Microsoft Smart Tags do not seem such a smart idea after all

From the "what can they have been thinking" department comes Microsoft's apparent plan to include a feature called Smart Tags in upcoming versions of its ubiquitous Internet Explorer Web browser. Or maybe not: public outcry may have changed its mind.

Smart Tags would allow links to be added to any Web page by third parties, disregarding the site's creator.

If links have been created using Smart Tags, words and phrases within a given page are highlighted by a squiggly line beneath them, which would indicate a link to other Web pages that the third party has decided to associate with that word or phrase.

What has really angered people is that Microsoft would be one of the third parties creating the links. The word "computer" on any Web page could automatically link to a selection of Microsoft-sanctioned content.

The Smart Tags issue has caused much venting of developer spleen over the past month, not least because many developers working with beta releases of Microsoft's new version of Windows, called Windows XP, knew nothing at all about it as the offending feature was not included in the beta release they received. Instead, most seem to have found out about the tags when the Wall Street Journal's widely read technology columnist, Mr Walter Mossberg, wrote about them in early June. He got them as part of his beta package for XP - pencilled in slated for public release in late October - and was rightly taken aback that Smart Tags might become a standard part of the XP browser.

Since then, plenty of ink and pixels have been spilled over the issue. Smart tags have inflamed developers, site creators and Web users because they completely alter the whole structure and philosophy of the Web.

Links are the soul of the Web. They move people along to new information and connections. But central to their function is the knowledge that the site creator has sanctioned the links - that one source is telling the visitor that travelling to the suggested point on the Web is an extension of, and somehow related to, the site one is browsing.

But with Smart Tags, anyone who understands the procedure for creating the tags could create links of their choosing to your site, which all your site visitors using an Internet Explorer browser would see. That "anyone" could be your competitors, your suppliers, your neighbour that you annoyed last week or that demented customer who has been threatening to sue.

To the site visitor, it would not be clear who had added the links. The visitor might think it was you that was linking to that Microsoft site on e-business.

Imagine this notion in the bricks-and-mortar world. Your morning paper might arrive full of annotations placed there by some unknown person. The annotations might provide commentary on ideas the annotator found offending - a critical article on Microsoft, for example. Or imagine receiving a magazine full of inserts that would provide advertisements, all from the same company, associated with dozens of topics discussed on any given page. Imagine a Father Ted episode or LiveLine call-in that kept cutting to brief ads when some trigger word was mentioned.

At the very least, such processes would prove highly annoying. I, for one, would find it exasperating to try to read a Web page cluttered with highlighted words and terms that the site creator hadn't intended to be there.

More insidiously, Smart Tags offer the possibility of a peculiar kind of censorship, in which the site visitor becomes the unwitting target of third-party opinions and perspectives disguised as "helpful" links.

For site creators, control of a site passes on to anyone who feels like adding a bit of link graffiti.

What Microsoft amazingly seems to be unable to see is that a website is a personal publishing format, whether it be for an individual or an organisation. Smart Tags are an invasion of that personal space, the equivalent of others being able to annotate your business card, brochure or opinions. For online news outlets, Smart Tags are deeply worrying because they would create a bizarre situation. Someone else could edit content within a publication.

But maybe it won't happen. According to an e-mail from a Microsoft insider received last weekend by US developer Robert Scoble, the company is backing away from making Smart Tags a default feature of Internet Explorer.

The company is apparently shocked at the angry reaction to Smart Tags and the fact that both the media and the wider Web community have been hammering away at the issue for several weeks. Those opinions have been voiced in the way they should - on paper, on the news, in online discussion groups. Not by invasively annotating Microsoft's website or press releases in the way that Smart Tags would allow.

klillington@irish-times.ie