“Google Turns the Web into a Giant Wiki – The Blogs at HowStuffWorks”:

Probably the most rational and least hysterical analysis of this so far.

Basically this new feature of the Google Toolbar, a plugin for Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers in case you’re not familiar, allows anyone to write and read annotations on any web pages.

The question here, as a web site owner, is do you really want any old Tom Dick and rival website owner leaving possibly disparaging remarks on your web pages?
The comments and remarks will be archived by Google and so far there is no indication that you as the website owner will have any control over what comments remain visible.

Google do say they will adopt some form of editorial control based on “Algorithms” to determine which comments are the most relevant. This is not good enough. The website owner is the only person who should have that control.

If you don’t have the Google Toolbar installed and activated you can’t contribute comments or see any comments which have been left. They won’t just pop up on their own.

My opinion of the Google Toolbar has always been, don’t install it, you don’t need it. But I realise millions of people have it installed and some of them may see a good game here.

This should be an opt in only option for website owners. A simple piece of code similar to the Google analytics code that would tell Google Toolbar “no wikithanks” must be possible.

How about it Google?