Google Toolbar, an Update

UPDATED

I had lunch yesterday with several Google folks including Marissa Mayer, the company's director of consumer Web products, to discuss the new Google Toolbar, which is now in beta.

Like several other people, I have raised serious questions about this product's new "AutoLink" tool. It strikes me as an intrusion into people's browsers by a company that commands great market share.

She listened to my concerns. And she explained Google's stance -- nothing new there, and it amounts to "this is all for the users' benefit" defense. I am not convinced, however, that Google will end up doing the right thing in the end.

As Search Engine Watch asks in this piece: "Why are publishers upset? Can they block the feature that adds links to their web pages? Who rules over content, users or publishers?"

Good and fair questions -- but Google hasn't sufficiently answered them.

At the very least, Google needs to make some changes in the installation process. As users install the toolbar they should be asked if they want features that change content on web pages. There should be an opt-in process, not an opt-out process, for such things.

I have trouble with Search Engine Watch's Danny Sullivan's view that publishers of Web sites should be able to opt out of the toolbar changes. In theory, once I have content on my desktop it should be my right to "remix" it in the way I choose.

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.

Will Google do the right thing? This is a big test.

(By the way, Mayer said that while Microsoft's former Smart Tags guy is working for Google now, he's not involved in the Toolbar project.)

Comments

[BillSaysThis]

Dan, your post confuses me. You mention discussing the matter with Googlers but then you don't give any quotes or paraphrases as to what they said.

"She listened to my concerns and explained Google's stance."

How about updating this post to tell us what she exaplined so we can decide for ourselves?

[Seun Osewa]

Perhaps he made a verbal non-disclosure agreement? Google is known to be secretive about a lot of things.

[jerry]

Could help me differentiate the difference between the Google Toolbar, the bookmarklets at bookmarklets.com and the dozens (hundreds) of FireFox extensions that do all sorts of things to a page's content including emphasizing, hiding, reformatting, making links more obvious, changing the page flow, ....

Also, what does it mean that most browsers, including IE, Mozilla, and Thunderbird let me specify my own CSS which does many things to a site's content including changing formats and even hiding portions of the content?

And I run various pop-up blockers some from Firefox, some from Microsoft, some from third parties all of which use patterns to recognize certain pieces of content and then act to remove that content from being displayed.

And my Treo dramatically alters the way a page looks compressing pages and images.

If sites want a static page displayed only the way they wish to display it, maybe they should consider paper.

Otherwise, power to the programmer.

[Cranky Observer]

> 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.

Seems to me that Google is taking exactly that into account, and is banking on it in fact. Success in such an enveavour would justify the stock valuation.

Cranky

[Danny Sullivan]

Dan, you're not alone among those that think once it arrives on your desktop, you should be able to do with it as you want. Others, of course, disagree. That's the problem -- the line of what's acceptable is unclear and moves depending on your viewpoint.

My argument is that software vendors, if they're going to make it easy for people to add links to other people's pages, should see that as a major line they are stepping over and provide the opt-out. In my article, I talk how Google could still give you link-like functionality through Alt-Click, acceptable to me because it doesn't actually shove a link on my page. But it also lets the user do everything that's great about AutoLink.

If you were earning money on your site with say Google AdSense, would you object if someone else had a tool that remixed your page by changing your AdSense links to perhaps links that gave the surfer themselves money for clicking? How about something that removed your revenue-generating links? What about something that contextually analyzed your blogroll and then inserted links to other bloggers that the tool thinks someone might wish to discover. The tool user might think that's cool and useful. You as a publisher might not think it's so hot.

It's a complicated issue -- what's allowable and what's not. But at its core, we keep seeing that the insertion of actual links on pages seems to be central. So respect publisher rights in this particular instance and let them opt-out. That can include doing it in a way to make it clear to you, the page remixer, that the publisher doesn't want this tool to allow the feature. You can then complain to the publisher if you dislike it or do an Alt-Click to have the link functionality but with more respect for the publisher.

[kpaul]

i have to wonder what Google's reaction would be to a browser extension/plug-in/toolbar that changed the way users saw google's se listings. what if some programmer out there got rid of the google ads on the SERPs for the users' experience. or is that fundamentally different because it would be taking away (just ads, though) instead of adding (basically, ads...)

[REK]

Digito-Society wonders: Is Dan really advocating a double opt-in process?

