Google OpenSocial agent

Appears to be something new from Google

[GaryK]

I'm not sure what to make of this. Yesterday I was visited by what seems to be a new user agent from Google:

Google OpenSocial agent (http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html)
74.125.75.1
No PTR
-----
OrgName: Google Inc.
OrgID: GOGL
Address: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
City: Mountain View
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 94043
Country: US

It took favicon.ico from one of my sites. A few hours later and from the same IP Address I was visited by two other Google UAs that took the same files:

Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+5.0;Google+Wireless+Transcoder;)

AND

FeedFetcher-Google;+(+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html)

I saw the thread from February about GWT. And of course I know what FeedFetcher is. Just thought this combo seemed odd. And here's yet another bot of some kind from Google with no rDNS. I wish I didn't get so much traffic from them so that I could afford to be more proactive in terms of banning this stuff.

[Pfui]

I wonder if it's related to a different new (for me) FeedFetcher UA?:
(hits all day long; different subscriber & feed id nos.)

rate-limited-proxy-209-85-238-nn.google.com
Feedfetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html; x subscribers; feed-id=snip)

-----
USUALLY:
(hits all day long; diff subscriber & feed id nos.)

209.85.238.nn
Feedfetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html; x subscribers; feed-id=snip)

209.85.238.nn
Feedfetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html; x subscribers; feed-id=snip)

-----
PRIOR:

ff-in-f68.google.com
FeedFetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html)

72.14.195.nn
Feedfetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html)

-----
MISC:
FeedFetcher-Google-CoOp;

-----
P.S.

What ticks me off about all of the above is that not having a feed doesn't matter, doesn't stop Feedfetcher's scores of hits day in and day out (almost as bad as spinn3r). What's that? Use robots.txt? Well...(emphasis mine) --

Google Information for Webmasters
Feedfetcher: Google's Feed Grabber
Frequently Asked Questions

7. Why isn't Feedfetcher obeying my robots.txt file? [google.com]

"Feedfetcher retrieves feeds only after users have explicitly added them to their Google homepage or Google Reader. Feedfetcher behaves as a direct agent of the human user, not as a robot, so it ignores robots.txt entries. ..."

Love that doublespeak.

[GaryK]

Feedfetcher behaves as a direct agent of the human user, not as a robot, so it ignores robots.txt entries.

I don't like it, but it does make sense to me.

I've been thinking about putting my feeds on Google Code to take the load off my server. I'd put some of my downloadable code there too to make it look more legit and take even more load off my server.