Yesterday, I blogged about Snap, a reasonably interesting new search engine that unveiled at the Web 2.0 conference. Today, an alert reader pointed out Snap's unbelievably bullshit linking policy — the idea that any company that is this clueless could end up a critical piece of the Web's infrastructure is so revolting it makes me want to take a bath.
Unless a User has a written agreement in effect with us which states otherwise, User may only provide a hyperlink to the Site on another Web site, if you comply with all of the following: (a) the link must be a text-only link clearly marked "snap.com" or "www.snap.com"; (b) the link must "point" to the URL "http://www.snap.com" and not to other pages within the Site; (c) the link, when activated by a User, must display the Site full-screen and not within a "frame" on the linking Web site; and (d) the appearance, position and other aspects of the link must not be such as to damage or dilute the goodwill associated with our name and trademarks or create the false appearance we are associated with or sponsor the linking Web site. Perfect Market reserves the right to revoke its consent to any link at any time in its sole discretion.
I mean, imagine if the only way you could link to Google was to use nothing but the word "Google" as the linktext and if you could only link to the Google frontpage (and not any of the search-result pages), and you couldn't scrape, frame or otherwise munge Google results — kee-rist, it'd be a frigging apocalype.
Search engines demand our trust and our goodwill, and they cry out to be an authorative namespace for locations relevant to query terms. For Snap to assert that it can own how you can link to them — despite the fact that this is nonsensical in both law and practice — displays such an imponderable depth of contempt and ignorance for the Web's norms that it is truly unforgivable. I've just removed playing with Snap from my list of things to do for the next hundred years or so. Maybe you should, too.
(Thanks, Jim!)
Update: Snap founder Bill Gross sez, "Cory, thanks for catching that and posting. We're changing the policy, so thanks!"
No word on the rest of the copyright policy, which includes a ban on "creating derivative works" with Snap results.