The full blog: http://digito-society.blogspot.com/2005/02/grumblings-over-googles-updated.html

[Isofarro]

Danny Sullivan says: "I talk how Google could still give you link-like functionality through Alt-Click, acceptable to me because it doesn't actually shove a link on my page"

Technically impossible to add any behaviour on the page without first adding to or changing the markup. The hypertext anchor is logically the correct markup for linking an HTML page to another resource. Hiding that link behind a combination of keypresses and mouse actions creates a number of barriers to accessibility. This is not good for the visitor who is more accustomed to click on a link using a mouse only.

If the problem is that the autolink looks like a link, then just stick some CSS rules into your stylesheet to style the Google applies links in whatever manner makes sense to you (without making it difficult for the user to spot). The AutoLink toolbar inserts links with a consistent series of ids - so its trivial to style it slightly different to your own links.

"That can include doing it in a way to make it clear to you, the page remixer, that the publisher doesn't want this tool to allow the feature."

That can be accomplished by the publisher putting the relevant text on their website. Its then left up to the user whether to take this request seriously.

[Mike Travers]

What's needed are some standards -- a combination of ethical and graphical -- that permit third-party tools to alter web content, but do it in non-sneaky ways. It should be obvious that an alteration has happened and who the responsible party is. For example, if Google adds a link it comes up with a box around it and a big G.

It should also be relatively easy to turn off the alterations and see the original.

This sort of design is already becoming prevalent, as for example the Firefox popup blocker which puts up a noticable yellow bar informating you of its actions and giving you an affordance for un-blocking them. It seems to strike a balance between empowering readers and respecting the rights of authors and publishers.

[John Mather]

Isofarro: Perhaps a good analogy is SPAM. It's up to the user or the mail server to sort out all the garbage. Great.

If Google can do this what's to keep anyone from doing it through viral infections. Double great.

So now web sites have a new job: filter content. Swell.

The more garbage that's dumped into the streets of the superhighway the harder it is to find your way. Let the billboard wars begin! Oh wait there are laws about the placement of billboards...

[layover]

I certainly don't think Google or anyone else has the right to alter information on my site to the user....even if the user chooses to install the G toolbar. Let's say I don't link to amazon.com from my site...for whatever reason. I have a story on the book Gone with the Wind.....even listing the ISBN number..but not linking to amazon. Does Google have a right to turn that ISBN number into a link? By doing so, they give the perception that I have linked to amazon...and thus..perceptions can be that I am partnering or endorsing amazon.com.

Isn't that how Google ranks sites? By external links?? Saying a site's Page Rank increases by external links from authority sites....cause a link to your site is an "endorsement" from the linking site??

So....their toolbar changes text on my page into a link..and the user thinks that I, as the publisher is endorsing this site and linking to it.

Now..not really a problem with amazon....but this can lead us down the path of Google linking to whoever they want (advertisers)....and I certainly do not approve of the toolbar creating perceptions that *I* am offering the link to the external site.

On a side note....the toolbar is slightly flawed. Spent 5 minutes tinkering with it.....did a search on ebay for Gone with the Wind book. Clicked on the 2nd result....and when I tried to use the autolink feature for info on the book, the toolbar highlighted the auction item number thinking it was the ISBN number and linked to amazon......which of course generated a page that didn't exist.

Also....books stores that publish ISBN numbers as text and not links, will now be faced with the G toolbar linking to amazon.com.

[Joe]

There's always www.scroogle.org

[layover]

Getting past the Google toolbar...

It appears that powells.com has wrapped ISBN numbers with an "a" tag, and thus, the toolbar *thinks* the number is already a link....so..the toolbar then cannot generate it's own link.

For example (from their site)...

0446533106 (had to add spaces to get the tags to appear in this post)

Seems they did this just within the last few hours......

Cannot reproduce the ebay problem I found a few hours ago...and cannot find any reason for it.

Think everyone is on the move today trying to get around this stuff?

[jerry]

1985(ish)

How would ABC, CBS, and NBC feel if someone invented a device, the VCR, which allowed the user to skip commercials?

1995(ish)

DVD's contain content that cannot be skipped over, the FBI warning for one. Disney's DVDs often do not allow parents to skip past commercials for other Disney movies.

