The latest beta iteration of the Google Tool Bar has created more than its share of controversy since it was released about a week ago. The tool bar is an add-on to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, a Browser that I use less and less these days, so I haven’t bothered to install it. But as I understand it, the tool bar includes AutoLink, the ability to insert custom links not intended by the Web page author, into the page. What’s wrong with that? Well let Walter Mossberg (subscription required), the Wall Street Journal’s Personal Technology columnist set the stage:
What if you had worked hard to design a Web page, carefully placing links just where you wanted them and carefully selecting the Web destinations to which those links led? And then, what if a company with great power on the Web started adding its own links to your page, drawing visitors away from your page to other sites of its own choosing?
You might be more than a little upset. You might wonder what gives any third party the right to edit or alter your Web page without your knowledge or permission.
An AutoLink, according to Mossberg, can link addresses to Google Maps, VIN (Vehicle Identification Numbers) to Carfax and ISBNs to Amazon.com. All useful, but what if the Web page author was a Barnes and Noble guy? (And, perhaps more important, what if this was a Barnes and Noble Web page?)
Mossberg notes that AutoLinks works only when you click on the Tool Bar button, each time you read in a particular Web page, notes that the AutoLinks function, and all of the Google Tool Bar is a work in progress, and that Google claims that AutoLinks are there for user convenience. But he doesn’t write about commercial advantage, although that clearly ought to be a consderation. Instead, he concentrates on some sort of moral right:
I take a back seat to nobody in favoring user convenience, but, as with most things in life, every principle must be balanced against others. In this case, that balancing principle is the right of Web publishers to control the content and appearance of their own sites. Users wouldn’t benefit if the Web became a sea of uncertainty, where anybody could alter every Web page.
Alas, Browser rendering of a Web page is not a constant thing. A page may look one way in IE, a second way in Firefox, and a third in Opera. A Web page designer could design alternate pages for each Browser, but what of the text-based Lynx Browser?
And Web pages clearly render differently on a wide screen display than on a standard one. And an 800 x 600 display clearly looks different than 1280 x 800. And Mossberg doesn’t complain about the popup-ad blocking capabilities of the Google Toolbar.
Of course, if you were a Web page designer, you might be relieved to be able to avoid the bother of linking to maps, and Amazon.com and Movie Times and so forth, and keeping those links current for as long as the information is on your Web site. Just toss in the ISBN or address and let AutoLinks set up the hyperlink. (Perhaps Google could arrange for “No AutoLinks” in a page’s metadata to instruct the Tool Bar to not invoke AutoLinks, even if the user wants the feature. At which time the question will arise as to why the user’s right to not have to surf to Google and paste the address or ISBN into the Google search box should be taken by the Web page author.)
We’re not really talking about how the Web page looks; the question is where the links go, and that is mostly important if the Web page author is getting paid for the links. As this is a feature which the user must invoke separately for each look at a Web page, it isn’t whether Google can redirect a link, but whether the user has the right to prefer Google’s selections over the page author’s selections. As long as the feature is user selectable each time a page is loaded, I don’t have any problem with it. Ask me again when Google (or Microsoft or anyone else) makes such redirection mandatory. I don’t think I would use that Browser or tool bar, but then I’m currently a Firefox evangelist.
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