Wall Street Journal attacks Google Toolbar

Bang goes another $500,000 off their worth !

... seem to be doing a much better (quicker) job of picking up on things like this in the past couple months, don't they?

Also, to be safe, here's what I'm guessing is the permanent link for archiving purposes and future readers....

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20050310.html

If there's ever to be a tipping point, I suggest this is it.

Good lord, when the old-school boys in the black&white world slap your wrist.... Yeah. WSJ is a definite tipping point.

You'll note right off the bat that WSJ says when they talked to Google, G said they were "actively considering changing" the way it worked. All the online sources have gotten for their complaints is the BS boilerplate, "it's opt-in for the end user, so it's Good, and we're not changing it."

Users wouldn't benefit if the Web became a sea of uncertainty, where anybody could alter every Web page.

I'm still not sure where the uproar is coming from over this. End-users have been able to alter any incoming page since day one of the Web, and it still seems to be moving along fine.

Lynx and other text-based browsers allow anyone to view your content with little formatting outside of some basic layout. Ad blocker plugins can strip just about any image or flash content the author puts in. The ability for most modern web browsers to override the style sheets of a given site with an end-user defined default is common. Attempts to forbid right-clicking through javascript is easily defeated by some readily available plugins.

As it stands, the so-called auto linking isn't as automatic as some of the detractors claim. A visitor to your website won't see any added links until they manually hit the auto link button, at which point the added links are obviously external to your website. Surfing away and back to your site removes the auto links.

Derek,

Perhaps you are correct: end users have been able to alter incoming pages by stripping what they don't want or changing formatting.

But they have not been able to *add* anything without a web owner's permission.

the other day while looking for something (no clue now what....) It's similar to what Google is wanting to do with the toolbar, though it's manipulable by anyone using a page if it's installed on the webserver.

http://www.co-link.org/

It's an interesting concept, and given that Google may not backpedal on Autolink, would give webmasters an alternative (other than AutoBlink).... Just make sure it's running on your servers, and then make sure the "menu" pops up when Autolink activates links on your pages. I don't know as yet how it would work with Autolink active, since I don't use either IE or toolbars. Perhaps someone who does both would like to play?

Where are my manner? Welcome to Threadwatch Derek, do introduce yourself

The problem is more what it can lead to and what implications it carries...

grnidone said:

"But they have not been able to *add* anything without a web owner's permission."

I guess that's the attitude that surprises me more than anything else, this odd fixation some web masters have with preventing visitors from using the site in any reasonable manner that the visitor chooses.

Imagine for just a second how most people would feel if they were told that the book publishers of the world wanted to prevent book owners from scribbling notes in the margins on a page of a book because they didn't want the owners to be able to add any information to the book.

On top of this, one really has to look at what the Google Toolbar actually does. For one thing, it only handles a very specific, known, set of information. The majority of that information is already going to be linked to a site of the website owners choice anyway.

For example, how often would you offer a page with a FedEx tracking number to a site visitor if you didn't want them to go look that number up on FedEx's tracking website? The kind of situation you're going to commonly find such a number is in an online invoice for a customer through your e-commerce site. Now personally, if I'm going to list the FedEx tracking number in a form, I'm going to code in a link to look up that package up.

What about street addresses? Well, as I said before, the so-called autolinks are only inserted when an end-user manually hits the autolink button. The primary reason for hitting the button to get a link to a map of that address? Most likely because that user wants to know where you are, probably to go there themselves. So why would you put an address on your site, say, for your retail store, if you don't want people to visit? Telling the end-user that you don't want them to look your address up on a map is rather unfriendly, don't you think?

So what about books? Now this is probably the point where you might have the strongest argument. You're writing book reviews, but want to make money off an affiliate link with, say, Barnes & Noble. You don't want the customer sent to Amazon and be undercut by Google.