2005(ish)

Broadcast flag proposed to keep users from recording TV shows, columnists becoming alarmed that an optional toolbar might, with just one click, detect addresses and link to maps, readers alarmed that others might create extensions that remove Google ads (it's called adblock and it already exists). Many of the same columnists advocate the use of RSS, which many people use to circumvent ads, and I'm fairly certain most of these same people all like Googe's language translation tools which like the Babelfish that came before, radically alter a page's presentation by translating it into a different language.

Strange world. And just what is the difference between Bloglines, Google Translation Tools, and the Google Toolbar?

[layover]

-----quote-----
Strange world. And just what is the difference between Bloglines, Google Translation Tools, and the Google Toolbar?
-----quote-----

The difference is this....

What stops every toolbar publisher from taking on the practice of gen'ing links on my site...and these links are to their advertisers...some who may be direct competitors of mine?

What stops me from developing my own toolbar for my users...and every time they visit my competitor's site...I force links within the page to link to my site?

[Rod Begbie]

i have to wonder what Google's reaction would be to a browser extension/plug-in/toolbar that changed the way users saw google's se listings.

Such items already exist -- For example, Better Search. As far as I'm aware, Google hasn't commented one way or another on this plugin.

[jerry]

"What stops every toolbar publisher from taking on the practice of gen'ing links on my site...and these links are to their advertisers...some who may be direct competitors of mine?"

Nothing except individual will. If their toolbar is useful, folks will manually install it. If their toolbar is not, folks will not.

But what is the difference between your not wanting folks to change content you provide, and HP not allowing folks to use FULL ink cartridges past a certain date? Or Disney not wanting to allow me to skip past 15 minutes of previews on a DVD? Or the TV industry wanting the broadcast flag and to make it illegal to skip past commercials?

Why aren't you upset about Firefox's popup blocker? Or Microsoft's IE 7 which also blocks popups?

Why aren't you upset about Microsoft's Anti-Spyware download? Or Lavasoft ad-aware?

Or IE's ability to NOT run various Active X controls?

Why aren't you upset with many ISP's proxies and caches that force users to see old and expired material but save the ISP money and presumably speed up the user experience?

My Treo's brower (and Dan's) will automatically recognize phone numbers in a page, and link them so that I can call them automatically. (I wish it would recognize addresses so that I could add them into my contacts list)

ALL OF THESE THINGS change the content from the way the publisher wanted it presented. Why are you now upset with Google?

[Dave Winer]

Jerry, if you had a balanced view of this, then it would be okay to create a toolbar that did Google searches and replaced their ads with more useful ads. Would that be okay with you? How do you think Google would feel about that?

[jerry]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the reply. I do think I have a balanced view of this....

I would probably be fine with somebody stripping out google ads, and there's already something similar to that. Since I have adblock on Firefox, I can easily add these two patterns to get rid of googleads as well as blogads:

*googlesyndication*
*blogads*

I use to 127.0.0.1 blogads as their servers interacted badly with Mozilla and kept pages from being presented properly. Either they fixed their servers or Firefox has figured it out, so I see the blogads now. I figure that Atrios, et. al, would rather I see their content properly, even if I didn't see the ads rather than me not coming by at all.

I would probably not be okay with someone replacing the google ads with their own, the reason being that if I want to support a site, I need to see the ads that google is paying them to see, and not just some usurpers (ala Gator?). There is no value to me for ads that do not support the site.

I think that's the real flaw in the ad-replacing toolbar analogy. I don't care what it does to Google, but it almost certainly hurts the site that I am viewing by hijacking their ad revenue. Google isn't doing that, and has never done anything close to that, even when retrieving pages from their cache, and so I don't think it makes your ad-replacing toolbar analogy terribly valid.

But unless the toolbar was spyware, I wouldn't have a problem with it. I don't know why folks would install it. But that's their problem.

I read most of the blogs I read on my treo using bloglines/mobile. It cuts out almost all of the ads. I'm pretty happy that I can do that, and I am thankful that your contributions towards RSS have made that possible. Now most RSS feeds are offered with the cooperation of the original publisher, but not all. Some are scraped by third parties.

Anyway, I assume most folks at Google would be upset about an ad replacing toolbar, and I bet some folks would like to find some way to regulate that out of the market place, or even go legal on them. But I also bet that others would be happy to compete on features and service and added value content that they would win, in the same way they have won the search market (for now.)

