Google Rewriting Your Content

Version three of Googles toolbar beta has the ability to rewrite your page. A friend of mine who’s very wise in the ways of anything search related has written the following. He’s Liverpuddlian so imagine this in the voice of Paul MCartney ;o)

“Ever since Google released version 3 of its Toolbar last week, there’s been a growing storm developing over one particular new feature; AutoLink.

Admittedly, I’ve been following industry reaction with an, ’… it’ll all blow over attitude’… afterall, Microsoft tried writin links into our pages with its ‘Smart Tags’ technology some years ago, then withdrew it.

(Incidentally, the guy responsible for Smart Tags now works at Google… and yes, apparently it’s his brain behind AutoLink too!)

Anyway, was thinkin about the bigger picture last night and started gettin quite angry about it all. There are several contentious issues as I see it…

Advertisin largely exists because of content (to hook onto). TV is the obvious and simplest comparison; The channels seek to commission content that’ll attract a sufficient audience for advertisers to target. It’s a one-way deal in a sense because the writers don’t have a say on what type of advertisin goes with their works, but they in turn however, enter into that understandin as part of their fee/contract. Similarly, the audience have no control as to what advertisin they will see.

The web however, is slightly different in that the publisher (us), up till now, had control over whether advertisin would be shown at all. Furthermore, if we do choose to serve ads in the hope of financial gain, a decent ad-provider allows us to exercise some control over what type of advertisin is delivered around our content – This is quite a good and fair exchange of services ‘cos it means we can make the overall content relevant, ie… content + ad symbiosis. Plus, various browsers like Maxthon allow the user to block ads with various degrees of control. So all in all, there is an exercisable choice throughout the chain.

So what’s this got to do with Google(G)? Well G now has the largest share of publically accessible websites in its database – That’s content you and I wrote. That’s content indexed by G with our implied permission by default… in other words, they take without askin first. They then scrape and serve a modified version of it from their servers and also display our pages in their full entirety in its cache (modified). They’re profitin from our content by servin ads next to our content. They (arguably) aid and abet others who use either its free API (for developers), or its general index to steal and re-use our content as their own, which… G indexes again! (‘er… more ads over here pls!’).

Now, ya know, we’re already in deep legal waters here really but now we have AutoLink; The feature within v3 of its toolbar that rewrites our content to kindly display links to external sites it feels we’ve “missed out”. Now, AFAIK, even the most basic Statutory copyright clause includes the ‘Not reproduce or alter without express permission’ paragraph?

(NOTE: I haven’t even mentioned Adsense – A recent French Court case ruled that G had to stop others bidding on the Appellants trademark name in its Adsense network)

Ironically, G despises SPAM – It works its algo to try to defeat it afterall!! It also acts upon DMCA notices. Basically, it doesn’t want you to do what they do. But if ya do, they at least don’t want you to do it on, or from, “their” (scraped) “property”.

OK, I did say I was thinkin about the bigger picture. Up to now I’ve basically just repeated the common rants people have regardin G; copyright and SPAM.

For the bigger picture however, we need to look at the other parts of its business too. Some of you may know that last mth (Jan 05), G imposed an Adword restriction basically aimed at reducin the number of affiliates advertisin the same product for the same merchants. There are some valid reasons for doing this but I’m lookin at the bigger picture here, ie… the effect. One of which is that it undermines the whole affiliate business model and places a huge burden on merchants to somehow take-up the slack.

Movin on, G introduced a pop-up blocker in v2 (I believe) of its toolbar. Again, you can argue valid reasons for doin it but once again, its effects were felt by affiliates and merchants.

Movin on, G launched Froogle as a central “repository” for businesses to ply their wares so to speak.

Movin on further, G is workin on developin Local Search – Again, valid reasons for doin so but the effect will make it harder for legitimate “outsiders” to target that market.

Movin on more, GMail! (Somehow, they’re managin to persuade folk that Google-controlled spam is good).

Movin on (to admittedly shakier grounds), there is the belief that newly-launched sites enterin the competitive commercial SERP’s are being “Sandboxed” until quality is affirmed.

Now I dunno, but it seems to me that they’re almost tryin to “funnel” the pathways into which advertisers can sell their goods, ie… Whilst they “deny” the uses of some delivery channels, they’re makin others available, except under their terms.

But here’s the punchline: Where G can’t persuade webmasters to display their ads on our sites, G will now write links into your pages – client-side (via the toolbar) – regardless! Thus providin another channel for its advertisers and, once again, under its terms (Note: At the time of writing this, it has to be said that G has denied it has received, or asked for, any money from the beneficiary sites that AutoLink currently points to… but the feature *is* still only beta).

So lets look at how just one example may typically, and wholly plausibly, play out for the vast majority of webmasters out there.

You build a rich and informative resource. Your passion for the topic means that you’re current, and you know who and what matters. You don’t wanna steer your visitors a bum lead so you prefer to have control over where, and what people should consider. Therefore, you choose not to have 3rd party ads served from outside. You provide direct links, whether an affiliate link or not… doesn’t matter really, to external sites of worth. Your site is a natural authority and regarded highly by the community as one that’s trusted.

Along comes a visitor with the toolbar installed and where once they would’ve been clear, now they’re confused. Maybe G wrote a link that gives your visitor a bum steer. Maybe it just writes even more links on your page that not only eventually arrives at the same site you already have links for, but they’re also misleading and slower. Misleading because the status bar shows a link to Google (its proxy tracking server) and slower because the user has to go through *it* first.

If your site is financed by an affiliation, now it’s sufferin. If you happen to also be one of the affs that now cannot bid on adwords, then you’re startin to feel like someone’s tryin to put you out of business. If you’re a merchant reliant on affs, you’re probably not-so now. If you’re just a small but successful online distributor in your own right, your competitors may now be using *your* content to show *their* links on *your* pages.

It all makes me start to wonder, who’s spammin who here?

… and legally, who has editorial control? Who ultimately has responsibility for breach of contract (Links are rewritten client-side don’t forget!)?… Does Google even care now they have deep pockets?

In the future, will G close other commercial avenues outside of its control and then introduce other replacements under its terms instead?

What’s happening?

I’m not convinced we’ll ever find out given that they’ve rarely, if ever, stated the rules AS FACTS (instead of void inference).

… And given that whilst they’re buildin its empire in spite of the rules of law… And whilst they’re basically achievin all this by basically usin the same techniques as SERP spammers (but better)… One conclusion you might draw is; ‘… If they’re spammin and puttin me out of business. And if I’ve always strived to stick within the vague guidelines they give, so as to avoid being seen as, what they consider to be, a spam site, for fear of death. And if all that effort is now workin against me, then I might as well do what works for G… SPAM! SPAM usin other peoples content!”

Its pretty bad behaviour on Googles part IMO. Fortunately, one of Mikes friends at <searchguild has already written a bit of Javascript to kill this if Google decide to proceed beyond the beta with it.