If you’ve not been following it, Google recently released a new beta toolbar that has a new feature called Autolink. Currently it’s mostly harmless but it’s also very scary in its potential. If you click it it will scan the page you are reading and attempt to make any ISBN number, US Street Address, package tracking number or VIN number link to a book, map, tracking info or car info. A minor change and that feature could be used to make any word on the page link to something. Reading an article about Iraq? Click the Autolink button and every word on the page would link to other pages about Iraq, Oil, Saddam, etc..
That sounds kind of neat at first but the problem is it concentrates the ability to edit a page for millions of people in just one company. That’s scary.
Right now for example if you search for Bush you’ll get lots of sites pro and con. Pro sites will have pro links, con sites will have con links. When version 1.1 of Autolinks appears that does more than the 4 types of data it does now then Google will have a chance to make all those links point one way or the other, pro or con. That power will be concentrated in one company. That is the scary part. You think it’s scary that people get most of their news from only 4 or 5 TV news sources? Just wait till the day when all online news sources pass through the editing hand of google and google alone.
It gets worse. Assume Google doesn’t actually directly control the content but uses pagerank to decide where links to a certain topic go. Then, who ever figures out how to hack pagerank (which many people have already done) will have a HUGE influence in shaping public opinion.
Face it, techinically it’s great idea. Instead of manually searching for stuff with my personal phrase of preference (bush president, bush oil, bush iraq) each person deciding for themselves how to search and therefore coming up with different links, the convienence of Autolink 1.1 will be “just click that button and I’ll get links selected by google as the best links for more info” and everyone else will get the exact same links.
That’s NOT good if you want diverse opinions.
Yeah, it is on the technically cool side….and the scary side. Well, Looks like we’re going to become a database world whether we want to or not.
It’s not like you have to use autolink, right?
It was going around the blogs a while ago:
http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/randommirror.php
Creepy.
As the long as the user is in control (as they are now), I don’t see any problem with Autolinks. To rebut the “Chicken Little” arguments though, Google does need to add an API so that users can choose where their links will go. This article sums it up quite nicely:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/6598
“As long as the user is in control”.
One analogy that might work is the analogy of Microsoft as monopoly. Lots of people claim they are but clearly Mac and Linux and FreeBSD and Solarix etc make it arguable they are not.
Well, Google being #1 and Autolink 1.1 being useful, I can envision a time when the majority of people will either click that button the moment they go to a page OR google will add an option that makes it automatic for all pages and most people will choose to use it. It’s true they all chose it but it would still be scary that one company would have influence over so many people.
You reveal how weak your argument is when you rely on making an assumption or two (or many) in order to make your argument stick. For example:
“It gets worse. Assume Google doesn’t actually directly control the content but uses pagerank to decide where links to a certain topic go. Then, who ever figures out how to hack pagerank (which many people have already done) will have a HUGE influence in shaping public opinion.”
How does something that is fictional, get “worse”. “Could get worse” perhaps, but definitely not “it gets worse”, unless you have access to a time machine and know what happens in the future. So we have gone from a beta product that currently creates links for addresses (US only), VINs, ISBNs and tracking numbers to some fantasy product that uses Google pagerank to determine which web sites are used in the links (Assumption #1). Next, you assume that someone will hack pagerank (assumption #2) and who will then have a huge influence on public opinion (assumption #3). That’s 3 explicit assumptions in order to make your argument. Since you make the assumption of “HUGE influence in shaping public opinion”, you make an implied assumption that the majority of internet users will be actively using AutoLink.
Much of your argument is based on Google doing something bad in the future. Show me the evidence that Google has gone out of it’s way to be evil over the past 7 years? You (and others) keep harping about the ‘power being concentrated in one company’, yet the beta version of Toolbar lets the user choose from at least three map sites. Google has pubically stated that are open to adding other web sites. How evil of Google. You stated that “it’s scary that people get most of their news from only 4 or 5 TV news sources”, yet here is Google News delivering news from broad range of sources, none of it edited, all presented as is. How is that bad? To me, that looks like Google attempting to expand people’s horizons, not restrict them. Google is truly evil.