Protect your browser from “Protect your site from Google’s new toolbar”
When it was just something on Threadwatch I wasn’t too concerned by the JavaScript to silently remove the Google Toolbar-added links that the user had specifically asked for, because the number of people I know who both use Internet Explorer on Windows and would wind up on a Threadwatch reader’s site (it caters to sheep ranchers (sites which funnel in searchers who will click on any search result, however unlikely, and can then be pushed out through an affiliate link) and mushroom farmers (sites whose only chance of a sale is keeping their customer in the dark about any alternative, helped along with a hefty feeding of bullshit)) is quite small.
But, if Jeffrey is going to use it to protect the one and only ISBN to appear in A List Apart, to ensure that no Internet Explorer using reader can easily buy a copy of Writing Effective Use Cases, then perhaps it’s going to spread to other people who need a reminder of just whose browser it is: mine!. Looks like you aren’t allowed to drag links in IE anymore, so right-click, Add to Favorites, and then when you click a toolbar link in your browser intending to affect your copy of a web page so you can navigate to where you want to go without having to select text in your browser, open a new window in your browser, type a URL in your browser, and paste the copied text in a search box in your browser, and the link which you wanted to add in your browser just disappears, click your “mine!” bookmarklet, and as long as the web-hostile-designer didn’t bother to rename the function (excellent odds), they won’t be able to break your browser (until the next page you load, when you’ll have to do it again).
Phil, I hate to be a pain but could you rewrite the second paragraph? I’m having a bit of trouble understanding what you mean, especially since the Jeffrey link is not actually linked to a URI. Thx!
Note to self: Never, never, never try to post in the morning. You don’t have the metabolism for making sense before noon.
Link fixed, thanks, maybe I’ll comment at great rambling length tonight (though my tolerance for the whole topic is quite low).
Bill, I’m wondering how you even got to the second paragraph. I’m still stumped by the blantant syntax error in the first paragraph.
Sigh. I had a hard morning of it: I’m not sure where to assess the blame, but between MT’s ”POST to preview” and this nightly of Firefox, trying to preview when your internet connection has disappeared seems to mean sending your post back to what it was some time back, if Back recovers anything at all. I actually corrected that twice, but neither correction made it into the final ”just POST the bloody thing once and for all!”
Sam,I am extremely stubborn.
Zeldman says ”if your company’s site includes a street address, a link to Google’s map service will magically sprout from your page.” If by ”magically” he means the user has to press a button to get a link to a map, then sure. But if by ”magically” he means ”automatically”, then that’s just not true.
He also says: ”Likewise, a book’s ISBN number will trigger a link to an Amazon page selling that book.” Same thing. The ISBN by itself doesn’t ”trigger” it. Users pressing a button triggers the link.
Then he says ”You might ask Google to turn off Autolink by default”. But as pointed out above, it’s already ”off”. People have to download software to get the feature, then press a button to use said feature when they want it.
Finally, I renew my assertion that Google needs to post something on their weblog about this. It’s been … how many days?
You know, Google pays sites to publish their ads so I wonder why publishers shouldn’t get some pay per click renumeration for this too. At least for AutoLinks going directly to retail sites and for publishers running AdSense on the page.
It might be your browser but the content is my copyright not yours or google’s, you don’t have the right to edit it, adding links to it to your site or a 3rd party site for commission/ad clicks which the Amazon link is.
this is adwords by the back door without paying the publisher a penny.
Plain evil, pure and simple
You sure about that? Since Google has specifically said that they are not being paid for linking to Amazon, your contention is that they have now so completely renounced their earlier ways that they will just flat out lie in order to get a few pennies?
That seems just ever so slightly hard to believe.
So why Amazon.com, I hear Barnes and Noble are upset about it.
Well, I’d guess Amazon because they are a better fit for its real use: find an old, unlinked bibliography, and search for the books on Amazon and then on Barnes and Noble. You’ll find more of them listed at all, more of them still for sale, in print or not, and more of them with more choice of condition for sale used from third parties at Amazon.
