We’ve all heard about Autolink, Google’s ill-advised toolbar
which will, like the abhorred “Smart Tags” Microsoft attempted to promote a few years back, insert stuff on YOUR web page that will allow your users to go to, among other places, YOUR competitors. For webfolks in serious commerce, this is obviously a really bad idea. To add insult to injury, Google hasn’t planned any way for the site owner to opt-out of having this toolbar, once activated by the user, add links to whatever other sites Google chooses - at present, “only” Amazon - no matter if YOU don’t deal with Amazon. The can of worms this opens is staggering….
I ran across “The Co-Link Project” the other day while looking for something (no clue now what….) It’s similar to what Google is wanting to do with the Autolink toolbar, though it’s manipulable by anyone using a page if it’s installed on the webserver.
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.
