March 16, 2005
AutoLink
This is a subject that I've refrained from writing about here for awhile now, because frankly it's likely to turn into a friggin' novel. LOL So I might as well apologize for this little tirade right off the bat, even though this is not going to be nearly as long or viscious as it would have been if I'd penned it when AutoLink first crossed my radar.
So let me just state that I don't care at all for this new "feature" of the Google Toolbar. No more than I would agree with any other third party software that has the potential take over a page that it has no right to. Long story short, they can do whatever they want to with their own pages and the traffic that goes to their pages, but LEAVE MINE ALONE!!!
Unless you want to start paying my hosting bills and pay me for every bit of traffic you divert.
Okay, now that I've got your attention... What is AutoLink exactly?
It's an extension Google have created for their Google Toolbar that, if enabled, will place links on potentially every page you visit that aren't there at the behest of the webmaster. It doesn't take over links you already have on your page(s), however it will key on certain things that you may have in the visible text of your page and turn it into a link. A link that leads somewhere else that Google has chosen. Without your consent or knowledge.
This concept if fraught with issues. Anybody who was around the 'Net back in the will remember the whole MS Smart Tags fiasco that was put forward by Microsoft. It did the same basic thing to webmasters, with the (fairly sizable) difference that Smart Tags required the active participation of the webmaster.
If you, as webmaster, didn't add a very specific tag to your page headers telling the browser to apply the Smart Tags nothing happened.
So it was an Opt In service.
Even still, so much hell was raised and so much public pressure was brought to bear over the concept and the slippery slope it led down that Microsoft was forced drop the idea. For all the right reasons I might add.
AutoLink takes it a step farther.
There is no Opt In. There's nothing you can put in your page to signal to the GTB (Google Toolbar, but I'm going to tire of typing that quickly) that you wish them to place additional links on your page.
There is also no Opt Out being supplied by Google at this time. In my mind that makes AutoLink, and in fact the GTB by association, nothing but Scumware. No better than any of the other browser hijacking programs out there that are the bane of all evil.
(As an aside, does anybody remember when you could actually believe it when Google said their company was built on the premise of "Do No Evil" ? They've certainly managed to fall a long way since those days!)
Okay, okay, so you want a concrete example. Here's one that is not only a good one, but is a high profile one.
AutoLink turns the ISBN numbers of books into links to Amazon.com. That's who they've decreed is the *only* book seller worth mentioning apparently.
Unfortunately, every other site out there sells books is probably going to have the ISBN number of every book they carry on their web site somewhere. The high profile example I mentioned was that AutoLink caused Barnes & Noble to re-tool their entire site so that every instance of every ISBN was a link, for no other reason than to keep Google from sending visitors who were already on their site off to Amazon.
What was Google's quasi-official response to this problem as clearly evidenced with B&N? As reported by Jill Whalen from Matt Cutts (of Google) who happened to be sitting on the same panel as Jill during the recent NY SES, Matt's response was "Well that's good, they should have been link anyway!"
(You can read the rest of what Jill said and what Matt said and several pages of what webmasters are saying in this thread from Jill's forum.)
I would hate to guess at the expense of that job or reconfiguring all of B&N's site. After all, according to Google itself BarnesAndNoble.com contains over 10 million pages! Frankly I hope one of the big boys like this sues Google for the cost of this type of silly change was required by their wrong-headed software. They deserve nothing better for sure!
Quite frankly, whether they like it or not, Google has no say and shouldn't have any say over whether they think any site passes their internal Usability Test. And even if their "They should be links anyway" mantra had any truth to it, why didn't they assure themselves that Amazon.com also linked the ISBN numbers on their site, thus providing decent usability? Amazon doesn't link ISBN's either for what it's worth, and they're often pointed to as a site to pattern oneself after on the usability front.
So a totally bogus argument by Matt Cutts IMHO. He was trying to convince Jill to take Google's side in the matter because he knows that her voice carries some considerable weight in the webmaster community.
Another interesting tidbit or two.
How are these sites that Google is giving a boost to being chosen? They won't say. Well, that's not exactly true. Their PR people spew out some fluff but never give a real answer.
Now if I were a conspiracy theorist I might start pushing the concept that perhaps the fact that Jeff Bezos, Chairman of Amazon and one of the original 5 outside investors in Google back in the late 90's, and who supposedly one of the few to have gotten Preferred Stock, reportedly for pennies (I've read the figure 6 cents per share a lot)...might just have some bearing on their decision to choose Amazon over Barnes & Noble or any of the others. Well, you can see where a thought train like that could easily go if one wanted to persue it.
