Dan Gillmor is still upset about the new Google Toolbar. And he’s still wrong. What gets Dan upset is the Autolink feature added to the toolbar in version 3, which adds links onto pages that contain certain types of information, links to specialized searches that Google already provides. Dan doesn’t like it because he thinks Google is acting too much like his arch-nemesis:
What Google isn’t taking into account is that its market power, and the tendency of users to accept the default — to eat what’s on the plate someone puts in front of them — will tend to create Google’s version of the Web, not the users’ version. We all hates Microsoft’s Smart Tags idea because it gave more, unearned power to Microsoft. Google doesn’t have that same dominance, but it has enough to worry about.
Whatever Google’s perceived market power, it doesn’t have the power to force anything on anyone. If you want the Google toolbar functionality, you have to download it and install it. Look at the download page for the toolbar beta and ask yourself if any of the features are hidden, if anything about what Google is doing is hidden. Answer: no, of course. Autolink will be useful to the people who download and install the software and use it voluntarily. What Dan seems to be suggesting is that companies with market power shouln’t be able to provide services to their customers that the customers want. Why should I be able to download and install an extension for Firefox that auto-links plain text, or that opens redirect links directly (i.e. not the way the website designer intended) or that takes a web user straight to a map page from highlighted addresses, but I can’t install a toolbar in Internet Explorer from Google that does pretty much the same thing?
Furthermore, does Google really have market power, anyway (and to reiterate, I don’t think it matters a bit if they do)? Wired has an interesting article in this months issue (not online until March 1) pointing out that for all the hype about Google, Yahoo actually leads Google in virtually every metric, and Google’s share in the “favorite search engine” race is narrower than one might think. In any event, with Yahoo, MSN and a host of other competitors on its heels, Google can hardy exercise monopoly power. It’s time to stop looking for tech boogeymen and start asking whether a service the company proposes to provide gives value to users or keeps others from providing competitive value to their customers. In this case, Google is offering a product which is useful to some and interferes with the economic activity of precisely no one.
February 26th, 2005 at 12:04 pm
Its interesting to see the same people who lauded Tivo’s ability to let them remix content and view it ways never intended by the publisher suddenly bitching when the tables are turned and *their* visitors might be given the same sort of options with *their* content.
February 26th, 2005 at 11:08 pm
[quote]interferes with the economic activity of precisely no one[/quote]
Tell that to Barnes & Noble, who appear to now have a fix in place. In fact, tell that to any other online bookstore, apart from Amazon.
Then again, perhaps you’ll have no problems with the toolbar due out next week that will turn most of this sites’ copy into “helpful” links to third parties. I’m sure the users will love “mixing it up” at *your* expense, and the cash benefits will go to the major shopping channel who owns the toolbar.
Be careful what you want. The flood-gates are about to open.
March 1st, 2005 at 3:36 am
Your response is a well-written response to the paranoia that seems to be growing over the capabilities and use of Google’s latest tool.
From the number of blogs from site developers making hysteric claims about this program automatically replacing their links, I have to wonder how many of them have actually installed it themselves and tried it on their websites.
A feature in a third party program that you have to manually install that requires you to know it exists to use it, and forces you to manually press a button each and every time you visit a site you want to use it on and then displays a unique mouse pointer when rolled over is as close a definition of “opt-in” as you can get, despite what Dan Gillmor’s often-quoted article seems to imply.
I have to wonder if these same site owners also install code to prevent text-browsers, or ad-blockers from viewing their website in any form not permitted by the owner. How long until you’re no longer allowed to even change the font-size for better readability because you’re compromising the site’s “artistic vision”?
April 4th, 2005 at 3:33 am
http://www.SirSeek.com/Toolbar/ is my favorite toolbar and it uses every major search engine so you do not need multiple IE toolbars! This toolbar doesn’t track any user data or web searching (unlike the others).