John Battelle's Searchblog

Re: Google, I agree 150%. If you don't like it, then don't use the toolbar, or use another search engine until they give you opt-in, opt-out, whatever.

Even IF it's being used to drive advertising, so what? Most users will recognize that they're getting advertising along with the results, and will make their own choices when that happens (put in an ad-blocker, ignore them, or, gasp, benefit from them).

I think that 99% of the users don't buy into the hysteria swirling around this feature and probably find it just plain useful.

If we want hysteria, what about the people who believe THEY can tell Google, an independant company, what they can and can't do? That's actually much scarier than Google introducing a feature which I can to use, or not, on my own.

"ideally a toolbar user cuold toggle it on or off"

You have to click a button to turn it on for a given page, and you can choose an option to make it disappear from the bar.

If this were just about the user (person browsing) or a business' "right" to do business then you are right. But it's not. The criticism focuses on the author of the content of the web site. See this post for some examples:http://maurus.net/archives/2005/02/26/every-bad-idea/. Of course some of the reaction has an element of hyperbole.

You are trying to frame the argument too narrowly. Take it beyond a Google customer trying to sell their consumer goods. Go the next step: to politics, or philosophy, or dare I say copyrights? Use other analogies like inserting content into books or songs or movies without the content creator's consent.

This is a much greater issue to be discussed and debated, not dismissed as a minor extension of what is already happening: Can it be stopped? Should it be stopped? If you see content on a page can you be sure it is what the author wanted. Does an author have control over their own content.

Frankly this concept will be sold like all the other social engineering that commerce has brought to the web. Google, "We're the good guys. We're here to help you get what our algorithms say you want." Superficially that may be true. But it also changes what people want by limiting the choices they so see easily.

I see you use Google ads. Bet you get paid, right? Well now Google can put ads on your pages without you even knowing it. With the Toolbar Google doesn't need your money. Or maybe they put ads on pages in your site that advertise something you hate. What you gonna do?

As with progress in ALL technologies it is better to debate the issues before the de facto market place (the big dogs) make decision for us. You response feels more like a dismissal than a point of debate.

Or flip it around. "What if a larger company, say Microsoft, without asking for permission, offered Google searches to its users without Google's ads, or even better, with more informative ads, chosen by Microsoft? I assume Google would think this is okay because hey, it's the user's content to remix as he or she wants to, right?"

As a user, John, I totally agree. As a webmaster I totally disagree. But fortunately we can throw up code to defeat this abortion from Google. Hands down their stupidest business move yet.

What disturbs me most about this is that these guys seriously believe they have the right to tell me how to read their page. Google is empowering the users of websites, just like popup blockers, spyware defeaters and other 'consumer' friendly tools. What's next, banning popup blockers from your websites? Screen Readers?

I don't use IE so I can't benefit from this great feature, but if a release comes out for firefox or safari I'll be all over it. And if I come across sites which disable this feature, I'll release yet-more javascript that re-enables it.

"What if---"

Come back to us when that happens, Dave.

And come back when you've called out the authors of Firefox extensions and personal rewriting proxies (Squid, Proxomitron, etc) that have munged content in nigh-on identical ways for quite a while. Heck, others have pointed out SalonHerringWiredFool.com...

I noticed the post that spoke about Indeed.com and Workzoo.com. Interesting timing. I just launched a site (on Feb. 4, 2005) called Work.com. It's a similar concept to the two however the big differentiator on the jobseeker side is that we go DIRECT to the hiring company's corporate career page. We'll be issuing a press release in the next few weeks, but I thought I'd give you a preview.

I don't agree with you on the Autolink feature--here's why--thanks for allowing me to contribute my thoughts (and sorry they're so long):

So much has been discussed about Google’s new “Autolink” feature in its newest BETA Toolbar, but I can only remember one single, and brief, mention regarding Autolink’s potential impact on academic, government, legal, medical, non-profit, and scientific information websites and web-enabled online repositories. All Google’s efforts seem to involve commercial services and commercial benefits at some level, which is understandable for a commercial entity like Google; however, Google seems to ignore the fact that a great many of our society’s benefits are not driven primarily, directly, or even indirectly by monetary considerations.

There are many millions of web pages (probably hundreds of millions) produced by organizations such as mine that have a mandate to produce authentic, authoritative documents. You know, that neat stuff they’ve got “over there” at NASA; that really useful report on licensed contractors at your state Consumer Protection department; the immense archives at the Library of Congress; helpful publications you may unfortunately find yourself needing from the NIH or the CDC on various diseases; those great government tourism sites you log onto every Spring, in anticipation of an exciting Summer getaway; the non-profit foundations and research organizations that provide analysis, research, and resources on a whole rainbow of topics; the really cool articles from science journals that contain the newest in scientific and technological research and discoveries…you get the idea, don’t you?

