I admit that when I first heard of Google’s Autolink dealio the first thing that crossed my mind was the evil Microsoft Smart Tags Fiasco – and in the context of Google’s Do No Evil moto it seemed contradictory to say the least.

Upod further review it’s not quite as evil. Unlike smart tags it has to be initiated by the user which to me is the biggest difference.

That is not to say that I don’t think that it is somewhat evil, especially for a company with the offical policy of Do No Evil and further more sets a very bad precident.

Hell, even Microsoft gave you a way to add tags to your page to disable the smart tags, Google hasn’t even provided that – fortunately third party developers have developed tools for web publishers that do not want Google re-writing their pages. Additionally unlike smart tags auto links look exactly like the other links on the page, visually nothing is different between Google’s inserted links and the original page authors links.

Personally it’s the slippery slope that I find the most troubling. If Google is willing to re-write web page content with this feature does it mean that they are willing to do similar things with other features? How about some sort of combination of the cached versions of their search results and ad words? I would hope not, but this Auto Link feature make me wonder anyway.

I have been a huge Google fan since jump, but this unilateral, dubious move is at least making me re-examine how I look at Google.