It really annoys me that airlines buy Airbus. But in other ways, it really is to my long term benefit as it puts increasing pressure on certain parties to improve their products in ways that keep me employed. (I hope!) (And as long as Airbus is fair competition, but that's a different story.) [All views expressed here are my own and not my employer's.... And I'm not on company time. And I really like my job! (Afraid of more than just the googlebot...]

But Dave, instead of telling me I don't have a balanced view of this, I would prefer if you, or Dan, would actually address my questions. How do Google's actions differ from the other things that I brought up? I can't differentiate them myself, but if you help me to, I think that would go along way in helping us both determine what exactly the problem is.

Thank you,

[Isofarro]

"Isofarro: Perhaps a good analogy is SPAM. It's up to the user or the mail server to sort out all the garbage. Great."

You've _got_ to be joking. If you believe this analogy makes any sense - don't install the toolbar, and if you failed that particular step, don't click on the AutoLink button.

I click the autolink button because I want the additional information Google offers to provide. I can stop using it at any time. Certainly not like any definition of spam I have ever seen.

The user even has to opt-in twice - before the first link is added. And can choose not to click the auto link, and even uninstall the toolbar.

User is in full control of his experience.

[Isofarro]

layover writes: "Does Google have a right to turn that ISBN number into a link? By doing so, they give the perception that I have linked to amazon..."

The visitor has clearly installed the toolbar, and clicked on the autolink button before the toolbar inserts any new links - it is a user initiated action. This is essentially a good summation of your position: http://cheerleader.yoz.com/archives/001927.html

Do you actually acknowledge the fact the visitor has a choice in this matter?

layover writes: "What stops me from developing my own toolbar for my users...and every time they visit my competitor's site...I force links within the page to link to my site?"

As long as the choice of using the toolbar rests with the user - there's nothing wrong with it. If a user of this toolbar finds the functionality you offer useful - more power to them.

layover writes: "It appears that powells.com has wrapped ISBN numbers with an "a" tag, and thus, the toolbar *thinks* the number is already a link....so..the toolbar then cannot generate it's own link."

Why not put in a proper link instead? Autolink is giving users what they want - linkable maps and books.

No matter how much you chose to distort the argument, the use of AutoLink remains the choice of the browser user. They have to initially install it, and click on the autolink button before it is used. They are also free to uninstall it.

[Larry Israel]

Although Google has not yet released a meta tag that web authors can add to their web pages to disable Google's AutoLink (as Microsoft did with SmartTags), some web coders have already written code to disable it.

JavaScript to Kill Google Autolink
http://www.searchguild.com/autoblink/

See also:
Protect your site from Google’s new toolbar by Jeffrey Zeldman
http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0205f.shtml

[jerry]

If you cup your hands and hold them real close to one eye and look inside, you can see little tiny flashes of light, caused by the lidar from the nanoviruses as they battle each other. On any given day, in a minute or so, there will just be one or two flashes, remnants of the great nano war of 2012. Today though, there is quite a light show going on. It is thought that the new Victorian colony has unleased a nano-virus to battle the nano-virus released by new Hong Kong that was used to defeat the nano-virus released by Google intended to incorporate their new toolbar direct into your mirror shades.

/Channeling the Diamond Age and Snow Crash.... Read them both!

[steven]

"ALL OF THESE THINGS change the content from the way the publisher wanted it presented. Why are you now upset with Google?"

who says we're not upset with those shenanigans too?

[Ian Lloyd]

Jerry wrote:

"Could (you) help me differentiate the difference between the Google Toolbar, the bookmarklets at bookmarklets.com and the dozens (hundreds) of FireFox extensions that do all sorts of things to a page's content including emphasizing, hiding, reformatting, making links more obvious, changing the page flow, ...."

The difference is pervasiveness. The Google toolbar is a much more widely used tool than the various Firefox extensions combined. It is almost an abuse of the power that they have (almost?).

Because the current set up is to opt-out rather than opt in, and because the large majority of people who might download this toolbar will leave it as it's given to them, the autolink feature is *not* the same as the type of user who runs Firefox, makes a concerted effort to find a specific plug-in that they *opt in* to use for a very focused task.

Jerry wrote:

"Also, what does it mean that most browsers, including IE, Mozilla, and Thunderbird let me specify my own CSS which does many things to a site's content including changing formats and even hiding portions of the content?"

Again, the key thing is that the default is *not* to do that; the default is that you're given things as the designer intended, but you are given the power to suppress these options if you have the inclination. This is the opposite of what Autolink is doing.

