The arguments in support of AutoLink
It’s not a service I’d use, but I believe that it’s the kind of service that is vital to the Web’s health. The ability of end-users to avail themselves of tools that decomopose and reassemble web-pages to their tastes is an issue like inlining, framing, and linking: it’s a matter of letting users innovate at the edge.
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And so on — it’s my screen, and I should be able to control it; companies like Google and individuals should be able to provide tools and services to let me control it.
He’s right. As I noted before, the problem people (myself included) have with it has more to do with the fact that it’s being done by Google, a company we all worry will turn into another Microsoft. However, if WAG the Dog web localizer is good, then AutoLink is good. If the concern is how it will be used, then we should remember that “fraud isn’t bad because it uses proxying, or deep-linking, or inlining: fraud is bad because it’s fraud, no matter what tools it employs,” as Doctorow puts it.
Also linked is Yoz Grahame’s entertaining take on the whole thing.