NEWS ANALYSIS: ITEM

			Boundary Issues: Google's AutoLink Feature Tests The Edge of Content Real Estate
			John Blossom
			28 February 2005
SUMMARY:			When Google launched a new AutoLink feature for its browser toolbar, the new feature was inserting links automatically into Web pages for maps, books and other key contextual content. This encroachment on content didn't make some folks very happy, so the feature has been retuned to not intrude automatically.  While it's understandable that publishers would get unsettled by this effort to make Web content more valuable at their expense, there's nothing to stop us from congratulating Google on coming up with a new method of creating monetizable value out of contextualizing content. As today's Web content providers become more adept at using software to contextualize its value tools for monetization like AutoLink are bound to flourish.

The Google toolbar is a popular downloadable option for use in Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers, with a number of handy features for initiating searches, blocking popups and highlighting text in Web pages. Simple enough, yet with its latest Beta release the toolbar seems to have caused a storm of protest. At issue is the toolbar's new AutoLink feature, which can insert hyperlinks into the text of Web pages when it encounters street addresses, tracking numbers for major shippers, ISBNs for books and other publications and automobile VINs. Addresses on a Web page link via AutoLink to Google's mapping pages, ISBNs to Google partner Amazon's site for the title, auto VINs to the Carfax ownership history service and so on. Kind of handy stuff, clever value-add for Web content to be sure. Except for one small problem: the feature was launched to work by default in the "on" position, so that the links would appear as is they had been placed there by the producer of the Web page.

Web content producers were not too happy with this arrangement, not to mention erstwhile friendlies who lit into Google for replicating the mistake of Microsoft's efforts to foist its Smart Tags proprietary link scheme on its Office suite users. Search Engine Watch provides a nice detailed account of this brouhaha. Today through its automatically updating features the main point of friction for Google's toolbar seems to have disappeared altogether: now when there is content that AutoLink can use the AutoLink toolbar icon will indicate that there's content that can have links applied to it, at which point a click of the mouse will imbed the links in the selected page. This is more in line with its other toolbar features such as text highlighting, which will be normally in "off" mode. Problem solved. Kind of.

Certainly the fact that Google is providing through AutoLink a context for monetizing content that moves beyond the search-results-based ads paradigm is an issue of concern for some publishers. But the broader issue is why publishers do not grab these kinds of opportunities themselves. The recent failed experiment by Forbes magazine's online portal to have sponsored links imbedded in its editorial content shows that "product placement" in content assumed to be objective can be a touchy issue to navigate with content users. Content is about relationships as much as it is about words and multimedia, with trust built carefully in sources over time. But Google has at least taken the step to identify that a Web page is a content object that can be enriched in a number of innovative ways based on the personal needs and interests of its readers that go beyond simple personalization or ad placements. Here are a few things to think about when considering how Google and others may profit effectively from rethinking the ways in which Web pages serve up contextual content value:

• Users want contextualized content - as long as they can understand who's in charge.  Before the default AutoLink mode was reset to "off" the generated links implied endorsement of a linked-to content source by the page producer. It's just not very perceptive to imply endorsements of relationships where they do not exist. Users want their content enriched whenever possible, but they want to understand clearly who is providing the enrichment, in part to understand who's providing them with a value proposition. The sponsored links that Google has provided in search results and AdSense ads in publisher sites offer a value proposition that clearly identifies the terms of how one's  trying to establish a relationship through content. As long as the terms of engagement are clear users will appreciate the offer of additional information most any time.
• Content contextualization is moving past HTML. Most publishers of online content are still focusing on the delivery of HTML-based Web pages, a relatively passive and safe vehicle that has comfortable analogies to the print and "dumb screen" world from which most paper and databased content from publishers springs.  By embedding its linking capabilities in a toolbar function Google uses the browser as a platform to examine page contents. But a Web page or an XML object imbedded with both content and functionality could do the same itself without having to rely on a toolbar function. Publishers need to move beyond serving up static content from databases to delivering content objects embedded with functionality that can enhance the inherent value of the "Plain Jane" version of an article or item - for a price of course, born by advertisers, subscribers or whomever, but inevitably monetized.
• Monetizing content contextualization is moving past ads.  Ads are a comfortable model for monetizing context in content that still works very well, but increasingly just one of many ways in which contextualized content could be used to drive people to transactions and other revenue opportunities. Many of these opportunities will require a combination of content and functionality. Instead of using software to contextualize content, though, capabilities such as Web services will allow publishers to use content to monetize the use of software with that object, providing on-the-fly data queries, realtime data streams and information appliance controls based on the user's relationship to a given content object. The idea of managing workflow requiring huge databases of content managed through a central application may be less important than search capabilities that allow content objects to be identified that can launch the right application for the content object at hand.

Not unlike the Google Scholar initiative, Google's AutoLink exploits existing content in ways that publishers have failed to identify as money-making opportunities. They may have had some boundary issues to iron out in getting AutoLink off the ground, but clearly they're thinking well ahead of most publishers in identifying not only valuable content but valuable ways in which to contextualize it. It's an annoying refrain to hear at times, I am sure, but without more aggressive product development efforts by publishers and aggregators it's a tune that's likely to become all too familiar.

- John Blossom

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