I’ve gotten some feedback about my previous praise and defense of the Autolink feature of the new Google toolbar. This will be my last word on it - eventually, the market will speak and it will stand or fail on its own. The criticism of the toolbar feature (and the criticism of me and other Google defenders) comes down to a few salient points, none of which carry much weight with me.
- No one has the right to change the form of content placed on the web by a content creator. Supposedly, its Evil for Google to add links to content that were not placed there by the “content creator”. This is, for lack of a better word, bunk. Or at least it’s not Google’s fault. If a content creator really thinks client-side processing destroys their creative vision, there are a number of options available. They can create a PDF. Or put pages up as big images. Or stick to paper. We browsers have changed content for years through the use of color and font and alternate style sheets. Firefox is replete with extensions that change content as it is rendered. Google has other features that change content, by highlighting search terms on pages and by caching pages in case they go off-line. And I certainly hope no one making this argument has a pop-up blocker installed.
The key to all of this is that the changes are client-side (Google’s not changing any pages for the web at large, just for users that invoke their service), single-user, and not based on fraud. There are in fact services that do this, unbeknownst to users (by superimposing ads, for example). That is Evil because it is fraudulent, not because it changes content.
Most importantly, Autolink only works when invoked by the user. You have to download and install the toolbar. Then you have to go to a site containing the kinds of information the toolbar can autolink. Then you have to click the Autolink button. If it’s the first time you have used the feature, you get a popup box explaining what it does, which you have to acknowledge. Only then does it superimpose links. Don’t believe me? Go get yourself a copy of the toolbar, and check out this post with it installed. Here are two of the types of information Google autolinks:
- Addresses: my favorite Argentinian restaurant is Palermo Viejo, located at 1359 Bardstown Rd. Louisville, KY 40204
- ISBN: I just finished Marvel 1602, by Neil Gaiman, ISBN 0785110704
No autolink unless you click the button. It’s all within your control, and everyone else sees the page as I wrote it.
- The functionality is not harmless. This is usually a response to a claim like the one I made, that the feature is useful to its users and harmful to no one. Inevitably, someone responds with “Yeah, what about B&N? I bet they don’t agree.” True, the ISBN autolink goes to Amazon, so in theory, if you clicked the autolink button while on a B&N page, you’d get a link to B&N’s competitor. This could mean a lost sale to B&N if they’re not competitive, but in that sense, it’s no different than a price scraping service like PriceGrabber. It doesn’t turn search results on BN.com into Amazon links, but does make comparison shopping easier. I still don’t see this as a big deal.
- It’s a slippery slope to Google/MS/evil bogeyman domination. Even those who accept this service from Google can’t bear the thought that Microsoft might do it (with some M$ abbreviations thrown in for good measure). If Microsoft follows the rules Google has, and makes it single-user, user-invoked, transparent and non-fraudulent, then good for them. I’d expect that Yahoo!, MS and every other search provider would do a similar thing. Because at bottom, all Google has done is take a specific subset of searchable information and add easy links to search results for that information. All the Autolink searches are already available as Search by Number searches.
Now, someone someday may take this Non-Evil technology and use it for Evil. If they do, they should be criticized. Google, however, is acting for Good, not for Evil. Slippery slope arguments make very little sense in a non-legislative setting, and they amke none at all here.
Smarter people than me are all over this issue. See Yoz Grahame here, here and here. And, lest you think Google is hypocritical, here are at least eight (as of this writing) services that scrape and reformat Google’s own content.
March 2nd, 2005 at 11:40 am
“Google, however, is acting for Good, not for Evil.”
Quite a leap in logic to make moral judgements about the motives of Google, don’t you think? I’m not saying I either like or dislike the toolbar (I don’t use it, though, which might in itself be a statement against it). But come on–”good” vs. “evil” in a toolbar? I’d say–almost without fear of rational contradiction–that Google is acting for “profit”, not “good” or “evil”.
March 2nd, 2005 at 3:23 pm
Guess I shouldn’t have left off the [sarcasm] tags. Although Dave Winer and Dan Gillmor have been quite happy to label Autolink and Smart Tags evil, so perhaps one should direct the complaint to them.
June 20th, 2005 at 5:38 pm
Last post about the Google Toolbar beta
Last post about the Go…