You might remember that I ditched the Google Toolbar a couple of months ago. Steve Rubel is reporting on another good reason to do so: the newest version includes a feature called Autolink. Greg Linden explains it very simply: with this feature turned on, Google’s modifying web page content to add its own links. For example, addresses are linked to Google Maps pages. Book ISBNs and package tracking numbers are linked too.
The folks at Google Blogoscoped toss this off with “talk about the Google OS taking over our lives”, but you know what? Microsoft tried something similar with their IE support for smart tags. Smart tags are exceptionally useful in Office, because you can easily write your own smart tag code to recognize objects unique to your business (like chemical compound names for a pharmaceutical company). I wrote one that recognizes scripture verses (you know, like “John 3:16”). When MS proposed extending this feature to IE, the furor was incredible. Walt Mossberg, Dave Winer, Dan Gillmor, and a host of other influencers immediately started screaming that Microsoft was taking control over web content and generally acting like an 800-lb gorilla. The EFF even opined that the MS smart tag implementation might be illegal. In fact, here’s what Chris Kaminski had to say:
Even if smart tags don’t violate copyright or deceptive trade laws, they still violate the integrity of the web. Part of the appeal of the web is that it allows anyone to publish anything, to take their thoughts, feelings and opinions and put them before the world with no censors or marketroids in the way. By adding smart tags to web pages, Microsoft is interposing itself between authors and their audience. Microsoft told Walter Mossberg “the feature will spare users from ‘under-linked’ sites.” Microsoft is in effect deciding how authors should write, and how developers should build, websites.
Worse, Microsoft’s decisions may be at odds with the intent of the site’s author or developer. If an Internet Explorer 6 user visits Travelocity and looks at a page with information on visiting Nice, France, the smart tag that aggravated Thurrott will link the word “Nice” to Microsoft’s Expedia site. With smart tags, Microsoft is able to insert their ads right into competitors’ sites.
Microsoft is crossing the Rubicon of journalistic and artistic integrity. Editors and authors no longer have final authority over what their sites say; Microsoft and its partners do. For a preview of what the web may look like for Internet Explorer 6 users who also have Office XP or Windows XP installed, take a look at InteractiveWeek’s Connie Guglielmo’s preview. With smart tags, Microsoft is effectively extending its role from being a supplier of tools people use to view content to being the executive editor and creative director of every site on the web.
So, check that out: Kaminski accuses Microsoft of “deciding how authors should write”, “insert[ing] their ads right into competitors’ sites”, and becoming “the executive editor and creative director of every site on the web”. He left out barratry and mopery and dopery in the spaceways, but that’s still a pretty damning list.
Now Google’s doing the same thing. Will we see the same reaction?
My guess is “no”. Google’s widely publicized mantra of “don’t be evil” is increasingly often being used to excuse behavior for which Microsoft, Oracle, or IBM would be roundly condemned. This is just the latest such instance. Don’t get me wrong: as a user, I think Autolink could potentially be a useful feature (but then I thought the same thing about smart tag support in IE). As a web content provider, I’m not comfortable with the idea that another entity (which may not have my best interests at heart) is modifying my content before someone else sees it. If Microsoft was wrong then, so Google is wrong now.
SearchEngineWatch says “the commercial possibilities are massive”– I’d have to agree. My somewhat cynical guess, though, is that , and that raises the question of whether it’s OK for Google to make money by modifying other people’s web content. My guess would be “not so much”– look back at the Kaminski quote and see the part about ad insertion again. On the other hand, I see that Dave Winer is labeling this as “a line they must not cross”– an encouraging early sign.
Update: Adam Gaffin points to this article, pointing out that I have Google ads enabled. True. One prominent difference, of course, is that I get to choose whether ads appear on my page or not; I have some reasonable control over the ads’ appearance, and I could filter out competitors if I wanted to. Autolink doesn’t provide any of these features, except that it allows you to disable it. If I’m an Amazon affiliate, let’s say, how do I stop Autolink from doing something nasty to Amazon links on my page? Sure, it might not do that now, but as any competitive strategist knows, you judge competitors by their capabilities, not by their intentions.