I would like to know, though, from someone more willing to keep Internet Explorer running than I, whether it might have anything to do with either the Amazon API, or the fact that Amazon’s partnership with Google includes giving them a way to crawl so they have a good idea of everything Amazon has. When you run AutoLink, it phones home for something before displaying links, and in my tiny bit of testing it hasn’t linked an ISBN to a ”we couldn’t find anything for that search” page yet, so I suspect it sends off a list of the found data, asking which of them should be linked. Does Barnes & Noble, or Powells, or Abebooks, or Whoever, have an API, or have they worked with Google to find a safe way to have their database-driven site completely crawled?
I don’t have the right to edit it? So if instead of being HTML it was a dead-tree book, I don’t have the right to black out words I find offensive, or to scribble notes to myself in the margins? You might try reviewing copyright law, which covers what I can do when I want to redistribute your work, not what I can do in the privacy of my own home.
But your are not editing it, google is and redistributing it to you, I’d be quite happy with a related links sidebar
PS my copyright is UK version not the US version
My law is not always your law…
The UK Patent Office - Copyright - Using copyright material
http://www.patent.gov.uk/copy/indetail/usingcopyright.htm
”How do I get permission to copy or use copyright material?
Normally by approaching the copyright owner, but there are a number of organisations that act collectively for groups of copyright owners in respect of particular rights and which may offer ”blanket” licences to users. Further information is available directly from these organisations.”
”Do I always need permission to copy or use copyright material?
No, there are certain exceptions to the rights given to the copyright owner. For example, limited use of works may be possible for non-commercial research and private study, criticism or review, reporting current events, judicial proceedings and teaching in schools. But if you are copying large amounts of material and/or making multiple copies then you may still need permission. Also it is generally necessary to include an acknowledgement of the name of the copyright work and its author.”
You’re mistaken. I have a right to edit anything; just not to redistribute the edited version. Unless your content comes with a EULA or something?
Here are two thought experiments:
(a) Imagine if Google did a sidebar of ’related links’ upon user-prompting, pointing to the same sources without altering your page content. What would your response be?
(b) Imagine this were a firefox extension, unaffiliated with any company. What would your response be?
a) I guess I wouldn’t mind too much.
b) I wouldn’t mind at all as long as the end user was the one who was choosing which words to link with which destinations.
When corporations decide to create links automatically for the end user, then I begin to get concerned.
Me too. What corporation is automatically creating links? I thought we were talking about Google’s toolbar, where the user looks at a page with unlinked VINs, or an address with no map, or Locus Magazine’s SF archives with just a bunch of plain text ISBNs, or J. Random Bookseller who may or may not be selling a book for twenty times what you can get a used readers copy for on Amazon, and so the user decides to click a toolbar button, rather than copy, new window, type URL, paste.
No, it’s not a toolbar button, it runs some JS that scans your page and inserts links (like highlighting search terms).
So if you have a book site with isbn numbers all the isbn numbers on the page will become Amazon links.
Damn it. And here I’ve been wasting time discussing it with you thinking you weren’t one of the idiots who have a very strong opinion about what they think it sounds like it might be based on what someone else said about what someone else said about what someone who actually installed it and looked at it said.
I’d be happy to resume discussing it, once you’ve made it clear that you have both used AutoLink, and understood how it works, and where the software that does the dirty deed lives. Until then, you’ll be talking to yourself.
it’s a button you click it, it adds links, yes i’ve used it, and i don’t like it.
Then don’t click on the button. Disable AutoLink all together (which is the default when Toolbar3 is installed). Is someone forcing you to use AutoLink? Have you emailed Google and let them know how you feel about AutoLink?
You forget that the items that AutoLink may create links for - street address, ISBN number, VIN number or tracking number - are not protected content. You cannot copyright an address, VIN, ISBN or tracking number.