Understandable. Yet still wrong. The only thing book-related that gets linked when autolink is pressed is the ISBN number. Here's the catch: Google Toolbar DOES NOT overwrite any links you have on your site. So if you simply put all ISBN numbers with links to the page on whatever book retailer you want the visitor to go to, something which isn't a bad design idea anyway, the Toolbar WILL NOT overwrite that link. Even if autolink is pushed, if the visitor clicks on the link, they'll go exactly wherever you wanted them to go.

And that's true with all of the other items. Want the user to go to a special FedEx tracker on your own site, just post the tracking number as a link.

Again, while I understand why someone might be concerned about things like affiliate links, taking the time to actually experiment with the Google Toolbar as I have will show how it won't do anything to your site that you probably shouldn't be doing yourself anyway.

As for the control issue some web masters have, the obsession with preventing users from using a site as they wish and giving total control over to the developer is exactly what's led to such monstrosities as flash-based navigational menus.

Nick W said:

"The problem is more what it can lead to and what implications it carries..."

This can be said of anyone and anything, though.

Mozilla Firefox is a wonderful open-source web browser that provides the end-user will near total control. You can configure it to override any CSS with a default stylesheet of the user's choice, such as making any fonts into an easier to read one or even larger. This will ruin the precisely designed layout of many sites, yet it's a feature most people accept.

There's nothing that can't be done with a user-designed plugin with Firefox, including every feature that the Google Toolbar has, yet there's no mass push from website developers demanding the Firefox development team put in place methods to allow the site to override any changes those plugins make.

If anything, Google's high profile nature makes them far less of a worry than Firefox's plugin abilities if only because more people watch what they do.

And in fact, Google has been one of the most open and website friendly companies out there. The company that developed adwords that make searching for information a pleasure through the use of clearly marked text advertisements instead of some of the pay for placement tricks other search engines used to use is exactly why Google's so popular. And the Adsense banner adverts have been great for websites that want a little bit of extra income but don't want the cheap, ill-fitting banner ad affiliate programs that used to be the norm.

I'm all for voicing a reasonable amount of feedback to Google about the future directions the Toolbar might take, but the web development community has gone overboard, treating the company as guilty-until-proven-innocent in a manner that stinks of the Google Watch guy.

Some good points well made Derek but most of us are fully aware of both sides of the argument, but still feel AutoLink is wrong.

ISBN numbers linking for example, well if you go and have a look at B&N and most other book selling websites you'll see that the majority of ISBN numbers appear on the page about the book. You woud have no reason to link that ISBN number to anywhere - you're already on the destination page. Where the ISBN number appears next to a book on a list of books you'll generally find that the book title and normally a thumbnail already link to the book info. People who design websites do tend to add links anywhere sensible which will get the client to the call to action page. If we don't have a link there already it probably won't help :) To be honest the reported suggestion that this is what we should be doing with our sites was one of the most patronising comments I've heard on the whole issue.....

Google have already started to make suggestions as to how this service could be enhanced, for example by linking product codes to suitable sites. It's no longer possible to argue that this is as far as it will go. I personally deeply doubt we're going to wake up one morning and find the toolbar adding links to every word on our pages - I suspect that Google too feel that selling random keyword advertising would be a step too far - but since most of my customers sell product online I am concerned that I may wake up one morning to find that anything with a product code or clearly defined spec is linking to a site not of my choice.

As an example - a lot of my sites contain flight numbers. They generally don't link because, as per my example above, those links would be without benefit to my site users. That doesn't mean that transferring the customer to BA (using the existing window not a new one) is a sensible option.

Say I sell flights for £100, the exact same price, route and flight number as BA. Ths customer is on my site first and has a price. They click the autolink to BA to do a price comparison. They find it's exactly the same price. Will they book usng the 'buy' button on the page they're on or will they click 'back' 8 times to return to my site, renew the expired shopping basket because the session's timed out and book with me?

Additionally if you manage one website or two then adding links isn't an issue, if you manage 30 or 40 but they're modular then it isn't the end of the world, but some people have 30 or 40 sites in hardcoded html. Whatever the format someone (my client presumably) has to pay for my time to go link all these little things, and then someone (me presumably) has to keep up to date on everything that Google add as a new type of helpful link to the user and go through the process again every time something is added. One lttle meta tag is all we're asking for here.

