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February 20, 2005

The Pros and Cons of Autolinks

As I'm sure you've heard by now, Google rolled out the latest version of its toolbar a few days ago, complete with a new feature called Autolinks, which has a lot of people freaking out.

The concern is over Google inserting links into a web page without the author's permission. So far, I'm not convinced that this strong reaction is really warranted. After all, it's not the case that Google's covertly altering web pages without the user's knowledge. Rather, they're providing a tool with which a user can choose to use to modify their copy of a web page to make it more usable to them. The user must explicitly click a button to get any functionality out of it, so it's not like it's being foisted on the unsuspecting public.

You could argue that once any web page is put online it immediately becomes copyrighted material, and Google would be violating the law by inserting links into that page. Of course, by that logic, any browser that allowed you to surf with images or javascript turned off would also be violating copyright law.

One questionable aspect of the Autolink feature is that the links it attaches to ISBN numbers all go to Amazon pages. As you might imagine, BarnesAndNoble.com is none too pleased with that. This is a little foreshadowing of the way a technology like this could be abused.

So far, the best argument for Autolinks can be found over at Anil Dash's blog, and it goes something like this:

Once your HTML page gets to my machine, it's mine to rip, mix and burn.

And the best argument I've found against has been voiced by Robert Scoble, who says:

SmartTags and things that add links to content are seen by users as helpful, content producers as evil, and tools makers as strategic. This is one time where the users are not right. Content producers' rights must be protected.

You can also get a pretty good review of the new Google toolbar over at SearchEngineWatch.

Update: Steve Rubel, through a comment left on his blog by Robert Scoble, has informed us that the same developer who created Microsoft's much-maligned SmartTags technology is also behind Google's new Autolink feature.

Update II: Okay, according to SearchEngineWatch, it now looks like the developer of SmartTags was not involved in creating Autolinks.

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