"And I run various pop-up blockers some from Firefox, some from Microsoft, some from third parties all of which use patterns to recognize certain pieces of content and then act to remove that content from being displayed."

Opt in.

"And my Treo dramatically alters the way a page looks compressing pages and images."

But does it add links that weren't there to start with? No, it makes the best guess it can to display the page as it was designed on a small device. Not the same thing as the Autolink, once again ...

"If sites want a static page displayed only the way they wish to display it, maybe they should consider paper."

No comment

[Ian Lloyd]

Just to clarify, when I refer to opt-in, I mean that the user who is installing/running the toolbar should have to opt-in for the toolbar to display these Google-created links. There is some talk of the need for opting out from the point of view of the web site owner wh may not want links to be displayed (in other words, by using a meta tag or similar). Thought I should clear that one up ...

[jerry]

Hi Ian, you're mostly wrong in what you wrote, but one glaring example...

"And my Treo dramatically alters the way a page looks compressing pages and images."

But does it add links that weren't there to start with? No, it makes the best guess it can to display the page as it was designed on a small device. Not the same thing as the Autolink, once again ..."

Yes, yes it does. It detects phone numbers and turns them into links that I can click on and phone. I wish it would do the same of addresses!

[Petey]

"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."

It's not about dominance. It's about monopoly.

We all hated Microsoft's Smart Tags because it was a monopoly illegitimately trying to extend its monopoly.

[Jacob Kaplan-Moss]

There's all this brouhaha about the Google Toolbar, but I still fail to see the problem. Dan, you wrote that "as users install the toolbar they should be asked if they want features that change content on web pages. There should be an opt-in process, not an opt-out process, for such things."

Fact is, is is an opt-in process. Let's go through the steps I need to follow to use AutoLink:

1. Go to Google.com and download the toolbar (that's me opting-in once).
2. Run the toolbar installer (that's a second opt-in).
3. Click the "AutoLink" button (that's opt-in number 3).
4. Click "OK" in the dialog that explains what AutoLink is and what it does.

That's four -- count 'em, four -- times that I, the end user, has to explically and deliberatly agree that I wish to add this feature to my browser.

The fact is that the very nature of the web makes it laughably easy for the end-user to change the content of the pages they view.

For example, how is the Google Toolbar any different from the "Links via Feedster" Firefox plugin that my collegue Adrian Holovaty developed? Or, how is it different from the "Zap Colors" bookmarklet I use to magically turn pages with offensive color schemes into good old black and white? How does it differ from my "linkify" bookmarklet that converts plain-text URLs into clickable links to that URL?

Each is very simply a tool that I get to decide weather or not I want to use. You, as the content producer, have no control over what I do once your HTML hits my computer, and that's all there is to it. This is the way the web works, and has always worked.

[David Sims]

I also am against Autolink, but for reasons I haven't seen expressed often. Thank you for allowing me to contribute my (rather lengthy) thoughts on the matter:

So much has been discussed about Google’s new “Autolink” feature in its newest BETA Toolbar, but I can only remember one single, and brief, mention regarding Autolink’s potential impact on academic, government, legal, medical, non-profit, and scientific information websites and web-enabled online repositories. All Google’s efforts seem to involve commercial services and commercial benefits at some level, which is understandable for a commercial entity like Google; however, Google seems to ignore the fact that a great many of our society’s benefits are not driven primarily, directly, or even indirectly by monetary considerations.

There are many millions of web pages (probably hundreds of millions) produced by organizations such as mine that have a mandate to produce authentic, authoritative documents. You know, that neat stuff they’ve got “over there” at NASA; that really useful report on licensed contractors at your state Consumer Protection department; the immense archives at the Library of Congress; helpful publications you may unfortunately find yourself needing from the NIH or the CDC on various diseases; those great government tourism sites you log onto every Spring, in anticipation of an exciting Summer getaway; the non-profit foundations and research organizations that provide analysis, research, and resources on a whole rainbow of topics; the really cool articles from science journals that contain the newest in scientific and technological research and discoveries…you get the idea, don’t you?

Whether you are for or against Google’s new Autolink feature (or the earlier Microsoft smart tags) or any other specific third-party software that manipulates content producers’ web pages, it should be discussed whether, as a society, it really is okay to “mix” or “remix” *ALL* varieties of information—the “users want it, so it must be okay” argument espoused by Google and many of its supporters, for whom “user convenience” is the (stated) driving force behind this technology.

