Google AutoLink

There has been a lot of commentary regarding the AutoLink feature of the latest Google toolbar. Some love it and some hate it. Here is some thoughtful commentary from Tim Bray's Ongoing.

I can understand both sides of the argument. Perhaps there is a happy medium. Let me propose 2 solutions...

1. The Google toolbar, instead of modifying the actual links in the page could provide links to AutoLink-able items in a sidebar or some other location outside of the actual web page. This way there should be much less confusion about where the links are coming from. This would still give Google the ability to derive revenue by driving traffic through their 'helper' links. It also could not be a conflict of interest because Google would not be modifying any web pages, but only supplying additional links which the end user can easily distinguish.

2. Use helper application protocols (like mailto). We already have several of these that are handled by the web browser and are very common. It allows a link to refer to an email address and a browser plug-in can be configured to handle the 'mailto' protocol so that end users can choose which service should handle that particular protocol. We could have a 'map' protocol for addresses, a 'book' protocol which could support both ISBN numbers or searching by title, author, etc. Perhaps page author could even be given the ability to provide a default protocol handler or URL for the case there a browser does not have a handler already configured. Google could then allow users to choose optional protocol handlers during install of their toolbar. This would allow Google to derive revenue by driving users to their services, while also removing the conflict of interest.