Who said I ”don’t have the right to edit it, adding links to it to your site”? Oddly enough, both IE and Firefox afford me the ability to override the fonts, colors and style sheets for any web page. If I choose to override your defaults, is that not editing the page? How about web sites or programs that translate a web page from one language to another? Sounds like editing a page to me. What if I create a program that blanks out swear words in web page - afterall we have to protect the kids - is that not editing a page?
In terms of ISBN numbers, right now I can highlight the ISBN number and copy it, goto Amazon.com (or a competitor or an online library catalog) and paste the ISBN number. AutoLink simplifies that process. How is that evil?
Hi Phil,
You may need to rewrite this entire post - i have absolutely no idea of what you’re talking about. At all.
Firstly, what’s all this stuff about sheep farmers and affiliate links? Is that a comment on Threadwatch (my website), Google AutoLink or what?
FYI there are no affiliate links on Threadwatch - though maybe that’s not what you meant… (not that it would matter if there were surely?)
If there is a problem with the code being made available at my website i’d appreciate some clear communication from you as to what it is.
Thanks.
Oh, come on Nick, at least try to have some fun dancing with language.
There are two classes of people who have strong reason to fear AutoLink, who as far as I can tell from the parts of your site that I run across are also people frequently found among your readers: people whose business model is ”get search engine visitors to funnel in, and make sure that the only exits available are through an affiliate link” — it amuses me to think of them as sheep ranchers, herding the searching sheep through their corrals, and, people whose business model is ”get search engine visitors to buy because they think I’m the only place to buy, because if they knew they could get it elsewhere for 40% off with free shipping, they would” — as with the classic mushroom farming management technique of keeping them in the dark and feeding them bullshit, that’s what you need to do for that sort of business, and a link that allows for price comparison is a nightmare.
What’s wrong with the code on your site is two things. First, it’s extremely user-hostile: someone has decided that they want an address or ISBN or VIN or package tracking number linked to a site where they can look up more about it, or in the ISBN case compare prices, and you enable sites to break their users’ browser. Given the presentation, which hasn’t been ”in those rare cases where AutoLink would actually be hostile to your business, like if you are a bookseller who can’t compete with Amazon on price, or… well, that’s about it, here’s how to slow AutoLink down” it’s presented as ”AutoLink is pure evil, and will destroy anyone’s web business, put this script everywhere.” For someone with the address to their retail store on a page in plain text, preventing customers from using AutoLink to convert it to a link to their choice of mapping site is crazy; for someone selling used car listings, disabling links to CarFax would make me so suspicious that I would immediately go elsewhere. The second thing wrong with it is that it’s too easy for me to get around: a named function in code that’s certain to mostly be just copy-pasted unaltered is just begging to be overwritten. The least you could do is make me work for it, having to rewrite the getter for the document.links collection ;)
I think you should include that second paragraph in your initial post rather than just the parenthesized bits you have there. It clarifies a dimension in your argument that isn’t plainly obvious from the post as it is.
My only beef with AutoLink is that, since it’s my browser after all, I should get to pick AutoLink destinations. If I bought my books mostly from Powell’s, if I rarely buy books at all but check them out from the library instead, if Amazon just ain’t it– I should get the option of picking the AutoLink to link to whatever website does reflect my preference.
But maybe the option to customize AutoLinks will come in the future.
Well, probably, in that you better be talking about whatever the Firefox extension(s) that do it will do, where they are far more likely to be open and extensible.
Which raises interesting conjecture about what would happen if google does buy/invest in FireFox with the gbrowser rumours.
I don’t recall this same outcry when FF released with google built in as it’s first and main search engine. But the same argument could apply.
However this isn’t even built into the browser. it’s a toolbar the user chooses to download, install and run. There are a host of FF extensions that can do similar things (e.g. turning unlinked url’s into linked ones). What’s next, saying pop-up blockers are bad because the site designer really wanted a pop up right there and who are we to stop the site from telling us how to do things.
I assume as with all the fuss with gmail (oh no, some pimply faced student at google is reading all my emails and telling his friends before putting ads up, nasty nasty nasty) this will die down quite quickly and either become quite standard, or disappear as the technology does or doesn’t get used.
