The difference between what Adblock does and AutoLinks does could legally boil down to the fair use segment of copyright law. One could probably argue that Adblock is protected by fair use; however, fair use does not allow one company to profit off of another’s copyrighted material without permission. So if Google inserts a link into website ‘A’ to website ‘B’, then website ‘B’ is profiting from the work done by website ‘A’. In addition, if Google inserts a link to say a map with driving directions, and that map contains advertising, then Google is profiting off of copyrighted materials of the website as well.
The difference between AutoLinks and Google’s caching feature, that allows Google to get away with their caching feature without getting into copyright trouble is that the web developer can throw a meta tag into their web pages that tells Google to display cached versions of the web pages. In addition, search engines can get away with indexing websites and display them in their SERPs that display ads, because again websites can use metatags and the robots.txt file to let the search engine bots know what pages not to index.
If Google provided a metatag similar to Microsoft’s SmartTags metatag that allowed webmasters to disable AutoLinks, this would probably protect Google from claims that they infringe upon intellectual property rights. It would also give the user extra functionality they may like on sites that don’t object to its use.
Not so surprising is that the person behind Google’s Autolink “enhancement” is non other than Jeff Reynar. He’s the guy that was behind MicroSoft’s SmartTags. His personal home page confirms that he is currently a Google project manager. Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion has also confirmed Reynar’s role in the Google project.
Reynart’s email address at google is jreynar@google.comThe most productive thing to do would be to write him a brief, polite and well thought out email describing your feelings for or against this technology that he developed.
Reynar’s specialty is “recognizing linguistic and conceptual pattern in electronic documents”. Most likely for the purposes of identifying them in search algorithms.
Questions arise:
Did Google hire Reynar because of his previous SmartTag work?
What is Google going to do with the AutoLink feature in the future?
Is Google trying to get away with MicroSoft could not?
If Google gets away with this are others like MicroSoft and Yahoo going to try to follow Google’s path?
Google is not capable of altruism. The moment that that they became a public corporation their only goal is to provide the greatest ROI for their investors and stockholders. All their efforts are to deliver on that goal.
It could also represent the simple typo that it is. You of course are free to consider the post in whatever light you wish. Just as I am able to consider yours.
Given the grammatical and spelling errors so prevalent in most posts in these forums, this should be considered to be nit picking or trolling. Some of the best posts I have seen in the SitePoint forums had grammatical and/or spelling errors.
First I saw nothing “anti-company”. I simply saw an informational post that laid out the connections between Microsoft’s SmartTags and Google’s AutoLinks.
Second, nit picking over such a petty typo does more to lower one’s credibility than the typo did in the first place. Rather than creating personal attacks on one’s credibility over petty issues, why don’t you debate or discuss the topic of the thread.
You have a pint, Molona, regarding an uncontrolled search possibly sending someone to a competitor. However, if your business model depends upon selling books that Amazon sells (one of your examples) then you have a bigger problem than anything the Google Toolbar might or might not do to hurt you.
When I decide to buy a book, I check sources to see where I cna get it for the best price. I would always go to Amazon and B&N, just to see what information and reviews are published. I think many sophisticated shoppers do this, and most unsophisticaed shoppers just wind up at Amazon to begin with.
It’s true this may hurt business if you are trying to mark up what is readily available at alower price, but there will always be shoppers who don’t want to pay full price. Google can’t change this behavior, nor can any other search engine … and I’ll wager in your personal life you don’t make ahabit out of buying items at a higher price than the “market” price, once you know what the market proce is, correct?
I guess we saw different things then, I saw an agressive “attack this person” post.
I’m not sure what there is to debate. One company is making it easier for people to buy books off Amazon, and Amazon’s competitors don’t like that.
The tool doesn’t automatically redirect links, it only provides a link when the user asks for one. If it is faster for a user to activate a toolbar feature and then click on a generated link rather than just using the the links already provided on the site, then I’m guessing the site isn’t very user friendly to start with. It could probably do with a redesign to stay competitive. That would be if Amazon hadn’t patented single clicks, but that’s a different thread…
From a user standpoint, this may be useful; however, the issue isn’t only about making things “easier” for users. It is also about intellectual property rights and what constitutes fair use. Amazon being able to profit off of links Google creates in relation to copyrighted material does not represent fair use. It represents a copyright infringement.
As has been stated, Google is not an ultraistic entity. They are an entity whose primary responsibility is to generate profits for their shareholders. As such, it is safe to assume that by adding the AutoLinks feature, Google sees a way to increase profits either directly or indirectly. This is not an issue of how useful the AutoLinks feature is for users, this is an issue of what constitutes fair use under copyright laws.
