You just have to appreciate the sort of bombast that Dave Winer can generate. Google creates a beta version of its toolbar that automatically detects addresses and turns them into links to Google Maps automatically — if the user explicitly chooses this behavior — and it turns out to be the end of the Web as we know it.
Any news organization or academic journal that publishes on the Web now has a serious integrity issue because of the existence of the Google toolbar with the AutoLink feature. All documents will have to contain a disclaimer that links contained within the page may not have been placed there by the author or organization whose copyright notice is on the page. Same is true for legal documents, end-user license agreements, rental agreements, etc. And if links are changeable, is text subject to change as well? Might Google correct our spelling? Or might they correct our thinking? Where is the line?
Straight from user-requested automatic links to George Orwell’s 1984.
I’ve participated in this sort of insidious conspiracy myself. I have an Extension to Firefox that inserts a graphic next to any link that is a PDF, MP3 or a number of other such links that piss me off when I click on them without being warned that my browser is going to try to load some huge-assed file.
I thought I was enhancing my experience and tailoring the web to work the way I’d prefer. Instead, I was walking down the slippery slope of Big Brother control of the web. If that plug-in can insert a graphic after a PDF, for example, what’s to stop it from taking every instance of “Winer” in a web page and substituting “Weenie”?
Hmmm… I wonder if Winer ever received permission beforehand to do SalonHerringWiredFool.Com? And I bet all of those organizations are happy he let the domain expire so it could become a porn site. Maybe Google should alter Dave’s thinking!