BLOG: Is Google Sidewiki giving hijackers the keys to the world's web sites?

By Alistair Houghton on Nov 3, 09 09:00 AM

LDP Creative Blogger Dougal Paver with his views on Google's Sidewiki

GOOGLE recently did something remarkable. More remarkable was the fact that its seismic implications have yet to be properly understood by web site owners and the media.

The search engine has developed an application, Sidewiki, that can be installed on its home page and which allows users to post comments down a side panel on any web site in the world. Site owners can't edit comments or delete them, though they do have a right of reply.
Think about that for a moment. Anyone with a grudge can hijack your site's Sidewiki panel with a constant barrage of negativity, forcing site owners to respond continuously in order to protect their reputation.
That, dear readers, is a prospective nightmare for any business involved in anything vaguely contentious; for royalty, celebrities and others in the public eye; and for anyone with competitors who aren't below stooping to a little skulduggery.
Lawyers are licking their lips and, to be honest, it presents issues and opportunities for consultancies like mine, too.
But the questions I'm asking are why and how Google think it's a good thing to despoil the look and feel of people's web sites and whether it is naturally just to deny people the right to edit comments - defamatory, libellous or maliciously false, perhaps - that are technologically 'pinned' to their home page?
A case of Google taking its market power just a bit too far? Or democracy with a mouse taken to its natural conclusion? The debate around this will, I suspect, run and run.
There's comfort in the decency, sound common sense and moderation of most folk - witness the reliability of tripadvisor as a source of balanced comment on hotels and restaurants, for example.
Because Sidewiki only works if you've downloaded it as part of your Google toolbar (meaning the side panel doesn't appear on a site if you haven't enabled this feature) I think there's room for salvation and am prepared to make you a bet: punters will get so fed up with the more asinine and extreme comments of people that they'll disable the facility and seek more balanced information elsewhere.
Like spam email, Sidewiki could well be a technology that kills itself.

Dougal Paver is managing director of Paver Smith in Liverpool

For Google's official blog on Sidewiki, click here

And for a look inside Google UK's London HQ, click here to see the LDP Creative gallery