How could Google buy Firefox? Which world do you live in?
Do you know which companies the Mozilla Foundation employees work at? Has it mattered, will it matter?
Look at the speculating around google registering gbrowser. Ok maybe I meant more release their own branded version of FF, but there is plenty talk about a google browser for it to have value.
Talk which seems to me even more unlikely now that toolbar.google.com redirects to /googlebar.html when you visit with Firefox or Mozilla, a page which recommends that you install the third-party Googlebar extension. I suppose it’s still possible to make a case that they aren’t willing to do a simple little toolbar extension because their top-secret gBrowser is going to have all the features built in, and linking to Googlebar for now is just to throw people off the scent, but my tinfoil hat just isn’t wrapped that tightly. Me, I think they are so tight-lipped that the very idea of distributing something open source, or even partly-visible source (I doubt you can build a browser on top of Gecko without having at least some JavaScript to tie your compiled bits together) horrifies them.
Fair point. I never thought about it like that. Although I can’t see the value of google building a new browser completely from scratch either.
However if they do release a browser, I guess all these kind of stuff will be built in and there will be the same fuss made. Perhaps more fuss.
Still keeps things interesting.
Phil on the new Google Toolbar
Phil has some excellent thoughts on the new Google toolbar ”auto link” functionality. I must admit, I am on the fence. On one hand, yes, the browser is mine, and as such I should be able to render and modify received content and presentation as I wish….
No, I disagree totally. The browser is yours, but the website is mine. I, as site owner, get to determine the links from it. Not the visitor, and certainly not a third-party. I publish content for it to be read, passively. I don’t give it away, for others to modify as they wish.
There is a fairly simple way to evade this ’feature’: don’t provide linkable content in the first place. Google links from ISBNs? Fine; no more ISBNs at my site. It’s kind of retrograde to have to withhold information to prevent tampering, but if that’s what it takes….
I can’t trust my readers (an unsavory lot, though I love them dearly) to understand the sacred nature of your every word (some of them *gasp* will even copy text and paste it elsewhere!), so I removed your link. Let me know when you are providing your ”web”log as either a signed PDF or one large image, so that they may be trusted to behave according to your anti-web rules, and I’ll put it back.
”The browser is yours, but the website is mine. I, as site owner, get to determine the links from it.”
Replying as a surfer:
The desktop is mine. The computer is mine. When I visit your site I give you permission to place ONE page of content in my browser window. One click, one page. As a surfer, I hate sites that try to take over my computer and do more than show the page I’ve asked for.
Over the years I’ve seen all kinds of crazy pop-up, pop-under, set bookmarks, attempt to disable the context menu, make me wait for an overloaded server on the other end of a damp string to send a megabyte of flash animation before showing the page schemes.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t want google creating an ever larger number of deranged hyperlinks on the page I’m trying to read. If I’m doing a bit of research, I want to know the links that the page author believed relevant to his or her argument.
What I want to see is the content I’ve asked the site to deliver. I no more want google doing stupid things on my computer than I want the webmaster doing them.
Replying as a web author for multiple sites:
I want to serve information to my surfers. I want them to find the information they are after and then either buy something from me, or exit via a paid link.
I already supply unpaid links off-site to content. I hope that by providing a useful selections, users will bookmark my site, and generate revenue on a return visit.
I choose to display google ads on my sites. I’m not happy with google (or any other provider) inserting additional ads on my pages. Why should google profit from my bandwith?
If you truly believe that you do not give away your content to be modified by others as they wish, then you better contact the developers of each and every web browser. Each browser gives me the option of viewing the page source and saving said source. I can load the source into an editor, study it, tinker around with it and so forth. I also hope that you are not employing any form of adblocker, since that is modifying the content without the author’s permission.
Your argumement about not listing ISBNs to avoid being linked is laughable. Since you decided to list the ISBNs, the apparently had some value, otherwise, why list them? Actually, if you didn’t want a 3rd party turning the ISBNs into links, you could have created your links for them. Besides, what prevented me from copying an ISBN, opening a new window or tab, typing/selecting an URL and pasting the ISBN before AutoLink? Why should I, as a user, not be able to simplify or automate that process? I thought computers were designed to make things easier, not harder?
