So there’s been a bit of an uproar lately over a new Google Toolbar feature that adds Auto-Links to websites, making titles of books happen to link to their Amazon listing, restaurants link to their addresses, stuff like that, whether the original author of the site meant for it to happen. And now there are scripts all about to kill this feature because, well, as a webdesigner you design and link as you see fit, who is Google to tweak your page?
EFF: Deep Links says bah and fooey on this hubub:
When I visit your website, and you send me a page in response, I should be able to do whatever I like to manipulate it on my end. Display it in purple, suppress images, block pop-ups, compare prices from other vendors, whatever. In the words of my colleague, Cory Doctorow, “it’s my screen, and I should be able to control it; companies like Google and individuals should be able to provide tools and services to let me control it.”
Of course, we have to make sure the butler doesn’t try to take over and act like a jail warden (i.e., monopolists forcing you to take a butler). And we don’t want the butler to sneak into your house when you’re not looking (i.e., spyware). But Google’s Toolbar seems to be a pretty good butler — it’s not like he hides his presence, and you can fire him anytime you like (it’s not as though Google’s leading position in search gives it much ability to force its butler on you; you can choose from lots of other “toolbar” apps that can submit searchs to Google).
And I kinda agree with this.
Now it’s one thing if folks start making money off your site when you don’t want them to, like in the case of the Amazon book links, but it is an added service to a potential reader. You’d probably be better off creating those kind of links yourself and using the associate feature Amazon offers. And getting to maps is pretty handy too.
But as the possibility of adding links to competitors exists, there should certainly be a way for websites to block Google, which there is.
I don’t think this is entirely EVIL of Google, nor do I think it was malicious. They think they are offering a great service to people using their toolbar and I have to agree. It might be a pretty handy feature to play with. Websites can opt out with the script, sure, but otherwise, let me the user play with what I have available. If that tweaks your site and makes it more accessable to me and my wants, awesome.