Google Toolbar Inserts Links in Others' Sites, And That's a Bad Idea
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.
Yet that's exactly what Google, the powerful search-engine company, is doing. A new feature of the company's popular Google Toolbar for the Internet Explorer browser actually adds links right into the body of any Web page. The links lead to Google's own map site or to other sites Google selects.
Google notes that this feature, called "AutoLink ," makes it easier for users to look up certain information. It also is strongly reminiscent of a Microsoft gambit of a few years back in which the software giant planned to program Internet Explorer to automatically add its own links to others' Web sites. Microsoft was forced to drop its "Smart Tags" feature after Web site owners and others complained.
The Google feature is more benign than Microsoft's for several reasons. Still, the way it is being implemented is a bad idea. If it takes hold, it would start the Web down a slippery slope where no owner of a Web site could ever be sure that readers had a chance to view its pages in the way they were composed.
The autolink feature is part of a beta, or test, version of the third edition of Google's popular toolbar, which installs itself as a part of Internet Explorer and is used by millions of people.
When you open a Web page, the new Google Toolbar scans it to see if it contains certain information, such as street addresses, the ISBN numbers that identify books, or the VIN numbers that identify cars. If such information is found, the AutoLink button in the toolbar changes to read "Look for Map," or "Show Book Info," or "Show Auto Info."
If you click on the button, Google turns the addresses, or book and car ID numbers, into links that lead to sites programmed into the toolbar. In the case of addresses, the links lead by default to Google's own new map feature. In the case of book numbers, the links lead to Amazon.com. For car numbers, the links lead to Carfax, a company that sells reports detailing a car's history.
In addition to the in-page links, Google creates an alternate method for getting the added information: A list of the addresses and ID numbers can drop down from the toolbar. Clicking on the items in the list takes you to the map, book and auto sites.
Unlike Microsoft, Google isn't the near-monopoly provider of Web browsers, so its adoption of the link feature isn't as serious a threat as the Microsoft plan was. People have to choose to install the Google toolbar, and they have to click the button each and every time they want to see the links. And, at least in the case of maps, users can choose among several destination sites, including Google competitors Yahoo and MapQuest.
Still, the feature has disturbing consequences for Web site owners. In my tests, for instance, it added links to the addresses of movie theaters I had called up in a Yahoo page, and the links took me to Google Maps, not to Yahoo's own map page. When I looked up a book on eCampus, a book-selling site, AutoLink turned the ISBN numbers on the page into links to Amazon, which competes with eCampus to sell the books. When I looked up a used car for sale on AutoTrader, AutoLink turned the VIN numbers into links to Carfax, not to a competing auto-history-report seller, AutoCheck, used by AutoTrader.
If the principle behind AutoLink were to take hold, there would be nothing to stop Microsoft from adding a feature to Internet Explorer that would replace the ads on a Google search-results page with ads sold by Microsoft's MSN service.
I've had long conversations about this with senior Google officials, and they say they are actively considering changing the way the AutoLink feature works so it might not actually alter the Web pages themselves. They note that the feature is a work in progress. But the Google officials also insist their first principle is user convenience.
A compromise is easy to imagine. Instead of adding links to a page, Google could limit the feature to the drop-down list of information it already creates. Or Google could require the user to highlight the address or ID number in order to get the added information. Or it could allow the user to click on an address or ID number while holding down a key. Or it could invite Web site owners to voluntarily enable their pages to accept AutoLink links.
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.
