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 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….
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.
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…
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
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.â€