Paul's Down-Home Page 
Google goes where MS couldn’t
Steve Rubel notes that Google is experimenting with a technique that Microsoft was roundly trashed for: auto-linking content in a page. (Microsoft’s version was Smart Tags.) Google looks through the page creating links out of anything it can: “In addit…
Paul, I know that you seem to be straddling the fence somewhat, but I just don’t see how Autolink can be construed as bad, especially given the other raft of options we users already have, both within our web browsers and via extensions to them, to “modify” the layout of web pages. As I just wrote over at MetaFilter:
Can someone, anyone, explain to me why Google giving users the ability to transform data into potentially-useful semantic links is bad, but Google letting you highlight search terms on a web page is OK, and Mozilla letting you add a user stylesheet that changes formatting for specific semantic data is OK, and the Adblock extension removing potential ads from webpages is OK? Because seriously, I’m not trying to be obtuse, I just don’t understand. They’re all ways that end users are modifying the layout of a web page in some manner, but for some reason, some of them have been communally blessed as acceptable, and others (Autofill and Smart Tags) have been run out of town.
I think ultimately what separates the blessed solutions from the ones that have been tarred and feathered is end-user control. If I add a stylesheet, that’s completely under my control. If I use Adblock to block ads on particular domains, that’s under my control. If I enable smart tags, the semantic and presentation changes are under MS’ control. If I use Autolink, the semantic changes are under Google’s control. The argument then becomes whether you trust whoever’s doing the marking up; my point is that Google seems to be extended the courtesy of assuming that they’re not evil even though their solution is functionally identical to Microsoft’s. I don’t think that’s fair.
Oh, I think we agree that it’s not fair for Smart Tags and Autolink to be treated differently; my argument, though, is that they should both be seen as reasonable ways for a browser to provide more than just a display-it-exactly-how-the-author-wrote-it experience.
The who’s-in-control argument seems like a red herring to me. What level of control is sufficient? Are things acceptable so long as the user is able to turn a feature on and off? Do they need more granular control than that, like being able to define the colors and decoration of links? As examples, if I released an extension that turned proper nouns into Wikipedia links (a la Stefan Magdali’s BBC rewriter), would that be OK even if the end user doesn’t have control how those links look? Google’s toolbar allows highlighting of search terms, and the user doesn’t have any control over how that highlighting looks, either; is that OK? And then back to the point of the post, would Autolink be better if the user could choose which third-party sites were used in the links?
The Value of Reputation
Perhaps the most vital asset to any technology company today is its reputation. It’s not money. It’s not assets. It’s certainly not patents. It’s what people think of you, your reputation. Paul Robichaux recently wrote that he thinks Google is…
What if an address is already linked, say, to Mapquest or Yahoo maps?
Will Google remove the link and rewrite it with their own, or ignore it?
On a slightly related note, I noticed that Yahoo is, as of pretty recently, routing outbound links through a redirector, so they can track what you’ve clicked on.
I can find no mention of this anywhere (did I miss something), and this seems like it ought to merit a similar discussion.
Yahoo and Google take different evil baby steps
So I noticed that sometime in the past few days, Yahoo has started tracking outbound links. When you do a search on Yahoo, say… for “stuff”, you get this page, on which all of the links for results are filtered through one of yahoo’s servers, so t…
Google releases new toolbar, faces consumer concern
Google launched it’s third incarnation of its popular Google Toolbar, and although it’s loaded with new features, it’s raised a number of eyebrows – and even concerns – around the internet. The features are concisely listed on Google’s toolbar features…
change required
Wow today has been a great day! Got alot done and my mind is racing with new ideas and concepts. Lately at work I’ve been hell bent on doing things better, and in particular finding better tools to help us…
Jason, I don’t disagree in the least. I was fine with the concept behind IE smart tags, and I’m OK with the basic idea behind Autolink– as long as the user gets to choose which provider is used for the link targets. My beef was/is that Google is getting essentially a free pass for Autolink, whereas MS was soundly roasted. Is Google less a monopoly in the search space than MS is in web browsers? Hardly.