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Found this interesting article, what do you all think about this?.
"Google seem to have taken a big leap towards complete totalitarianism and dictatorship with one of their latest features.
I don’t know whether you have noticed an interesting feature of the latest Google Toolbar. The latest version of the Toolbar introduces the Address Bar Browse by Name feature.
Browse by Name helps you find a site even when you don’t know its URL. Just type the site name into your browser address bar, and Toolbar will take you there automatically. For instance, try typing “oxford” into the address bar to go directly to the university’s home page at www.ox.ac.uk.
The Google Toolbar Address Bar Browse By Name feature works by leveraging Google’s SERP results. If for example you enter “football” into the Toolbar Address field, you will be directly taken to www.nfl.com because nfl ranks #1 for the term “football” in Google’s SERPs. All the other competitor websites will not get a look-in.
What’s interesting is that this tool basically completely eliminates the possibility of type-in traffic for anyone that utilizes the bar for their searches. And more importantly from a user’s perspective, it reduces the search experience to a blind following of Google’s SERP results.
How?
While this tool might be intended to work against cyber-squatting by making sure typos of popular domain names do not get any traffic, it is introducing heavy consequences that directly affect both domain owners and Toolbar users.
Domain owners are affected as follows: if you own football.com and someone types “football” into a normal IE or FF browser, by convention, you expect them to be taken to your domain football.com. What the Google Toolbar Address feature does is it negates this effect and leverage its SERPs results instead - for all Toolbar users that use the Address feature for browsing.
Ok. Consequence of change you might say.
However, the Toolbar implicitly affects its users as well. In the past, by providing the Toolbar Google have enabled us to search for terms directly, without going to Google.com. With this new feature they are limiting our search options by selecting results for us.
If I am searching for sites with the term “football” I certainly don’t want Google to decide what site I will see. I want a selection of results as defined by the mere definition of search engine results.
What’s next? Google’s affiliation with Firefox might mean they will make this feature permanent in the FF browse url? Maybe they should just decide what terms we should search for next?!?"
"Google seem to have taken a big leap towards complete totalitarianism and dictatorship with one of their latest features.
I don’t know whether you have noticed an interesting feature of the latest Google Toolbar. The latest version of the Toolbar introduces the Address Bar Browse by Name feature.
Browse by Name helps you find a site even when you don’t know its URL. Just type the site name into your browser address bar, and Toolbar will take you there automatically. For instance, try typing “oxford” into the address bar to go directly to the university’s home page at www.ox.ac.uk.
The Google Toolbar Address Bar Browse By Name feature works by leveraging Google’s SERP results. If for example you enter “football” into the Toolbar Address field, you will be directly taken to www.nfl.com because nfl ranks #1 for the term “football” in Google’s SERPs. All the other competitor websites will not get a look-in.
What’s interesting is that this tool basically completely eliminates the possibility of type-in traffic for anyone that utilizes the bar for their searches. And more importantly from a user’s perspective, it reduces the search experience to a blind following of Google’s SERP results.
How?
While this tool might be intended to work against cyber-squatting by making sure typos of popular domain names do not get any traffic, it is introducing heavy consequences that directly affect both domain owners and Toolbar users.
Domain owners are affected as follows: if you own football.com and someone types “football” into a normal IE or FF browser, by convention, you expect them to be taken to your domain football.com. What the Google Toolbar Address feature does is it negates this effect and leverage its SERPs results instead - for all Toolbar users that use the Address feature for browsing.
Ok. Consequence of change you might say.
However, the Toolbar implicitly affects its users as well. In the past, by providing the Toolbar Google have enabled us to search for terms directly, without going to Google.com. With this new feature they are limiting our search options by selecting results for us.
If I am searching for sites with the term “football” I certainly don’t want Google to decide what site I will see. I want a selection of results as defined by the mere definition of search engine results.
What’s next? Google’s affiliation with Firefox might mean they will make this feature permanent in the FF browse url? Maybe they should just decide what terms we should search for next?!?"
