spidersplat.com

There has been much buzz in the forms recently about the Google Toolbar Auto Link feature. From the sounds of it people were comparing it to the old scum-ware programs. To those who have not seen them in action, what these older programs do/did is link relevant words and phrases on web pages that a user visits to PPC advertisements where the software vendor get paid the PPC cost. Many webmasters and webmistresses were upset, as these programs were hijacking their visitors from their websites for a profit. No commissions were paid to the owners of the hijacked websites and no permission was asked or granted.Sounds annoying, right? So what’s the twist on Google’s feature? Well to start off, this feature is disabled by default when you first install the toolbar. Still annoyed? Then consider this: The auto link feature only creates links to what appears to be addresses, these are then linked to a map of the address. It also attempts to link tracking numbers to the their respective carriers.

The following is how it is described on the tool bar feature page: “AutoLink will link a U.S. street address to a map of that address or the tracking number of a package to the page that gives you the status of your package”.

So is it really that bad as everybody makes it sound? Not in my opinion.