1. DOCUMENT INTEGRITY: IT’S REQUIRED

For instance, “my” site contains thousands of pages of government statutes, regulations, and legal opinions that carry the weight of law (known as caselaw), and other information that, among other requirements:

(1) must remain intact, as it has been created by a legislature or other mandated government authority;

(2) must remain impartial in its presentation;

(3) must serve all participants within a system (legal, medical, etc.) equally, regardless of who a particular participant is, what political ideology they hold, etc.

Why must it remain intact? —To truthfully serve our “users” and not lead them astray, which results in effective and efficiently-running legal systems, medical practices, and more.

Why must it remain impartial? —To provide the credibility required so that our “users” can come to trust us as a (or *the*) source of reliable, authoritative information and helpful service.

Why must we serve everyone, without preference? —Because we are a *public* agency; our mandate is to serve everyone, without giving preferential treatment to anyone, but rather ours is to provide assistance and service fairly and equitably.

For *any* software to add content (even in the form of links) to the content my agency publishes online distracts users from the true intent and value of the publication of that content and, in the future, could result in potentially unnecessary, lengthy, and costly litigation. One simple example: every single legal opinion on our site is a public document that carries the names and addresses of the attorneys involved, yet linking them all completely distracts from the true (non-commercial) value of the document and could (in the minds of our online customers) imply our agency’s endorsement of particular individuals and/or firms, which is neither our intent nor our right—remember, unlike a private sector commercial entity like Google, we’re mandated to be impartial.

And if future “upgrades” to Autolink come down the pike, other “distractions,” potential “misinformation,” and inadvertant “endorsements” could show up on our pages unannounced. Will our taxpayers, our customers, know the difference? We’d like to think so, but many years of experience leave me very unencouraged in this regard.

In addition, is it fair to citizens of this nation for agencies like ours that serve public, societal interests, and for those of us who work in these organizations, to be forced to spend time (and dollars) on “protecting” ourselves from private-sector encroachments like Autolink? I’m not going to give my personal opinion, but my professional opinion is that it certainly weakens our ability to carry out our missions as public, societal institutions since we now have to “protect” the material as well as simply creating it and making it available. The net result will be less content, and that goes against the inherent strengths of the web to serve our fellow human beings (and save money in these tight-budget days).

2. PRIVACY POLICY CONFLICTS?

Another problem: Google’s own documentation says, “Google may collect information about web pages that you view when you use advanced features such as...Autolink...” Now, some people would say this is spyware...some would say this is just unethical...yet others just see it as a part of “capitalism” and therefore, to them at least, it’s perfectly okay. Whatever you believe, at the very least this tracking of web activity conflicts directly with the privacy policies that many, if not most, government agencies must abide by. My guess is that it also conflicts with the policies of many other types of organizations as well. Legally, I don’t know whether this is a problem for us (I suppose only my Attorney General could tell me for sure).

However, so many “users” won’t see any line dividing our pages from the “extras” that Google gives them, that it may create a problem for academic, government, legal, medical, non-profit, and scientific entities in the “user’s” eyes—they’ll go to one of these highly-textual, information-rich sites with the expectation of (relative) anonymity, but will (through no fault of the sites visited) be tracked.

Now I ask you: is it fair to people who have paid for a website (either through tax dollars or through charitable giving) to be tracked, spyed upon, in return for those dollars? Would you like it? Is it the worst thing that’s happened to humankind? —no…but it’s not nice, and it’s neither ethically nor morally defensible.

3. MIND READING (wow!!) and RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLE’S EXPERTISE

I have read in various accounts statements from Google to the effect that Google knows what users want and knows their online behaviour, so they can and should do this. I admire Google’s ability to read their “users” minds—this is truly legendary talent—after nearly 8 years developing a site and speaking with many hundreds of its online customers, I am still amazed at the various viewpoints from which so many intelligent “users” like attorneys, medical doctors, university researchers, etc. come—I myself would *never* be able to make a statement to the effect that “when a user comes to a [whatever type of] number, they’ll of course be ready to leave the site.” I am thoroughly floored that any human corporation, such as Google, can actually know *when* people will leave a site, and further that they have the educational and professional expertise in *every* situation to provide the *most* appropriate links for “users” to follow…really, truly gifted individuals these Google folks!

