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Google Toolbar
Published: March 1, 2005
Google used to be cool. Now, it seems, that it's turning into a bully. Not only are Adwords seemingly getting greedy and favouring the big payers but now the labs are kicking out a new toolbar (Beta 3) that hijacks keywords on the page and creates hyperlinks that steer people to a competitor. If the toolbar is such a great tool that you could forgive this, then fine, but let's face it, the popup blocker is nigh on redundant and the search box isn't much of a gain as Google is in so many peoples bookmarks anyway.
The problem arises on ecommerce websites. Say the Google toolbar promotes Amazon books and sees an ISBN number on another site that sells books, it will promptly turn that ISBN into a link to an Amazon book. This can have serious implications in terms of trading and I, for one, am appalled at the thought of a plugin that rips off other websites or steers people away. What about copyright issues too? Surely amending code is against the rules! Saying that, popup blockers do that too. Meh!
I know Google are innovative and that's a good thing but I guess having a cap of $55billion is going to their heads and now they're thinking more about Microsoft and less about users.
I shall be watching the toolbar and seeing who Google team up with in terms of traders. I may go so far as to buy elsewhere. C'mon Google, show us what made you what you are today. Keep the jeans on and kick out the suits.
Google's Autolink is bound to favour a handful of big players in each industry - if only because the list of included companies will become unusable if it's large.
This will make it harder for new competitors to enter these markets. Without new entrants or at least a credible threat of new entrants, market leaders concentrate on improving profit margins and forget about innovation and value for money.
I found a forum which offers webmasters tools which may silence Autolink