A large part of the reason that this issue has become so overblown is that no one at Google has responded to the initial feedback. Comments from the GooglePlex were initially dismissive and to be honest fairly condescending (I'm sorry I will never believe a company as bright as Google didn't consider the smarttags comparison and the fact they claim it didn't cross their minds makes me wonder what else they may be keeping quiet about). Now, it seems, Google are considering the fedback receieved, but they aren't telling the people providing the feedback that, they're telling a couple of well connected journalists. Thus as far as we can tell the normal feedback loop is broken - how can we express our concerns other than publishing them?

I totally agree there are some very shrill voices on both sides of this discussion but we aren't all using the phrase "evil". Google are guilty of nothing but poor judgement and an ill conceived idea at the moment, but I'm with the thin-end-of-the-wedgers on this I'm afraid....

Gurtie said:

"ISBN numbers linking for example, well if you go and have a look at B&N and most other book selling websites you'll see that the majority of ISBN numbers appear on the page about the book. You woud have no reason to link that ISBN number to anywhere - you're already on the destination page."

I understand this example, but at the same time I fail to see why this is anything other than complaining about a service that relies solely on user inconvenience to sell a product.

"Say I sell flights for £100, the exact same price, route and flight number as BA. Ths customer is on my site first and has a price. They click the autolink to BA to do a price comparison. They find it's exactly the same price. Will they book usng the 'buy' button on the page they're on or will they click 'back' 8 times to return to my site, renew the expired shopping basket because the session's timed out and book with me?"

This example is similar to the Barnes & Noble versus Amazon argument some use, but both play into the idea that the inconvenience of going to another site is the most important motive behind a sale.

In your example, a potential customer is researching prices on airline trips. Now most such consumers will get more than one price quote at the amounts tickets cost, so they're just as likely to get your price and then go through the forms on another site to get theirs.

How would that consumer be any more likely to go back to your site and go through all the forms to get back to where they were if they do the search on another site manually, versus having it autolinked for them?

In fact, wouldn't it be easier for them to go back if they made the jump through an autolink? Using that feature allows them to jump through all the target product page without going through menus, so they're in fact only looking at one back button hit, versus multiple button hits using the manual method.

Anyway, again, most arguments seem to start from the premise that a user is on a page and the links are automatically added, which as you know is untrue. So if I'm on Thinkgeek.com's website looking at books, I won't have any links to Amazon at all. Until I make the conscious decision to check out the Amazon prices by hitting the autolink button and clicking on the new ISBN number link.

From there I'm instantly taken to the Amazon.com page for that book. Of course, if I don't like the price, I can hit the back button, I'm whisked right back to the original Thinkgeek.com page.

So really, in the world the anti-Toolbar people want, the thing that keeps you from purchasing at other sites is the inconvenience of manually having to go there to check their prices out for a similar product.

The thing is, I think most consumers will only buy a product at the first page they come across if it's reasonably inexpensive. I just don't see hoping that your customer doesn't have the time or energy to go compare prices on anything but the littlest of purchases is the best plan for revenue.

Next up, should retail store owners ban cell phones on their premises to prevent customers from calling other stores to compare prices?

...what you or I think does not matter, at least "my" side of the story has now got out into the big wide world out there.

It's the Walt Mossberg's of this world that matter to Google. Why? because he is read and respected by investors. And by the analysts from the investment banks.

Google is a corporation with a net worth of £50 billion. At this stage it is difficult ro know what is cause and what is effect. The stock market is a bit woolly, but..

..Google has lost around 3% of net worth in the last two days, (probably) due to mainly press articles, both of which we have covered here. To a certain extent G can tough it out if they can deliver in the long tern (read that is make people believe they can).

But right now the G PR department has to think of a better way to hold their share price than wielding the big stick at TW

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1395327

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=google

Let us know the stats on that Jason, please.

