I hate it when companies change my stuff, especially whey they automatically link words in something I have written. I am not talking about those hover links that Yahoo and many other sites use (usually underlined twice or as a dotted line), but rather a normal, permanent link that appears even when sent to another site (like Gmail). Google caught some flak for this back in 2005 when they added an auto-link feature to their Google Toolbar. I just recently found out that Yahoo Mail does this. This is something you can easily reproduce on your own:
So why exactly does Yahoo feel the need to edit my emails? As far as I can tell, they are not adding any affiliate or tracking information to the links, so I doubt they are getting paid for doing this. There seems to be no consistency that I can detect; they link to Fox News but not CNN and they link to Comcast but not Time Warner. Adding a “.com” seems to always cause a link, except in the case where the company name is all capital letters, like CNN.com. I tried this with Google’s Gmail and they did not link anything, as a draft or when I sent it to myself. I then sent the same email to Yahoo Mail from Gmail and, surprise surprise, the exact same company names were linked. So it seems that Yahoo Mail is not only editing the emails I send to other people, but also the emails I receive. I find this to be unacceptable. Please feel free to add a comment about any other service you use that also adds permanent links to your content.
Here is a list of companies I tried that Yahoo did auto-link:
Here is a list of companies I tried that Yahoo did not auto-link:
|
|||
n01getsoutOpen Source, Open Mind |
User login |
|
Recent blog postsPopular contentToday's:
|
|
 |
