I installed the beta release of Google’s toolbar today and after reading so many hate posts about the autolink feature I went to work. Maybe not to work but I checked it out. What a big misunderstanding, I thought it autolinked everything, and you may know already, that isn’t the case; only maps, books, license plates, and tracking numbers. What a waste, I really thought the toolbar inserted links that were relivent to the site like a google ad or something, not even close. The only problem I see is the autolink takes bussiness, say I have an online bookstore, the autolink feature would link out all my isbn numbers to Amazon, now that sucks for them. And for those online retailers, there isn’t an opt out for autolink, just a javascript hack.
My worries actually began a few years ago, when I first found out that Google’s website cookie doesn’t expire until 2038 (yet another good reason to periodically clear out your cookie cache). With the beta release of Google’s toolbar a few weeks ago, the debate has really ratcheted up to new levels.
Google introduced a new feature with its Windows/IE toolbar: AutoLink. When a user presses the AutoLink button on the toolbar, new links are created on the current web page, including the following:
Book ISBN – Amazon.com
Address – Google Maps
Car license plate number – Carfax
Package tracking numbers – UPS or FedExNow, there are a few things critics of AutoLink have ignored. For instance, it’s not enabled by default. A user has to push the AutoLink button every single time they want to enable its use on a page. Further, current links are not overwritten; only unlinked text is affected. Even so, I’m really torn about AutoLink. I use other services that rewrite the code of a web page in certain ways to benefit me, like the BetterSearch Firefox extension, for instance, which (ironically enough) rewrites Google results to display a thumbnail image of each search result’s home page. And I’m a enormous, grateful fan of the Adblock extension, which allows me to remove advertisements and other annoyances from websites. I could go on. In all those cases, I’m in essence rewriting content on a web page that I’m viewing, which one could also argue is what AutoLink does.
But I’m growing convinced that the problems AutoLink brings up are greater than the benefits. I’m not alone in this: plenty of others, like Dave Winer, Robert Scoble (at Microsoft, no less), Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineWatch, and noted web designer and developer Jeffrey Zeldman are criticizing AutoLink as well.
Google’s relationship to the web reminds me of those old SAT analogy questions; in this case, it would look something like
Microsoft : operating systems :: Google : websearch engines. Back in 2001, during the beta release of IE 6, Microsoft introduced a Smart Tags feature that acted much the same as Google’s AutoLink (for an excellent, detailed analysis of the problems associated with Smart Tags, read Chris Kaminsky’s masterful “Much Ado About Smart Tags“). There was quite a brouhaha, and Microsoft withdrew the feature.Looking back, there are eerie similarities between Microsoft’s Smart Tags and Google’s AutoLink (not surprising, since the same guy created both), with two key differences: at least Microsoft’s links were purple and dotted, making it relatively obvious that they were different than the normal links on a web page, while Google’s links are blue and underlined, just like the vast majority of links found on most web pages. In other words, once AutoLink is pressed, the viewer will not be able to tell which links are put there by the page’s author and which are put there by AutoLink. Granted, holding your mouse over the link and waiting for a tooltip to open will indicate that the link comes from Google, but I’m not sure how many users are going to do that. In fact, given the state of most web users’ knowledge, I have serious doubts that they’d even understand what the tooltip’s text meant in the first place.
Even worse, there’s no way for site authors to opt out! At least Microsoft indicated that it would respect an opt-out META tag that site creators could insert into their web pages (of course, it would have been far better if it had instead offered an opt-IN META tag, but such is life with Microsoft). Google offers nothing: no opt-in, no opt-out, nothing. As a result, code has already appeared that website developers can use to block Google’s AutoLink (and it works with JavaScript, ASP, PHP, and Perl!).
Original article here