>but both play into the idea that the inconvenience of going to another site is the most important motive behind a sale.

why do you think that? Look if I'm selling a holiday for £5,000 I EXPECT people to shop around. I don't rely on people not having other information to make a sale. You seem to be confusing poor business people (who may well rely on stupid customers and not think ahead) with GOOD business people who have a business plan, forsee potential issues and attempt to prevent them becoming real problems.

Before this, if one of your competitors came up to you and told you they'd done a deal with IE which would place a link on your page to their site when the visitor pushed a button what would you say? Would you have welcomed it because it improves the user experience? I somehow doubt that.

It's odd to me that one of the main complaints being leveled against Google here is that they don't communicate, yet the "but Google Toolbar is doing a deal with my competitors!" argument stems from not actually listening to what the company has said in a number of responses to articles about the service that are anything less than "Google is TEH EVIL!".

The company has stated that this is only a beta test of the feature. They only chose FedEx and Amazon because they wanted to deal with a single company to test against, and they never "made a deal" with those companies, or even contacted them in the first place. They merely thought Amazon was a good all-around test because it has one of the most feature complete sites.

Google has stated that they are going to offer custom options for the autolink target sites. They're testing that option first with the address autolink, which provides you right now with the ability to set it to forward between three choices: Google Maps, Mapquest or Yahoo! Maps. Yes, that's right, you can set it to forward to one of their competitors.

The thing often forgotten is that Google is most certainly NOT a monopoly. In fact it's not even the top dog in search engines. Wired magazine has an article on Yahoo showing that they routinely get 119 million unique visitors per month versus Google's 72 million.

Remember, Google didn't get to where they are by being evil, so suggestions that they'll suddenly become the next Microsoft are often nothing more than hate for someone who's become successful. Google became successful because of a clean search interface with acceptable ads when everyone else was pay-for-placement, overbearing advert, user-unfriendly portals.

It was the geeks who made Google popular, and if Google becomes what the doomsayers claim, it will be the geeks who move the rest of the population to something else.

This is pretty much the last I'm going to say on this, because I see far too many people in the web development community that seem to WANT to believe that Google is some sort of evil monopoly now that it's popular with mainstream users, and are going to continue to obsess over move, gleefully dancing whenever their price dips in the rather unstable tech industry stock market.

I refuse to believe that. There was a deal involved, even if Google isn't willing to admit it. It doesn't make sense for Google, a for profit business to do anything for free.

Thanks for proving my point about how people will see evil in a successful company no matter what.

You have put your case in a totally precise and compelling manner in all of your posts in this thread. You have used calm, reasonable and definitely logical thinking to craft your replies and they have all been very compelling reads.

In one of your last posts, you defended Google’s communication stating that the product was only in beta the few things that have come from various parts of Google so far. I believe that this is the only thing that has let you down.

If Google, with their $50b, had asked it’s media relations people to be ready with all of the ammunition that you have provided here in this thread, a feat that is not beyond them, and had communicated in a timely and opportunistic manner, I am sure that the webmaster and seo/m boards would have been quieter.

Having read Walter Mossberg’s article, I notice that he 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.” I don’t know if these senior Google officials informed him of the points you put here today and he never used them, but the Google official line so far has been very bad in PR terms as far as I have seen.

The people paid to do public relations for Google have let them down on this occasion. I don’t know how the internal workings of Google go, but I believe that in a normal company before the release, even in beta, of a product the company would speak to their marketing and PR people for their opinion. Google is full of people way smarter than me. Those people must have been able to put the msft smart tags and current version of the toolbar together the same way as groups like threadwatch has.

No matter what one thinks of the toolbar, Google’s communication and prior planning has not been at it’s best, to say the least.

Had too many Gins tonight anyway so I’ll just put my helmet on now and wait for the incoming.

Maybe my first paragraph should have been:

You have put Google's case in a totally precise and compelling manner in all of your posts in this thread. You have used calm, reasonable and definitely logical thinking to craft your replies and they have all been very compelling reads.