The original Napster was a really useful tool, however, it also violated copyright laws and hence was successfully sued into oblivion.
How would you compare Google’s AutoLink feature to Opera’s double click feature?
If you’re not familiar with Opera, it works like this: you double click on a word (say, an ISBN number), Opera selects the word and then lets you search using the selected text as a keyword. On install, it comes with links to Google, Amazon, eBay and so on. Firefox has a similar feature, though on a default install it only provides a Google web search (though for an ISBN number the top link will probably be Amazon anyway. Once the Google Maps is working, searching for an address will probably give access to that map at the top of the SERP too).
Both actions (adding links and selecting text) are both user initiated. It seems like it should pan out much like Napster vs Kazaa: Napster (like Gator) directly infringes, while Google (like Kazaa) lets users infringe.
In the short term I think there will be ways around this for webmasters who need to protect their income. It’s a bit like designing for different browsers - you might have to include a few extra bits of code to make sure your site appears how you want it on different people’s set ups.
I think in the long term this kind of thing will get much more common and will cause problems with the advertising revenue stream for websites. It’s like people reading your news in RSS format (although there are ways of adding your adds to RSS feeds).
I guess is might cause some websites to go under, other may turn to other models (premium content, subscription only for example).
It makes sense in my view that the web should be about providing information that can be used and displayed in a variety of means according to the needs of the user. Getting the user to support the creation of this information is the hard bit! Advertising supports it now - what will in the future?
theodp writes “While Google pooh-poohed any comparison of its controversial AutoLink feature to Microsoft’s SmartTag technology, Google’s generation of dynamic links to maps and use of ISBN numbers to trigger links to booksellers cover the same territory as Microsoft’s 2000 patent application for Providing electronic commerce actions based on semantically labeled strings, whose sole inventor - Jeff Reynar - was the lead SmartTag Program Manager while at MS and is reportedly now a Google Product Manager who’s being credited as AutoLink’s creator. Reynar’s patent applications that have been assigned to Microsoft, including one for Smart Links and Tags, describe a world of ‘recognizer’ plug-ins that automatically look at every document a user creates, receives or views, transmitting messages to ‘action’ plug-ins - and even to the plug-ins’ authors - that can be used to decide what info you’ll be presented with, what options you’ll be given, what price you’ll pay for goods, and even who you’ll be permitted to buy from.”
The issue seems to be who has ultimate say over what happens to a web page once it’s been downloaded. As the author do I still own the copyright or have I relinquished any rights to the end user?
I believe it’s still mine. It’s my page, I made it to display a certain way, and I alone will decide which ads get put with it and which companies get to profit from my hard work. If there’s a class action lawsuit to make this law then I’ll donate $100 to the cause right now.
I had the same reaction to Opera when they started showing ads to my competion. I pulled all support for them, which might not hurt their bottom line too much but I used to install Opera on at least one computer per week. Now I actively discourage people from using Opera.
I’m undecided about how this latest development will affect my support for Google, but as a cautionary measure I’m pulling all my support for the toolbar and I will not be recommending it at all until this situation becomes clearer.
I guess the main problem is that most people don’t like adverts. There are degrees of dislike, to be sure, at the moment people would rather ads than pay for premium content (which is always odd, as I assume the people making the ads are trying to get people to pay for things they don’t already want, while the only reason there are ads there in the first place is because the visitor doesn’t want to pay full price for things they do already want…)
Its the “don’t piss of the people you are trying to sell your product to” problem… a bit like suing your band’s fan club…
At the moment, it seems like you do. But in your terms you don’t explicitly say that I can even download the page to view in my browser; which means that even reading your terms page has to fall under fair use because you’ve not even given me the right to view your terms…
I don’t think this is a good idea. What if, in the future, there will be more companies like Google with a similar feature in their toolbar (Yahoo, Alexa, …). Will we have to include X number of html tags to tell each individual toolbar not to change our websites?
And this would also mean that by default we allow Google (or anyone else) to change our websites, unless we use the special html tags that tell them not to change anyhing.
Not to be entirely off topic but how is this very different from what adware companies install? (not talking about installation process ofcourse where user isn’t aware) but I am talking about how it works…some of the adwares steal affiliate users and monitor keywords and so forth…main idea is stealing…whether it be commission from other websites or traffic to other sites/search engines…how is this really that different? why do big companies get away with this by adding a twist? in this case how is an adware really that different which adds a code where each time you search on google top result shown is from another search engine that pulls results from 10 different engines? would that be considered stealing as well?