Google Desktop doesn’t respect 301

Of all the people you’d expect to know how web protocols work, the Google Desktop client doesn’t respect a 301 permanent redirect.

From the HTTP 1.1 Status Codes Spec:

The requested resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future references to this resource SHOULD use one of the returned URIs. Clients with link editing capabilities ought to automatically re-link references to the Request-URI to one or more of the new references returned by the server, where possible. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise.

Instead, I’m getting hits from every Google Desktop client every 5 minutes, and every time they’re getting a 301 Moved Permanently.