Search Trends - Search Engine Marketing

I still think Google's autolink feature is a completely different beast than Microsoft's infamous smart tags. I also think Google is not going to take advantage of their position as market leader like MS would, but I'm starting to bend towards the side of the argument against autolink. I think the central problem is that Autolink opens the door for more intrusive additions to publishers' content such as adwords or other types of advertising-based links that steal traffic from innocent site owners. It might not even be Google who crosses that line with the next "autolink-clone". It will be another company who saw that Google got away with autolink, so why not take it one step further. You can't tell me everyone's not trying to copy Google's every move anyway--except for retail sites, who copy Amazon's every move.

Walt Mossberg came out against autolink in today's Wall Street Journal. In fact, he says he spoke with Google people who say they're considering changing the way the new feauture works. Here's a quote from Walt's article:

"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."

First off, of course it's a work in progress. Everything that company creates is a work in progress. That explains the 12 year beta tests.

Read more from The Wall Street Journal

My prediction is that Google will make the necessary changes to appease the weepers and wailers on this issue. They're just trying to create a more convenient way to browse the web. They have historically been very good at listening to their customers and making necessary adjustments. Also they take their motto (sometimes too) seriously -- "don't be evil". Even if "evil" is a very subjective concept. Typically anything computer geeks don't like is considered evil, even if there's nothing inherently evil about it. Take pop-up ads for example. The guys at Google don't like popups so they've taken a hard-line stance against popup ads. Not only do they not run popup ads on their own site, you can't even run any ads in Adwords that link to a page with a popup ad. That's the beauty of living and doing business in America. They are free to run their company however they want. Computer geeks get to create a company that does things other computer geeks like. These geeks just happend to come up with something that a lot of non-geeks like, too!