AutoLink ’blocked’
A quick update to that previous posting about Google’s AutoLink ’feature’: Jeffrey Zeldman, of A List Apart, offers a JavaScript, er, script to automatically remove any links added without the author’s permission, defeating AutoLink.
No problem, Phil. After all, this is your website, and I fully support your right to add and delete links as you choose ;)
Sweet Georgia Brown! Now I’m stuck: the only way I could possibly hope to read your site would be by either copying the text and pasting it somewhere that it would be a visible black(ish) on white(ish), or by applying a user-stylesheet to change it from pale spring green on black, but I’m not allowed to do either of those, not even to hit Ctrl-+ a few times to get up to a font size I might stand a chance at seeing. This passivity is hard work!
Hmm, Phil, as much as I tend to agree with you, the difference between content and presentation is a valid argument, isn’t it?
Don’t forget the third leg: behavior. Behavior is very, very much between me and my browser.
Google Toolbar AutoLinks followup
Let me elaborate a few inches deeper into this.
I believe the issue some ”normal” folks have with this, is the notion of Google (a for-profit) using some of the web’s works to create income.
While this may be true for a lot of modern web based …
Google Toolbar’s AutoLink & The Need For Opt-Out
AutoLink is new feature in the new third version of Google’s popular Google Toolbar that’s raised controversy since it was released last week. Why are publishers upset? Can they block the feature that adds links to their web pages? Who…
This new function of the googlebar competes with my own linking system. I, like many other publishers, use a system called Intellitxt that dynamically creates links from my content - just as the GoogleBar does.
The difference? I get paid for the clicks that the IntelliTxt links receive.
Google’s adding links to my site dilutes the power of my own revenue generating links.
My site has no subscription fee. I survive off of the revenue generated by banner ads and IntelliTxt links.
AutoLinks undermind that.
If my ad revenue goes away, my site goes away. Who benefits from that? Perhaps Google….but certainly not the web population.
Difference between the links you are paid for and the links Google provide are that theirs are optional and potentially helpful. Ah well… at least, with a bit of work, we can set our browsers to block /intellitxt/.
It certainly doesn’t appear to compete with you. If you have some other site, or some part of that site I didn’t spot, where you have US addresses, ISBNs, US VINs, or package tracking numbers (now that would be a trick, having a page of unlinked package tracking numbers that was somehow useful), please do link to it: I’d like to see some example of impacted sites other than a bookstore which can only compete with Amazon by having customers who don’t know Amazon exists.
However, the IntelliTxt business model, having lots of completely unlinked text that includes words people search for, and then deciding what words to link and where to link them based on who’s willing to pay to be linked, isn’t necessarily something that the world absolutely requires be maintained at all costs. Personally, I’ve never seen IntelliTxt result in even vaguely useful links: it’s usually more like a caricature of the worst that SmartTags could have been. If, as is not the case, AutoLink really did mean the death of IntelliTxt as an advertising mechanism, I wouldn’t mourn it at all, and I don’t think any third party has any responsibility to maintain its viability.
Google News And Notes
During the last few weeks when I’ve been too stupidly busy to blog as much as I’ve liked, I’ve noticed a bunch of news about Google that kept getting flagged…
Google, Gator - Gator, Google - SNAP!
n/a
For those of you keeping score at home, the logical fallacy Nick has fallen into in his TrackBacked post above is called guilt by association. If Gator, Adolf Hitler, and Google all three say that 1+1=2, that has no bearing whatsoever on the truth or falsity of the statement. (And, as is the case with the first pair of quotes, if one party lies about what they’ve done, and the other tells the truth, it isn’t even good emotional persuasion.)
