Google has submitted a patent application which is entitled "ENHANCED DOCUMENT BROWSING WITH AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED LINKS TO RELEVANT INFORMATION" - Simply put, this technology means that if you have the google toolbar installed with your browser, then google could change some of the websites that you are looking at to add links to other relevent content where there are no links defined in the native HTML of the website you are viewing. these links would be generated from either personalised information on your browsing habits, or based on the number of other people who go on from reading the current page to another similar topic page.

All sounds a bit altruistic, however, if you consider that other companies pay google to add links on their search engine results, why not pay google to add links to other websites? For example, how valuable would it be for say a carpet shop in london to have links back to it's site automatically generated from any website that is about buying carpets in the South East? Or on a bigger scale, have any text with your trademark (eg coke cola) automatically changed into a link to the coke websites. The potential marketing opportunity is quite large. However, with this opportunity comes risks. Do we really want this feature added to websites? wouldn't we rather see websites as the author intended and not interferred with by a browser add-on (or done automatically by google chrome)?

Note that this is just a patent application, one of many hundreds that google submit on a regular basis, and does not necessarily mean that this will ever be put into practice.

Personally, I think this patent has been submitted just to plant google's flag on the idea and it will never be put in to practice. The privacy implications, the potential backlash from content authors and the risk to business relations are probably too great to alow this idea to become reality. Saying that, I've been wrong before about some of google's less than brilliant marketing strategies.