Google and some more

What if you had worked hard to design a Web page, carefully placing links just where you wanted them and carefully selecting the Web destinations to which those links led? And then, what if a company with great power on the Web started adding its own links to your page, drawing visitors away from your page to other sites of its own choosing?

You might be more than a little upset. You might wonder what gives any third party the right to edit or alter your Web page without your knowledge or permission.

Yet that"s exactly what Google, the powerful search-engine company, is doing. A new feature of the company"s popular Google Toolbar for the Internet Explorer browser actually adds links right into the body of any Web page. The links lead to Google"s own map site or to other sites Google selects.

Google notes that this feature, called "AutoLink," makes it easier for users to look up certain information. It also is strongly reminiscent of a Microsoft gambit of a few years back in which the software giant planned to program Internet Explorer to automatically add its own links to others" Web sites. Microsoft was forced to drop its "Smart Tags" feature after Web site owners and others complained.

The Google feature is more benign than Microsoft"s for several reasons. Still, the way it is being implemented is a bad idea. If it takes hold, it would start the Web down a slippery slope where no owner of a Web site could ever be sure that readers had a chance to view its pages in the way they were composed.

The autolink feature is part of a beta, or test, version of the third edition of Google"s popular toolbar, which installs itself as a part of Internet Explorer and is used by millions of people.

When you open a Web page, the new Google Toolbar scans it to see if it contains certain information, such as street addresses, the ISBN numbers that identify books, or the VIN numbers that identify cars. If such information is found, the AutoLink button in the toolbar changes to read "Look for Map," or "Show Book Info," or "Show Auto Info."

If you click on the button, Google turns the addresses, or book and car ID numbers, into links that lead to sites programmed into the toolbar. In the case of addresses, the links lead by default to Google"s own new map feature. In the case of book numbers, the links lead to Amazon.com. For car numbers, the links lead to Carfax, a company that sells reports detailing a car"s history.

In addition to the in-page links, Google creates an alternate method for getting the added information: A list of the addresses and ID numbers can drop down from the toolbar. Clicking on the items in the list takes you to the map, book and auto sites.

Unlike Microsoft, Google isn"t the near-monopoly provider of Web browsers, so its adoption of the link feature isn"t as serious a threat as the Microsoft plan was. People have to choose to install the Google toolbar, and they have to click the button each and every time they want to see the links. And, at least in the case of maps, users can choose among several destination sites, including Google competitors Yahoo and MapQuest.

Still, the feature has disturbing consequences for Web site owners. In my tests, for instance, it added links to the addresses of movie theaters I had called up in a Yahoo page, and the links took me to Google Maps, not to Yahoo"s own map page. When I looked up a book on eCampus, a book-selling site, AutoLink turned the ISBN numbers on the page into links to Amazon, which competes with eCampus to sell the books. When I looked up a used car for sale on AutoTrader, AutoLink turned the VIN numbers into links to Carfax, not to a competing auto-history-report seller, AutoCheck, used by AutoTrader.

If the principle behind AutoLink were to take hold, there would be nothing to stop Microsoft from adding a feature to Internet Explorer that would replace the ads on a Google search-results page with ads sold by Microsoft"s MSN service.

I"ve had long conversations about this with senior Google officials, and they say they are actively considering changing the way the AutoLink feature works so it might not actually alter the Web pages themselves. They note that the feature is a work in progress. But the Google officials also insist their first principle is user convenience.

A compromise is easy to imagine. Instead of adding links to a page, Google could limit the feature to the drop-down list of information it already creates. Or Google could require the user to highlight the address or ID number in order to get the added information. Or it could allow the user to click on an address or ID number while holding down a key. Or it could invite Web site owners to voluntarily enable their pages to accept AutoLink links.

I take a back seat to nobody in favoring user convenience, but, as with most things in life, every principle must be balanced against others. In this case, that balancing principle is the right of Web publishers to control the content and appearance of their own sites. Users wouldn"t benefit if the Web became a sea of uncertainty, where anybody could alter every Web page.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at [email protected]