I checked out Nick W’s compare and contrast of comments made by Gator and comments made by Google and it is clear that he has no idea what he is talking about. Gator was evil. People installed it not fully knowing what it was or what it did. With Google, we are talking about a beta product that has a feature that must be enabled by the user before it can be used and that must be activated by the user when and only when they have a need to create links for specific things. Yes, I can see how Gator and Google are similar - NOT.
The ”It’s a shame that some otherwise seemingly intelligent people do not seem to be able to get past the ”Google is all pink and fluffy” idea. Wake up boys, this is about business, not the user” comment is telling. Essentially, Nick is saying that if you are okay, happy, or otherwise content with Google, then there is something seriously wrong with you - ie you are one dumb person. What a wonderful way to win people over.
Readers of Threadwatch are sheep ranchers?
Funnily enough, when I move to Scotland later this year, I am actually going to look at the practicalities of keeping sheep. :)
Where would us Yorkshiremen be without their sheep? :D
Where? Happier, would be my guess. I’ve kept sheep, and they are a dumb and fickle lot, suddenly stampeding off in any random direction at the least provocation, or no apparent provocation (perhaps because an ant fell off a blade of grass). From what I read in SEO forums, the online version are much the same.
I think it is telling that a few days after this was announced, the Barnes and Noble website hyperlinked all the (previously unlinked) ISBNs in their listings.
I personally don’t have any ISBNs on any of my ”sheep ranches”, and though I have in the past frequently put a link to mapquest on address pages, I really don’t think that it is particularly fair that Google stick links to their map service right into my page. If I have my address listed, and below it a link that says ”click here for mapquest driving instructions” or whatever, now Google’s map info will conflict with. I dunno, it just doesn’t seem 100% helpful to the users.
I suppose I just don’t like the precedent that is being set - what’s next- will a new version of the Ask Jeeves toolbar automatically replace adsense publisher IDs with their own? Will an MSN toolbar filter out links to the Commission Junction sites?
My main problem is that my HTML content is being re-written. For some reason I don’t think I’d mind as much if the tool bar had a button that said ”map this” and had map options sprout from the toolbar - but the fact that it is placed into my content, as if it was my content, just seems… wrong.
I agree that it’s telling, but not for what I suspect is your reason. To me, it says that BN knows they can’t compete in a truly open market with buyer awareness, that they don’t think they have any of the advantages I assumed they must have to still be doing it (buyer loyalty, better speed, more stock, dunno, I don’t buy from them myself), and they are so afraid of having a microscopic number of their customers who’ve installed a beta toolbar who then actively want to look at Amazon’s page for the same book do so that they’ve made their own site look weird and broken for everyone. Apparently they don’t think there’s any chance that they’ll be included in the final version of the toolbar, or they don’t think anyone would choose them, or they don’t think that anyone who looks at both their page for a book and Amazon’s would buy from them. So, yeah: to me it’s telling that Barnes & Noble are mushroom farmers.
If you have a Mapquest link, and someone clicks their toolbar link to insert a Google Maps link instead, it means that either they prefer Google, or that your link wasn’t obvious enough for them.
If someone writes a toolbar that does evil, that’s the time to fight that toolbar. Casting this as a fight to keep back the hordes who want to write toolbars that will do evil or hidden alterations ignores both the fact that fighting back SmartTags didn’t stop everything for all time, and the fact that other much more evil rewriters already exist. Acceptance of the Google toolbar means acceptance of exactly what it does, and nothing else, and all the people saying that it means the next toolbar can do anything and everything and eat your puppy and nobody can object makes me worry mostly about their own ethics.
But it is not placed into your content, as it if was your content. AutoLink does not automagically insert links on-the-fly. It requires user intervention to function. The user has to click on the AutoLink button AFTER a web page is loaded. Think of it as a shortcut to copying, loading a different web page, and then pasting the information into that web page.
Your first argument is an ad-hominem attack on threadwatch. You are
not starting well, having exposed the fact that you don’t have a
strong opening position.
Your second argument (it’s MY browser, dammit!) is completely specious
- — you are using your browser to read someone else’s content. And it
is that other person’s content that is being changed, without their
consent. Furthermore, it is being done to advance the interests of
Google and competitors to the websites whose content has been changed.