P.S. Welcome to the group. I look forward to you posting in the future on even more bitchin pieces.

deals, favours and old boy networks (for both sexes) are what makes the world go around. You don't have to accept cash or even speak to someone to be doing a deal or have a strategic partnership, we all do it all the time and a simple search on Google will show many sites better designed to assist the comparison shopping customer complete with reviews and price checks than Amazon are.

Google know that, we know that. Why try and pretend otherwise? Derek, no successful business practices altruism and Grnidone clearly understands that, stating a fact isn't calling Google an evil greedy monopoly despite what you want to read into it. The company that gives a million to charity does factor in tax breaks and media reporting. It doesn't make the donation any less welcome and generous but it would be silly not to acknowledge all the motivations.

Google can stop this whole debate with one little opt-in tag, I think though, as you say, it's just getting started baby.

Gurtie said:

"Derek, no successful business practices altruism and Grnidone clearly understands that, stating a fact isn't calling Google an evil greedy monopoly despite what you want to read into it."

I'm sorry, but I don't think he does. For one thing, he's entire argument in his last post consists of "Google HAD to have made a deal, because there's no reason to link to other sites for free".

If you'll take a step back from the anti-Google bandwagon, you'll see that there are plenty of reasons to do so.

There are probably a hundred different "toolbars" available for Internet Explorer right now. In fact, Google's bigger competitors, Yahoo and MSN Search, both have their own available for download.

So why would anyone spend the development time on free software like that? Because the search engine business is highly competitive. As I said prior, despite what many think, Yahoo gets more hits that Google. And MSN Search has Microsoft's operating system as a lead in.

Getting someone to use your toolbar makes Google money because the searches they do with it lead directly to their search engine, where the results are displayed, but so are their text ads, which is where the real money is.

So yes, there's a reason to offer the Toolbar, for free, and without them having done a deal with Amazon. As the BETA progresses, and they add the ability to put other bookstores in there, they're doing so because it's another feature to attract consumers to using their toolbar to do searches through their search engine.

Gurtie said:

"Google can stop this whole debate with one little opt-in tag"

That's a great idea if your only concern is web developers, but a bad idea if your target is consumers. Guess which of the two the toolbar is designed for.

An opt-in tag's only reason for existance is to prevent me, as consumer on the web, from getting the information I want, information that's available to me anyway. The toolbar is expressly designed to please the consumer, not the webmaster, as evidenced by the fact that it automatically blocks most pop-up and pop-under adverts, pleasing the visitor and annoying the site owner.

Website developers are going to have to get used to the idea that there is no such thing as Mossburg's claimed "right of Web publishers to control the content and appearance of their own sites". Javascript blockers, Flash removers, text-based browsers, Ad blockers, CSS stylesheet overrides, proxy server rewrite scripts and more all point to the simple fact that once you make your content publically available as HTML, you give up any expectation that what the visitor sees is exactly what you want them to see.

If you have a problem with that, perhaps you should make everything available as a pdf file.

Derek, you say

I suspect that Google don't believe that "the real money" stops at text ads - I suspect that they are banking on the "real money" being in hijacking links in the future

Look, if we're going to go with the logic that some here seem to believe the world revolves around, and automatically assume that everyone is evil and never does anything for free, I should just automatically assume you're not quite as obsessed with being anti-Google and instead just an unsubtle viral marketer.

So ... how much does Yahoo pay you, Mister Cornwall?

Anyway, this oddball conspiracy theory about Google being some mastermind evil genius corporation that's plotting in the hidden base in ruins of an extinct volcano island who will take over the world one hikacked link at a time is comedy genius.

For one thing, Google isn't a monopoly. They don't even have the largest share of the search engine pie. The second consumers start to believe that the Toolbar isn't there for their benefit, which is what you're saying when you suggest that it would hijack links without the end-user's permission, is the day those same consumers abandon it and go get one of the other hundred or so toolbars available.

Google survives only as long as the average person surfing the web believes they'll get the most benefit out of using their service. Hijacking links without the end-user's permission and only sending them to product sites they don't like in the final release version of the Toolbar does absolutely nothing but hurt Google's bottom line.

