In The craft
Google AutoLink’s
oogle’s new toolbar adds links to web pages. Being a developer this scares me. I don’t want anymore or any less. Leave my links alone.
Essentially Google’s new toolbar identifies addresses, books…etc and adds relevant links. Book’s ISDN numbers link to Amazon, addresses link the location on Google Map’s.
Don’t get me wrong it’s a noble gesture, but I can do without. Nobleness is never noble for long.
The beauty about the internet is people have a voice; this voice is powerful, powerful enough to bring corporations to their knees (ex. Kryptonite locks).
Jeffery Zeldman has a nice piece on how to remove these links.
The problems with Google’s AutoLink’s as Jeffery Zeldman summarizes them:
- Per Walter Mossberg in The Wall Street Journal, Smart Tags enabled Microsoft to “edit any page on the web without the author’s knowledge.”
- They extended Microsoft’s monopoly power into new markets, giving the Redmond giant the power to decide which non-Operating System companies would live and which would die. (Companies Microsoft’s Smart Tags division partnered with would live; their competitors would eat worms.)
- Not least, Smart Tags were “amenable to nefarious uses, such as covert user tracking” (Chris Kaminski in ALA, paraphrasing Dan Gillmor).
It all comes down to one company having too much power.