In the worlds of academic, government, legal, medical, non-profit, and scientific publishing, in so many instances links are endorsements of the legitimacy of information *and of its pertinance in certain circumstances*. I know it might seem like heresy to some reading this, but I actually do believe that the publishers in those communities know better than Google what is legitimate and pertinant in a given legal case, a page on treatment for cancer, the intracasies of nuclear particle behaviour, and so on.

As good as the folks at Google are at what they do (and they *are* good, we all admit that), they are *not* the very EXPERTS creating and publishing the billions of web pages that Google itself indexes.

It is just plain irresponsible for Google (or any other “reputable” organization) to make changes to content where a seemingly innocuous change (from Google’s perspective, in this case) might have an unknown (again, from Google’s perspective) and potentially negative effect upon parties relying on a particular body of online information.

I hope Google will reconsider implementing this and similar technologies; it’s a big mistake for their “users,” contrary to what they themselves may believe. Changes to such material might suit some “users” just fine, but as a responsible society we don’t let kids play with fire just because they want to—even adults cannot be experts in all fields of endeavor and should not, through this type of technology, be made to feel that they have the moral or ethical right to “remix” material for which they simply don’t have the authority, background, education, experience, training, etc.

I don’t consider this attitude to be snobbishness on my part, and I am certainly not trying to put “users” down—I am a “user” too, and am comfortable enough with my own human limitations that I can admit that I myself am not necessarily an expert in medicine, law, science, or any number of other fields—I've got to have respect for those who *do* know about these things, those who have spent lifetimes gaining specific knowledge in specific areas, and to have confidence in their abilities and motives—we have ALL got to do that. If the integrity of the content they produce comes into question, then we will *all* in this society have a problem far bigger than Autolink…and if we cannot respect other people and value them for their gifts and abilities, we will lose our humanity.

4. REWARDING THE BAD, PENALIZING THE GOOD?

One last argument I’ve seen wielded in favor of Autolink-type technologies is the notion that if someone builds a site but doesn’t give you good links, then “we’re here to ‘save the day’ and provide a way out of this (lousy) site.”

That argument seems to me to reward those who don’t build good sites and hurt those who do build good sites, the polar opposite of the service upon which the good Google name and reputation have been built. I frankly don’t understand this viewpoint; it seems to me to undermine the validity of the core service for which the whole world admires Google—it just doesn’t make sense.

5. PLEA AND REQUEST

I ask Google to remember that an important, sizeable, and significant part of the web consists of material that is beyond the scope of its own professional expertise—this viewpoint requires humility, but I think Google can handle the challenge of respecting the rest of the world’s contributions to the web as the rest have already found respect for Google’s own contributions. This material plays an essential (though often not directly commercial) role in making this a relatively safe, enjoyable, and desirable society in which to live. “Playing around” with this material for “fun and profit” diminishes its true value and is a short-term investment in the web—it *may* make money for Google and its stockholders, it *may* make some “users” happy because they feel a freedom and power that is near unlimited, but it won’t serve society’s deepest and most important human needs.

I respectfully ask Google to remove the Autolink feature immediately, and further to develop no similar features in the future. Such features simply are too editorial in nature and diametrically oppose Google’s existing strengths.

6. OPT-OUT: MY DEMAND

As has been suggested elsewhere, IF Google insists on going through with this disrespectful scheme, then I would *demand* that Google provide a simple, reliable means for content publishers to "opt-out" of any Autolink-type features, something like:

(meta name="GoogleAutolinkPreventParsing" content="TRUE")

7. IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT GOOGLE

In some cases, it really *is* necessary for the benefit of the “users” to preserve document integrity: you not only want, but you NEED, the “correct” statute, the “real” info on cancer treatment, an impartial guide to resources, etc. without the added commercial pressure of the pursuit of monetary gain influencing such important documentation and informational content.

Publishers MUST have the final say in these types of circumstances: they are, after all, the experts in their respective fields and presumably that is why visitors to their sites are going to *their* sites for information. If it were otherwise, we could all just go straight to Google and nobody would need any “external” sites anymore, Google would have “all the answers.”

Please Google, listen to and respect *all* of us who are part of a diverse, healthy, vibrant web.

[Jane]

I think, when your article says "... 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 ...", you really should be saying "... What Google IS taking into account ..." I think they know full well that users obviously accept the defaults, and in their opinion that means they're onto a winner.