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Google Gets Away With What Microsoft Couldn't
FreshlyShornBalls writes "WebProNews is reporting that
Google's new beta toolbar apparently sports an "AutoLink" feature which appends hyperlinks to existing content. These hyperlinks, of course, point to their services, such as maps for addresses, isdn numbers for books, etc. Sounds an awful lot like Microsoft's "Smart Tags"." Update by J : ... except that Microsoft's proposal was in the monopoly browser while Google's software is a third-party add-on, and Microsoft's was (originally) on by default while Google's is a button to click.
Microsoft is Evil
Google is Not (yet!)
Easy tiger - for this to work, you have to click a button on each and every page you want to temporarily create these links on. It took 3 minutes to confirm that. Is the art of journalism dead?
/. reader won't touch that with a bargepole.
This is an opt-in feature designed to help people who want it. Google aren't ramming this down people's throats.
There is also the option to change the default mapping app - you can switch between Mapquest and Yahoo maps in addition to Google's offering. A nice touch - google didn't have to do that. It's just a shame this only works for US addresses right now.
Of course, this is all academic. It runs on IE, and the average
I of course detonated the PC I used to test the toolbar in a controlled explosion a few minutes ago.
It's ISBN not ISDN
Microsoft has an almost total monolopy on PCs. If Microsoft does this, it's anti-competitive. They have been convicted as monolopists.
If Googles optional toolbar points at their services, that is hardly an abuse of a monolopy. Heck, I don't even have a google tool bar, I don't want one.
But at work, I'm forced to have a windows machine.
Until or unless Google becomes a big monolopy who can force everyone to use their crap, the fact that Google does something that would be illegal for Microsoft to do is irrelevant.
Why is this so tough?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
takes over your browser integrates it with the OS and forces you to see the links. then they are getting away with something MS didn't .... quite
"He's a real midnight golfer"
Google gets away with what Microsoft couldn't
Oh Good Lord what rock have you been under for the last 15 years.
Microsoft is a monopolist convicted of using that monopoly in unlawfully anti-competative ways to run competitors out of business. They've violated in spirit and letter numerous consent decrees, agreements with government, and even court orders, and gotten away with it because their cycle of business is orders of magnitude faster than the wheels of justice.
As a convicted monopolist, Microsoft must play by a different set of rules than everyone else, like, say, Google, which has never been convicted of anything in the US (and quite IMHO bugus trademark violations in France).
You might as well say "Joe's Computers get away with what Microsoft Couldn't." Damn straight. Joe's Computers, like Google, haven't been shown to even be a monopoly, much less convicted of abusing such a position if they had it. Microsoft has, on all counts.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
...if it weren't for that pesky Slashdot!
What Google has done is completely different because it didn't come from Microsoft. Microsoft has been operating a sweatshop of coding gnomes. They pay them only in fractions of a farthing per month! Whereas Google employs a crack team of trained code sphinxes who test their search technology daily with vexing questions. Google pays their sphinxes well and because of that the sphinxes coded this new technology that is quite superior to Microsoft's magic links technology. So don't fear the sphinxes for they are your friends. Microsoft abuses gnomes. They are evil.
;P
Yes. Laugh... it's absurdist!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I did wonder how long the "Microsoft Inc Bad, Google Inc Good" pastiche could last.
...
Just because its founders are young and "wacky" doesn't mean they can't make very corporate decisions in polo shirts instead of pinstripe shirts. The platitude about "thinking outside the box" already sounds trite coming from Google. The decision to fire a blogger for speaking up is proof that Google has a PR department just like any other corporate minded drone army.
Bill Gates was once young and just as idealistic as Sergey and Brin. Bill Gates once said that he was planning to give away most if not all of his fortune to charity - I bet he wasn't labelled "evil" back then
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
I find it surprising that most /.ers, while criticizing the MPAA and the RIAA for placing restrictions on the way their content is used, balk when website content is manipulated on the browser end.
Microsoft's Smarttags could have had great benefits and brought about semantic-web like features if only people weren't paranoid. After all, the website owner had full control over how and where smart tags were displayed on his page.
Now, 3 years later, Google does a stripped down version of the same to make themselves more money (MS' smart tag gave the website owner options - Google does not), and we all scream asking for the equivalent of DRM on web pages.
We who don't want to pay for the music and movies, who don't want to pay for software, who believe in the 'creative commons', throw a collective fit when a user agent wants to do something cool with the HTML already downloaded to the computer already.
It's been over a decade since the first browser - and all we have to show for it from Microsoft, Netscape, Opera and Mozilla put together is what? A new way of doing tables and tabs!
Stop cribbing and let someone innovate.
It runs on IE, and the average /. reader won't touch that with a bargepole
For those slashdot users who would touch IE if they had a barge pole:
General Purpose 6-12 ft extension pole
Avery Push Pole (for water use)