Good job by Walt Mossberg on this story but the real "tip of the hat" goes to the bloggers who really fleshed out this story through iterative posts and commentary. This is the real value of the blogging paradigm. Not just new reporting but iterative collaboration that develops good work product or good factual arguments to an issue.
Walt Mossberg slams Google on their Autolink feature. Rightly so because Google deserves it. However I applaud Google for pushing the envelope in getting a competitive edge. I've been following this Google AutoLink fiasco with great interest ..while I was running the product group at RealNames we had a product being developed called "Links" which was excactly like what Google is doing. In fact alot of the key navivation products that Google is developing we had on our product develop radar in 99-2001.
Anyway Mossberg points out the issues in a clear way for the average user to understand:
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.
That's what AutoLink is about. Modifying links on a page without the authors consent (in this case putting paid links - ads in)
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.
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