Google Toolbar Content Modification

Google's gone batXxxt. If you have the latest toolbar from them you'll experience this (as described by Dave Winer):

AutoLink is described in Google's post-install screen as: turning "street addresses into links to online maps." So if I put an address into this page, say 1200 Western Avenue, Seattle, WA, and visit the page in the browser, with the toolbar installed, it says "Look For Map" instead of AutoLink. Click on it and a popup window appears, explaining. (Note: the popup window only appears the first time we click on Look For Map.)

Once I click on the Look For Map button, a new link appears on the page; the link looks exactly like the other links on the page. It appears as if the author of the page added the link. Only a reader who's paying very close attention would know which links were put there by the author, and which were put there by Google. Unlike Smart Tags, which made the Microsoft-generated links appear differently from the authored links, Google makes no such distinction.

It essentially means that as you surf the web, things magically become links that you can click on to find other information. If you write about a book, when people view your page they see a link to Amazon. Microsoft tried this a while back and got the crap smacked out of them. I was shocked that Google tried the same thing. It's essentially adware.

Google's toolbar is very powerful. I've used it for a while now. My personal likes are 1) the search-results-in-another-window feature that allows me to quickly tree a search without manually opening a window and 2) the highlight feature.

So, they've given me a cool tool for free. I can choose to use it or not. They can certainly change some links, right? Yep. Right. They can. They're legally allowed. They're morally allowed. They're allowed.

But that's not what this is about.

A web page is built on technologies like html, css, GIF and JPG. These things relate to the layout and presentation of the page. People spend a lot of time getting their pages to look the way they want them to. Adding links to a page changes the page itself. It's like watching television and having little bubbles popup next to your favorite star's head during the best part of the plot. It's distracting at least and obstructive at best. How does somebody know whether a link is yours or Google's? Do they have to check the status bar for every single click? Baloney.

And the aesthetic/usability argument is just one piece of it. In the hyperlinked web, the link is currency. It's a valuable commodity that can be granted or revoked. It's the pathway between pages and sites. It's the metric of movement through the space. And Google knows this... they created PageRank which is based on this interconnected nature of the web... it made them billions.

Which, again, is why it's so odd to see them doing this. Somebody (sorry, I forget who) said that they're likely under incredible pressure to justify their massive stock market valuation. Their google toolbar sits on a lot of desktops so they had to monetize it.

Again, I have no issue with them doing so as a business. It's their right. But in doing so they change my notion of Google... the company who "got" blogging by buying Blogger.com first... the company built on scientists that has awesome algorithms... the company that provides excellent search results... the company that gives away 1Gb with free email accounts.

But now it looks like they're turning more commercial. I'm not mad at them. It's the natural progression of a business. In a way I want Vince Vaughn to say "aw, my baby's all growed up." They just won't have the same halo glow that they once did. No big deal. The loss of innocence. I still like them.

They could do one thing to restore faith in my mind. If they have some semblance of spryness and responsiveness left in their bones. Retract the feature or make it easily op-outable. So that I can use the toolbar but opt out of the links feature.

I'd bet that they'll try to weather the storm for a few more days/weeks and then if it's still looking bad they'll do something like this. Which would be acceptable to me. We're all allowed to make mistakes... it's how you recover that matters. By changing, they'd be reinforcing another of their brand's most important qualities: cooperation.

Dave, in the above-linked post and in others, talks about the line. I think this is an important discussion. The line defines what's acceptable and what's not on the part of toolmakers that we intend to use.

To me the line is simple: I will choose browsing tools that do not modify the content I'm viewing. I acknowledge that font issues, malformed html issues and non-download issues force a toolmaker to guess at the intentions of the page designers, but this is generally a good-faith guess and is not intended to modify the page itself.

The key is that we're in control. The power is shifting to the people via democratizing software like blogs. In fifty years we won't worry when our favorite company does something stupid. We'll have learned to make our own individual decisions and trust that as a whole the system of capitalism works. We'll stop using the toolbar and get on with life. Remember, we vote every time we act with a corporation. Spend a dollar. Spend an hour. Obscure your web view with ads. These are all voting acts and when seen as such it's easy to realize that the power rests with us.

I'm not freaking out about this. It's just a toolbar. If you don't mind the links, go ahead and use it. I mind the links. I mind that all the users who spend time creating and editing their sites on reger.com will have their content modified by a third party.