AutoLink
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
AutoLink is a feature of the Google Toolbar. Users can convert street addresses, ISBNs to links by clicking a button on Google Toolbar. The links direct the users to Google Maps for street addresses and Amazon.com for book information.
Since introduced in February 2005, there has been a lot of controversy about this feature. Some webmasters expressed their concerns over AutoLink feature claiming that Google had no rights to modify their webpages or to direct the users to a commercial website (i.e. Amazon).
This caused Barnes & Noble to link all ISBN's on their site back to themselves to prevent people clicking them to take them to their competitor.
Google sceptics compare it with Microsoft's unpopular SmartTags, which ultimately proved too controversial and were dropped.
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