Sure we’ve been here before with Microsoft Smart Tags and though that idea sucked, at least we could remove them by putting in a special tag in the source of the document. Google, who should be able to Google the internet past better than anybody else and thus know better, stupidly seems to think this concept was a good idea. Steve Rubel points out that Google got away with something Microsoft couldn’t — but it’s far from over, Steve:

Google today launched a new version of its toolbar that employs a new feature called Autolink that turns non-linked content on Web sites into hotlinks back to Google properties and other sites.

Time is not going to change a bad idea. If I don’t want something on the content of my website as a web publisher than no software should be allowing this. I have a problem with ad blockers that remove banner ads from web pages too … this is how publishers pay for the content! Also, the new toolbar doesn’t seem to recognize anything but major websites, so what’s the savings in dropping the .com from sites like eBay, Microsoft, etc? Google_evil++

Did this post make you go hmm?

 Loading ...