If Google were thinking this thing through, selecting Amazon and Amazon alone was one of the worst decisions they could have made. Sort of a: "Yeah, we're going to release this new thing to 'help users' and anybody who looks for a book is going to be sent to the site of our Angel investor, because they're the biggest and the best and nobody else counts."
The word Collusion comes to mind. Quickly.
(FTR, I don't think anybody has the full details on the number of Google shares Bezos owns or owned. Or exactly what he paid for the stock. Or if he's sold any and if so how much profit he made from that sale. All that can be said for sure is that he owns enough to be noted in the Google IPO filings, and that he got some Preferred Stock (also from the filings with the SEC) and that he didn't own over 5% of the total Google stock at that moment, because then by law the issue how much of it all would have had to been disclosed.)
Let's see, what else before this turns into War and Peace. LOL
1.) Webmasters are in an uproar. Of course.
2.) Google is supposedly considering offering a way for webmasters to Opt Out of AutoLink, which is completely backwards. It should be Opt In only, not force webmasters to Opt Out. Just like their Adsense stuff. If the webmaster does nothing to send a clear signal that they want Google to add something to their page(s), Google should do nothing.
3.) Someone started a little anti-AutoLink petition you can sign if you want. I signed it, but as mentioned above I think they too have things a little bit backwards. It should be Opt In, not Opt Out.
4.) None other than Walter S> Mossberg penned an article that appeared the other day in The Wall Street Journal panning the idea of AutoLink. For those who don't know, Mossberg was one of the early and vocal opponents from MS Smart Tags many years ago too. Hopefully his article is a signal that the mainstream press will finally start to pick up this story, as that type of public pressure is probably the only thing that will stop them.
5.) Some of the folks that frequent ThreadWatch.org have developed and released several Javascript and combination Server-side/Javascript routines to detect and defeat AutoLink. It's better than nothing considering the current state of affairs I suppose. I just hope this kind of thing doesn't end up giving Google an easy out in living up to their responsibility to be a good Netizen. I fear that it will.
6.) Some are supposedly considering starting a Class Action suit against Google over it all. The basic thought right now is to approach it from a similar angle that eBay did when they sued Bidder's Edge. The case isn't the same because in that one eBay was mad about Bidder's Edge scraping their auction pagess and putting the data up on their own site where they compared items and prices on various other auction sites. But hey, at least with that one if someone chose an eBay auction they went to eBay, not some other site that Bidder's Edge had chosen.
FWIW, I'm not a lawyer but I think the basic premise may well be close enough to make a dent. eBay alleged Trespass to Personal Property (their site), Unfair Business Practices, Copyright Infringement, Misappropriation, False Advertising, Trademark Dilution, Injury to Business Reputation, Interference with Prospective Economic Advantage and Unjust Enrichment.
Some of those would definitely be a stretch. But the Trepass has a decent chance since the judge in the above case actually found that the domain eBay.com, and the content it provided, was Personal Property. That would, in theory, make all of our domains and the content on them our personal property.
I can also see something of a case for Misappropriation (stealing traffic that has been paid for one way or another), False Advertising (because their links will look like your links), Trademark Dilution (obvious), Injury to Business Reputation (since we webmasters would have no control over where those AutoLinks lead off to), Interference (since they're diverting traffic without explicit permission of the domain owner), and Unjust Enrichment (since they're sending our traffic off to enrich someone else and you'll never convince me that Google isn't receiving any benefit from their partners. Add in Collusion too for good measure, and include their partners.
I'd really like to see some of the big companies not fold as I suspect they will as soon as Google agrees to include them in the AutoLink choices. Get a handful of large e-Tailers heading up the list the the courts are much more likely to take the suit seriously. Whether Google does or not. I'd still like to see Barnes & Noble sue Google for the cost of having to tweak the ISBNs on their site for the sole reason of foiling AutoLink. Frankly, I think Google should bear the cost of that update since they forced the reaction.
The saga continues. And I'm sure much more will be written about it. I'm not sure I'll write about it anymore here though. The whole thing makes me sick to my stomach.
My only hope --if Google continues down this slippery slope that will, I say with 100% certainty, open things up for every other Scumware manufacturer out there-- is that they get theirs in Spades for being so stupid and such bad 'Net neighbors. In other words, if they go forward I hope that Microsoft builds the same type of thing into their new IE7 browser that is supposed to be out this summer. Only instead of it affecting every site, let's have it specifically target anything that is displayed on Google.com and their other Internet properties, effectively taking their users off to MSN. Hey, MS did just announce their new adCenter to compete directly with Google's adwords. Might as well get it off to a rip-roarin' start! :::sweet smile:::
That would be ironic justice in my mind. Even if MS does it only to prove the point that they learned the hard way back in the MS Smart Tag days.
Do No Evil my foot... Fight fire with fire I say!