superflippy's Journal: Routing around the damage

Many people who own and build web sites are annoyed by the new AutoLink feature in the current beta version of Google's Toolbar. Fortunately, the internet is full of smart people who know something about how web pages work, and someone has already come up with a solution for disabling AutoLink.

disabling autolink

[turg]

Why do you need software to disable autolink. The article says (emphasis added):

When Web surfers install the toolbar in their Microsoft Internet Explorer Web browser and click the AutoLink button, Web pages with street addresses suddenly sprout links to Google's map service by default. Book publishers' ISBN numbers trigger links to Amazon.com, potentially luring shoppers away from competing book sellers such as BarnesandNoble.com. ...

Seems to me that you just don't click the autolink button and you'll get

Re:disabling autolink

[superflippy]

You're right. After reading all the stuff floating around about this thing, it seems like it's nothing to worry about.

For one thing, it only works on one browser and one platform, and even then not very well according to reviews. For another, it's completely user-controlled and -initiated. It's like me using bookmarklets to get rid of annoying animations or change hard-to-read color schemes: just another way the end-user can make my web page better meet his needs.