Whether you are for or against Google’s new Autolink feature (or the earlier Microsoft smart tags) or any other specific third-party software that manipulates content producers’ web pages, it should be discussed whether, as a society, it really is okay to “mix” or “remix” *ALL* varieties of information—the “users want it, so it must be okay” argument espoused by Google and many of its supporters, for whom “user convenience” is the (stated) driving force behind this technology.

1. DOCUMENT INTEGRITY: IT’S REQUIRED

For instance, “my” site contains thousands of pages of government statutes, regulations, and legal opinions that carry the weight of law (known as caselaw), and other information that, among other requirements:

(1) must remain intact, as it has been created by a legislature or other mandated government authority;

(2) must remain impartial in its presentation;

(3) must serve all participants within a system (legal, medical, etc.) equally, regardless of who a particular participant is, what political ideology they hold, etc.

Why must it remain intact? —To truthfully serve our “users” and not lead them astray, which results in effective and efficiently-running legal systems, medical practices, and more.

Why must it remain impartial? —To provide the credibility required so that our “users” can come to trust us as a (or *the*) source of reliable, authoritative information and helpful service.

Why must we serve everyone, without preference? —Because we are a *public* agency; our mandate is to serve everyone, without giving preferential treatment to anyone, but rather ours is to provide assistance and service fairly and equitably.

For *any* software to add content (even in the form of links) to the content my agency publishes online distracts users from the true intent and value of the publication of that content and, in the future, could result in potentially unnecessary, lengthy, and costly litigation. One simple example: every single legal opinion on our site is a public document that carries the names and addresses of the attorneys involved, yet linking them all completely distracts from the true (non-commercial) value of the document and could (in the minds of our online customers) imply our agency’s endorsement of particular individuals and/or firms, which is neither our intent nor our right—remember, unlike a private sector commercial entity like Google, we’re mandated to be impartial.

And if future “upgrades” to Autolink come down the pike, other “distractions,” potential “misinformation,” and inadvertant “endorsements” could show up on our pages unannounced. Will our taxpayers, our customers, know the difference? We’d like to think so, but many years of experience leave me very unencouraged in this regard.

In addition, is it fair to citizens of this nation for agencies like ours that serve public, societal interests, and for those of us who work in these organizations, to be forced to spend time (and dollars) on “protecting” ourselves from private-sector encroachments like Autolink? I’m not going to give my personal opinion, but my professional opinion is that it certainly weakens our ability to carry out our missions as public, societal institutions since we now have to “protect” the material as well as simply creating it and making it available. The net result will be less content, and that goes against the inherent strengths of the web to serve our fellow human beings (and save money in these tight-budget days).

2. PRIVACY POLICY CONFLICTS?

Another problem: Google’s own documentation says, “Google may collect information about web pages that you view when you use advanced features such as...Autolink...” Now, some people would say this is spyware...some would say this is just unethical...yet others just see it as a part of “capitalism” and therefore, to them at least, it’s perfectly okay. Whatever you believe, at the very least this tracking of web activity conflicts directly with the privacy policies that many, if not most, government agencies must abide by. My guess is that it also conflicts with the policies of many other types of organizations as well. Legally, I don’t know whether this is a problem for us (I suppose only my Attorney General could tell me for sure).

However, so many “users” won’t see any line dividing our pages from the “extras” that Google gives them, that it may create a problem for academic, government, legal, medical, non-profit, and scientific entities in the “user’s” eyes—they’ll go to one of these highly-textual, information-rich sites with the expectation of (relative) anonymity, but will (through no fault of the sites visited) be tracked.

Now I ask you: is it fair to people who have paid for a website (either through tax dollars or through charitable giving) to be tracked, spyed upon, in return for those dollars? Would you like it? Is it the worst thing that’s happened to humankind? —no…but it’s not nice, and it’s neither ethically nor morally defensible.

3. MIND READING (wow!!) and RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLE’S EXPERTISE

I have read in various accounts statements from Google to the effect that Google knows what users want and knows their online behaviour, so they can and should do this. I admire Google’s ability to read their “users” minds—this is truly legendary talent—after nearly 8 years developing a site and speaking with many hundreds of its online customers, I am still amazed at the various viewpoints from which so many intelligent “users” like attorneys, medical doctors, university researchers, etc. come—I myself would *never* be able to make a statement to the effect that “when a user comes to a [whatever type of] number, they’ll of course be ready to leave the site.” I am thoroughly floored that any human corporation, such as Google, can actually know *when* people will leave a site, and further that they have the educational and professional expertise in *every* situation to provide the *most* appropriate links for “users” to follow…really, truly gifted individuals these Google folks!

