Just got a note from a Microsoft PR guy who tells me that another statement made to me about Smart Taga is untrue. A product Smart Tag product manager had told me that site owners wishing to stop display of tags could put a single meta-tag on their home pages. In general, that would block browser display of tags throughout the site, he said.
“It does take one tag per page,” the PR guy now says. “Jim Allchin said late last week he will change this (or will try) by the time the product ships.”
That’s better than nothing, I guess. But you should ask yourself why Microsoft wrote the code this way.
I chalk it up to the company’s utter, willful belief that we would all just eat what Microsoft put on our plate. Sheesh.
Dave Winer: Does Microsoft own the Web now? It would have been much more fair and reasonable to require an opt-in on the part of websites. It would be a minor change to their code. That way we could try the feature before commiting all our web content to Microsoft’s new idea of linking on the Web. Instead we have to scurry and waste a ton of time and money to keep integrity in our work.