a good bot and a bad bot? Web crawlers from search engines are for example inherently good, so they should still be able to operate, but if it is easy to register a good bot in WEI, it is also easy to register a bad bot. If it is hard to register a good bot, then you’re effectively gatekeeping the automated part of the internet (something that actually might be Google’s intention).
I was thinking the same thing about Google wanting their bots to be the only ones allowed to crawl and index the internet.