Let’s use an analogy to understand your fallacious reasoning. Instead
of MY browser, say MY car. Just because it is YOUR car, doesn’t give
your the right to drive it any way you want.
You don’t appear to have any more points to make, so I’ll finish by
saying that Google has gone way over the line here.
- –
Derek Shaw
BIS Business Information Systems Inc.
Victoria, BC.
voice: 250-885-2021 fax: 250-386-4060
GnuPG Public Key ID: 0×5553C338
The missing first part of your comment, only visible to people verifying your signature (hyphens and GPG don’t mix well) was:
Well, no.
An ad hominem would be
But in any case, my verbal ”argument” is not just weak, it doesn’t exist. My argument was only in code, with some words around it to explain my motivation (and to explain to my readers, most of whom don’t even own a Windows machine, much less run IE, why I was bothering with this) and what the code was and how to use it. The JavaScript to disable a feature of the user’s browser asserts that the page author controls the browser, my code corrects that assumption. Everything else is just asides and reading-into.
I can’t use my car to run over people, much as I want to, but even though the designers wanted it to be driven at high speed on curvy roads, I am free to drive it at 25 mph in heavy traffic instead, or put it in the yard (with a fence around it, so I’m not affecting other people) and plant flowers in it.
Your argument assumes that a hyperlink qualifies as ”content”. Using IE or Firefox, I can override a web page default fonts, colors and stylesheets. I can change all text - links or otherwise - to the same color and turn off underlining of links, so that it appears that a web page has no links. Another person sits at my computer and all they see is a page with no visible links. Have I altered the content? Have I altered how the page was meant to be displayed? I can only assume that you are opposed to programs that block ads on a web page. Afterall, the author of the web page intended for the ads to be displayed, and by blocking them, one has changed the content without the author’s consent. What about sites or programs the translate web pages from one language to another? What if I turn off Javascript, Java or ActiveX? The whole concept of ”content” is not black and white as you make it seem.
If you select a MapQuest or Yahoo Maps in AutoLink, no links created by AutoLink will point to a Google web address. Hardly sounds like advancing the interests of Google. Besides, what is stopping other companies from picking up the phone or sending an email, asking Google if they can be included as an option? Seemed to work for Mapquest and Yahoo Maps?
I’m surprised that the words ”monopoly” and ”cartel” have not appeared in this discussion. As far as I can see, Autolink looks very like a cartel in the making because:
Uhm. Does anyone even care anymore?
First off, Autolink needs to be enabled explicitly, to begin with, and even then it only affects very specific items (unlike, say, Microsoft’s SmartTag feature that would linkifiy words left and right), and even then only if these items are already part of a link. By sheer odds I can’t imagine that having any measurable impact on anyone’s traffic.
After the dust from the storm of protest following its release about 11 months ago settled, dead silence set in. I haven’t heard a peep about it in at least 8 months. I take that to mean that Autolink turned out to be exactly the non-issue that most sensible people expected.
I mean, of course, “are not already part of a link.”
I’m not entirely, absolutely sure that even Philip cares any more, which is why I’ve deprived him of his link to his commercial web design site.
My memory of the argument, back when it was actually happening, was that it boiled down to whether you think that Google is a public utility that should be regulated. Now? I switch my primary ”search from the URL bar” keyword between Google and Yahoo every couple of weeks, just for variety. When IE 7 ships, with tighter integration of MSN Search than IE 6 has, Google will be even less a synonym for search. Something that their toolbar does (for a minority of the minority of their users who even install the toolbar) just doesn’t make my cutoff for a public utility.
It should be noted for posterity that Google is paying $1 for every new customer who downloads Firefox… with the Google toolbar pre-installed. I doubt too many of those customers will be switching back to IE 7. (But what do I know? I’m the sort of person who was using Google in 2000 and using Firefox when it was the bastard stepchild of Mozilla and called FireChicken or PhoenixTofu or something.)