Google releases new toolbar, faces consumer concern
Link: Google releases new toolbar, faces consumer concern
Google launched it’s third incarnation of its popular Google Toolbar, and although it’s loaded with new features, it’s raised a number of eyebrows - and even concerns - around the internet.
The features are concisely listed on Google’s toolbar features page - while in A New Version (Beta) of the Google Toolbar is Now Available, Still No Firefox Gary Price at SearchEngineWatch discusses some in a little more detail.
What has commentators specifically concerned is the new “Autolink” feature - for the time being it is being proclaimed as a way of auto-inserting useful reference links into web content - such as addresses, Google sites, and ISBN numbers.
However, it opens the door for Google to introduce a new form of context advertising, based on a similar method as Vibrant Media on SEOchat articles.
The reason why this is such a big issue is because it would allow Google the ability to modify published content to users for it’s own financial gain.
And as Paul Robichaux points out in Google Toolbar and Autolink: badness afoot, Microsoft once tried to do the same with something known as “Smart Tags”, but were vocally shot down by key figures of the internet community for the intrusion.
However, as Dana Blankenhorn describes in The Value of Reputation, while Google still enjoys a good reputation on the internet it is so far allowed to implement AutoLinking without facing such an immediate backlash.
The internet is a very dynamic place, though, and although Google currently is a very favoured technology company with a lead in search, there have been other bearers of that same torch who are now but memories - not least Alta Vista, and Infoseek.
Blog Spam and Google Autolink
I kept thinking about the autolink feature from Google, and how webmasters are generally angry about it. However, something that struck me the other day is that how self-confessed blog-spammers have been particularly vociferous about the matter. In par…
Trackback by Brian's blog: internet business, search, and marketing on the web — March 7, 2005 @ 4:38 pm