Grnidone said;

Gurtie said:

and Derek said:

So I think we're all agreeing this isn't being done out of the kindness of their heart but because it makes business sense? Google may or may not directly monetise the links inserted by AutoLink. No one (here at any rate) is saying Google is evil because it doesn't do things for free, any 14 year old who's taken a biology lesson can explain why altruism doesn't exist. That point isn't even contended.

If you read the threads at Threadwatch, and at SearchGuild (and I think at SEW, HR, Cre8, WMW etc although I don't lurk those places as much), you'll find that no one posting at any of them is suggesting that, initially we asked the question, we did the research, we found the facts and we know what points we're arguing. Sure there are a lot of people getting very stressy who don't know what they're talking about. On both sides. But I think you're making that argument in the wrong forum/blog frankly.

The Google Toolbar does not abuse the end-users rights?. Yes fine we never said it did. The AutoLink feature, in our opinion abuses the website owners rights. If you feel the website owner has no rights or has less important rights than the website user that's where you need to take issue.

I'm always amused at the sudden creation of "rights" where none existed before.

Could you explain to me what so-called website owners "rights" are being violated here? Outside of the usual copyright laws, you have no rights to what an end-user does to your files on their computer thanks to the fair use laws.

Since the Google Toolbar only modifies files that exist on an end-user's computer, and does so at the request of that end-user after they've installed the software and manually hit the auto-link button, no web master rights, legally or morally, have been broken.

"But I think you're making that argument in the wrong forum/blog frankly."

You're right, I'm quickly coming to believe that there are far too many people who hate Google for many of the same reasons Daniel Brandt does.

It's pretty obvious that Cornwall, for example, has a gleeful obsession against Google.

No, Derek, just what they are trying to do with the toolbar, and what the long term inplications are of that.

Rightly or wrongly, I believe that this aruement over the toolbar will be decided by the investors, not webmasters nor the users.

Google, investors, webmasters are all here to make money. The user is getting a free lunch, but we all know there is no such thing as a free lunch, somebody, somewhere has to pay for the food.

which part of fair use does adding a link to a copy of a website fall under Derek?

Yes I'm sure you can find something to quote to me about how it is actually fair use, I picked the first result on Google I didn't research for ages. Point is you can argue either side of that particular coin and provide 'evidence' to back it up.

I have no idea why Daniel Brandt hates Google, in fact I'm not sure he knows himself. He doesn't like a few other people I know much either.

But loads of people hate every big company. So what? I don't hate Google, I don't think they're the devil incarnate. I happen to think they're wrong in this instance. I'm not accusing you of being Larrys secret lover because you're defending them, although I'm tempted to accuse you of trolling because I'm sure you can see both sides of this argument perfectly well in reality.

Yes I'm sure you can find something to quote to me about how it is actually fair use, I picked the first result on Google I didn't research for ages.

Obviously those portions of US copyright law are in regards to fair use in publishing.

Unless you're taking the output of a page file modified on your computer by the toolbar and publishing that modified output file on your own website, none of what you just posted applies.

Now, if one wants to look on the same website you linked to for the Fair Use Doctrine, you'll note that beyond the sub-section on fair use and publishing, which you took your facts from, one can find a test for general fair use under the law, of which one of the first tests is if the modification is for "personal use".

This is why, despite all the ranting and raving of the recording industry, you are allowed under current copyright law to make a personal copy of an audio CD for personal use, modified as you see fit. For example, substituting some songs for other songs.

I guess in your mind, the "mix tapes" made by millions of teenagers are completely illegal and an abuse of the rights of the RIAA.

So the score stands as US Copyright Law: 1, Gurtie's claimed right to control the files on an end-user's computer: 0.

really highlights

Since Gurtie's the one that's claiming he has a right that's being abused here, he's the one that's logically required to show that this right exists in the first place.

