Does Google use a FrontPage UA?

[mayest]

Today I got 5 hits within about 15 minutes from a Google IP (74.125.16.xx) using the following UA:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MS FrontPage 6.0)

It was given a 403 because it twice requested FrontPage files (/_vti_*) and three times because of "FrontPage" in the UA when requesting real URLs.

According to my WhoIs tool, that is a Google IP address. Anybody know why they would do this?

[Samizdata]

That seems to be another IP range shared by various Google tools:

[webmasterworld.com...]

I suspect that it is not Google themselves but someone trying to abuse one of their proxy services, probably the Wireless Transcoder - and you seem to have it covered, so congratulations on that.

I would not block the IP myself as Google-Sitemaps also uses that range.

...

[mayest]

Interesting. Thanks for the reply. I definitely wouldn't block a Google IP, but strange UAs are fair game.