Salon is doing a little bit of self-promotion on their cover story today about media consolidation online. The article focuses on the troubles independent publishers are facing in the shadows of AOL, Microsoft, Disney & Viacom. But there was an interesting passage concerning Microsoft's Windows XP:

As Microsoft readies the next mass-market version of Windows XP, provocative tidbits of its "integrations" have surfaced. The most outrageous gambit is a little innovation known as Smart Tags -- a tool that automatically adds new links to documents. You don't choose where on the Internet these links point to; Microsoft does.

In Windows XP, Microsoft intends to extend Smart Tags to the Web browser, usurping the heretofore-unchallenged right of a Web site operator to decide where links point.

Smart tags scare me.