In the worlds of academic, government, legal, medical, non-profit, and scientific publishing, in so many instances links are endorsements of the legitimacy of information *and of its pertinance in certain circumstances*. I know it might seem like heresy to some reading this, but I actually do believe that the publishers in those communities know better than Google what is legitimate and pertinant in a given legal case, a page on treatment for cancer, the intracasies of nuclear particle behaviour, and so on.

As good as the folks at Google are at what they do (and they *are* good, we all admit that), they are *not* the very EXPERTS creating and publishing the billions of web pages that Google itself indexes.

It is just plain irresponsible for Google (or any other “reputable” organization) to make changes to content where a seemingly innocuous change (from Google’s perspective, in this case) might have an unknown (again, from Google’s perspective) and potentially negative effect upon parties relying on a particular body of online information.

I hope Google will reconsider implementing this and similar technologies; it’s a big mistake for their “users,” contrary to what they themselves may believe. Changes to such material might suit some “users” just fine, but as a responsible society we don’t let kids play with fire just because they want to—even adults cannot be experts in all fields of endeavor and should not, through this type of technology, be made to feel that they have the moral or ethical right to “remix” material for which they simply don’t have the authority, background, education, experience, training, etc.

I don’t consider this attitude to be snobbishness on my part, and I am certainly not trying to put “users” down—I am a “user” too, and am comfortable enough with my own human limitations that I can admit that I myself am not necessarily an expert in medicine, law, science, or any number of other fields—I've got to have respect for those who *do* know about these things, those who have spent lifetimes gaining specific knowledge in specific areas, and to have confidence in their abilities and motives—we have ALL got to do that. If the integrity of the content they produce comes into question, then we will *all* in this society have a problem far bigger than Autolink…and if we cannot respect other people and value them for their gifts and abilities, we will lose our humanity.

4. REWARDING THE BAD, PENALIZING THE GOOD?

One last argument I’ve seen wielded in favor of Autolink-type technologies is the notion that if someone builds a site but doesn’t give you good links, then “we’re here to ‘save the day’ and provide a way out of this (lousy) site.”

That argument seems to me to reward those who don’t build good sites and hurt those who do build good sites, the polar opposite of the service upon which the good Google name and reputation have been built. I frankly don’t understand this viewpoint; it seems to me to undermine the validity of the core service for which the whole world admires Google—it just doesn’t make sense.

5. PLEA AND REQUEST

I ask Google to remember that an important, sizeable, and significant part of the web consists of material that is beyond the scope of its own professional expertise—this viewpoint requires humility, but I think Google can handle the challenge of respecting the rest of the world’s contributions to the web as the rest have already found respect for Google’s own contributions. This material plays an essential (though often not directly commercial) role in making this a relatively safe, enjoyable, and desirable society in which to live. “Playing around” with this material for “fun and profit” diminishes its true value and is a short-term investment in the web—it *may* make money for Google and its stockholders, it *may* make some “users” happy because they feel a freedom and power that is near unlimited, but it won’t serve society’s deepest and most important human needs.

I respectfully ask Google to remove the Autolink feature immediately, and further to develop no similar features in the future. Such features simply are too editorial in nature and diametrically oppose Google’s existing strengths.

6. OPT-OUT: MY DEMAND

As has been suggested elsewhere, IF Google insists on going through with this disrespectful scheme, then I would *demand* that Google provide a simple, reliable means for content publishers to "opt-out" of any Autolink-type features, something like:

(meta name="GoogleAutolinkPreventParsing" content="TRUE")

7. IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT GOOGLE

In some cases, it really *is* necessary for the benefit of the “users” to preserve document integrity: you not only want, but you NEED, the “correct” statute, the “real” info on cancer treatment, an impartial guide to resources, etc. without the added commercial pressure of the pursuit of monetary gain influencing such important documentation and informational content.

Publishers MUST have the final say in these types of circumstances: they are, after all, the experts in their respective fields and presumably that is why visitors to their sites are going to *their* sites for information. If it were otherwise, we could all just go straight to Google and nobody would need any “external” sites anymore, Google would have “all the answers.”

Please Google, listen to and respect *all* of us who are part of a diverse, healthy, vibrant web.

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