I'm all for protecting Gurtie's rights as a publisher. You find me someone who's taking his content and republishing it for their commercial benefit without permission and I'll willingly help storm the walls of their castle.

But once that HTML file gets downloaded from his webserver onto an end-user's computer and that end-user wants to do something that's within his fair use rights under the law, any rights Gurtie claims are overruled by the legal rights of the end-user

I was, of course, incorrect in using the term "fair use" and was chided for this mistake by a lawyer friend of mine.

What I should have said is that the implication given when someone says their rights are being abused is that those rights exist under copyright law, to which my friend reminded me that the Fair Use Doctrine only applies to reproduction and publishing.

In otherwords, since there's no reproduction and publication involved, copyright law does not apply and therefore does not give the content author any right over control of that work on the end-user's computer.

Therefore, bringing copyright law into this was a stupid blunder on my part, mainly because I spent those years when I could have been studying at a nice law school instead running around god-foresaken parts of this planet with the US Army.

On behalf of myself, I deeply apoligize to any lawyers I've offended, and shall punish myself by watching two-full hours of LA Law every day for the next week.

now I know you're trolling, unless you're in the habit of calling men baby, which is not normal even in Brighton where we're all very relaxed about such things, I suspect you may be trying a little psychological warfare huh?

Of course I can't prove one way or another where the fair use boundries fall in this case and nor can you. As you doubtless know fair use cases are frequently decided by a subjective judgement on the part of the judge and I have no legal training so I'm not going to have that argument, especially since it's complicated by the involvement of a third party software who may be defined as republishing it on the users computer (since the toolbar in fact amends and redisplays the page content even though acting on the users instructions) and may be doing so for commercial profit (which we previously all agreed need not be a direct financial payment)

Now that, as they say, is reaching.

Your content is not being copied on the end-user's computer, therefore copyright laws do not apply, it is merely being viewed in a manner you disagree with.

What you're basically arguing is that if someone uses Firefox's "override font face and size" feature, that Firefox is republishing your site and therefore illegal under copyright law, along with text browsers, adblockers and every proxy servers on the face of the planet.

The font size argument is clever, but not that clever.

Changing the font size, or even the background color or layout of a webpage for usability, device rendering or pure whim does not change the content of the page.

Inserting links, certainly to my view, changed the content of the page and can be perceived to associate my website with other websites i've no intention of associating with. Though that's rather besides the point in this particular argument.

One laywer has argued that the Autolink jobbie could be creating a derivative work, and i think you'll find his argument compelling:

Much more detail on Eric Goldman's original post.

It's all very well splitting hairs and arguing fine points Derek, you can draw people into all kinds of pointless arguments that way and even win those arguments if you're good at it.

Unfortunately, some will see through that, having not been directly involved in the conversation untill now and point it out for what it is.

Never *once* did I use the term 'evil.'

And, for the record, I don't think that making money or not admitting things are necessarily 'evil' acts.

Personally, I think the term 'evil' is way, way, too strong a term for what we are discussing here.

And, I never "argued" there *was* a deal. I just said I refused to believe there wasn't. You can agree or not, either way it is my personal opinion.

BTW, I'm female.

I actually know someone, who was directly responsible for making LA Law such a hit. He will not be amused at all at the abovementioned statement and will feel that his talent is being misrepresented. He agrees that Law & Order is much better but it was a different generation.

To get back on to the subject. Derek, can you put another hat on as CTO of BarnesandNoble.com.

I know you can technically come up with solutions, but your CEO has told you that the press office wants him to put out a statement on the new version of the toolbar, his thoughts on it and how it will affect or change his business going forward. If you wish to craft this reply, remember you are the CTO of BarnesandNoble.com, have worked there for a number of years, like working there and are proud of your website.

Oh... and then take your CTO hat off and replace it with your normal hat (or beret) and do you think Google handled the whole episode well?

I am not a lawyer, but I have encountered unjust enrichment in a former life. I wonder if all the talk about copyrights is off base. If you look at the argument in a financial sense, Barnes & Noble could have been loosing money to Amazon due to the actions of Google. Did Google profit? Will they profit in the future? Did Amazon profit?