Google新功能Autolink引发争议
如果你费尽心思地设计一个网页，仔仔细细地将一些链接放在你中意的位置，并精挑细选这些链接所指向的网站。然后，你发现一家在互联网上拥有强大势力的公司开始把它的链接放入你的网页，将访问者从你的网页吸引到它自己选择的其他网站上面，你会怎样。
你也许不仅仅是心情不畅吧。你可能会奇怪谁给了另外一方在你未知情或未经你同意的情况下编辑或修改你的网页的权利。
但这就是搜索引擎巨头Google的所作所为。该公司广受欢迎的配合Internet Explorer使用的'Google工具栏'增加了一项新功能，这项功能实际上能将链接加入到任何网站。加入的链接会将访问者连到Google自己的地图网站以及Google挑选的其他网站。
Google指出，这项名为AutoLink的功能将使读者查找信息变得更方便。这很容易让人们联想到微软(Microsoft)在数年前采取的一项战略，当时这家软件巨头计划修改Internet Explorer，使其能自动将微软自己的链接加到其他网站上。在网站拥有者以及其他人抱怨后，微软被迫放弃了这个名为'Smart Tags'的功能。
从某些方面看，Google的新功能比微软的要友善一些。但是推出此功能是一个糟糕的主意。如果新功能被广泛采用，网络由此将会走下坡路，届时网站拥有者们永远都不能确定访问者是否有机会浏览到其网站的本来面目。
Autolink是Google工具栏第三版测试版的一项功能。目前有数百万用户使用Google工具栏，在电脑上安装后它将植入到Internet Explorer中。
当你打开一个网页时，新的Google工具栏会扫描这个网页，查看它是否包涵某些信息，比如街道地址，书籍的国际标准图书编号(ISBN)，或者汽车的车牌号码。如果寻找到这些信息，AutoLink按钮上将会显示'寻找地图'(Look for Map)，或者'显示书籍信息'(Show Book Info)或'显示汽车信息'(Show Auto Info)等字样。
如果你点击按钮，Google会将这些地址、或书籍或车牌变成指向工具栏内含的网址的链接。如果是地址，工具栏的缺省设定将会把用户连接到Google自己的新地图功能上面。若是书籍，用户将被链接到亚马逊网站(Amazon.com)。如果是车牌，链接网站将是Carfax，这是一家出售关于一辆汽车详细历史报告的公司。
除了页面上的链接以外，Google还创造出另外一种获得额外信息的方法：能从toolbar上下拉的一个地址和ID号码名单。点击上面的其中一条，你将会被带到地图、书籍以及汽车网站上。
与微软不同，Google不是一个几乎垄断网络浏览器市场的浏览器提供商，因此它推出链接功能并不象微软的计划那样对市场构成严重威胁。人们必须选择安装Google工具栏，他们必须每次都点击按钮才能看到这些链接。并且，至少在地图这种情形下，用户能够选择包括Google竞争对手雅虎(Yahoo)和MapQuest在内的网站。
但是，这项功能仍然给网站拥有者带来了麻烦。比如，在我的测试中，它在我打开的一个雅虎页面的电影院地址中加入了一些链接，这些链接将我带到Google的地图页面而不是雅虎自己的地图页面。当我在一个出售书籍的网站eCampus找一本书时，AutoLink将这个页面的ISBN号码变成了亚马逊网站的链接，后者是eCampus的竞争者。当我在AutoTrader上寻找一辆二手车时，AutoLink将车牌号码变成了CarFax的链接，而不是其竞争对手、为AutoTrader提供服务的AutoCheck。
如果AutoLink这一套行得通，那么将没有什么能够阻止微软在Internet Explorer中增加这样一项功能：用微软的MSN服务上面的广告替代Google搜索页面上的广告。
我与Google的高层就此进行了长时间的会谈，他们称正积极考虑改变AutoLink功能工作的方式，以使其不会改变网页本身。他们指出，这项功能仍处于开发阶段。但是Google高层同时坚称他们的第一准则是用户的便利。
我们很容易想像出Google可能作出的妥协。Google可以不将链接加入页面，而是限制这项功能仅对工具栏下拉菜单内的内容发挥作用。或者Google可以要求用户先选定地址或ID号码，以获得额外信息。或者，它可以让用户只有在按住一个按键的情况下才能点击一个地址或ID号码。它也可能邀请网站所有者主动让他们的网页接受AutoLink链接。
我对于方便用户使用的做法毫无意见，但是正像生活中的大多数事情一样，每一个准则必须与其他准则取得平衡。在这里，平衡准则是网站所有者有权控制自己网站的内容和外观。如果网络充满变数，任何人都能够更改网页，用户将不会从中受益。