From Answers.com

1. The retaining of a benefit (as money) conferred by another when principles of equity and justice call for restitution to the other party; also The retaining of property acquired esp. by fraud from another in circumstances that demand the judicial imposition of a constructive trust on behalf of those who in equity ought to receive it see also quasi contract 1 at contract
2. A doctrine that requires an equitable remedy on behalf of one who has been injured by the unjust enrichment of another

Again, not a lawyer, but trying to see if this direction has legs...

but I can't resist it

Derek said

Derek said

we are rather into splitting hairs territory now - do you want to call a truce Derek? :D

One of the best arguments against Autolink was that changing the presentation of a web published work would act as a disincentive to web authors and content originators - they published it the way it was for a reason and if they had wanted hyperlinks all over it it is presumed they would have put them there. I no longer have the URL to the original blog post stating this but I thought it made a lot of sense especially if Autolink encourages others to introduce their own Autolink or SmartTag clones in response to Autolink.

We haven't had Dougal come out for a time :-)

http://www.dougaltoolbar.com/

...until legal precedent is established regarding websites and fair use. AFAIK, it hasn't been fought out yet, but this certainly looks to be a good opportunity to do so.

By Derek's reasoning, all bets are off once a file reaches the viewer's computer, but it could be argued that a different interpretation of fair use for website content is needed in this case, as delivering a website to a viewer's browser is the largest part of what "publishing" means on the internet. You cannot buy a DVD at the store, and then advertise free showings at the 50-person theater you've set up in the garage. (That's right, even if you DON'T charge to see the movie, you can't offer public showings with the copy you paid for), which clearly demonstrates limits to the "once the media reaches the consumer's hands, all bets are off" argument.

So that is a different interpretation for fair use of movies as opposed to books (you often see libraries offering book readings or children's story times, and I don't think they paid for a special "multi-user license" for the books they read). Clearly, many arguments could be offered for why websites would need separate fair use guidelines, just as books, television shows and recorded movies all have their own technologically-determined differences.

Nick W wrote:

"One laywer has argued that the Autolink jobbie could be creating a derivative work, and i think you'll find his argument compelling"

I didn't find his use of UMG Recordings vs MP3.com as the legal precedent as compelling an argument as you might have.

As my lawyer friend pointed out to me, the court records state that MP3 was charged as having:

"purchased tens of thousands of popular CDs in which plaintiffs held the copyrights, and, without authorization, copied their recordings onto its computer servers so as to be able to replay the recordings for its subscribers."

MP3 wasn't in legal trouble because they were acting "as an agent" for the user, they were in trouble because they had made copies of copyrighted music and had made those copies available on their website for subscribers to their service. It's not "splitting hairs" to suggest that there's a rather large legal difference between that and what Google is doing on your local computer.

However, I should apologize for when I mistakenly used the phrase "Google Toolbar only modifies files that exist on an end-user's computer" as pointed out by Gurtie. It was a poor choice of words because no files are actually modified. The HTML file in your cache is unmodified by the toolbar in the same way that using Firefox's stylesheet override does nothing to modify the incoming files themselves.

Mivox wrote:

"You cannot buy a DVD at the store, and then advertise free showings at the 50-person theater you've set up in the garage."

While that's true, it's not relevant because it's considered a "public performance", which is where those legal warnings in rather boring text on a solid background that displays something along the lines of "Licensed for home use only, any public performance is prohibited" at the beginning of most DVDs comes in.

If I was going to project your website on the side of a building in a busy area downtown without your permission, then I would be equally guilty.

Derek and I are not the same person.

[but I agree with nearly all of his arguments! Thanks, Derek, for bringing some sanity on the Autolinks subject back to TW :D]

..no, but it is common knowledge that you are both Google employees :-)

I found this thread at wmw that definitely said you were, and I expect that at this very minute your collegue Derek is being similarly unmasked in a forum across the web.

British humour, lest anyone gets uppity