Apture acquired by Google
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I hate those things, I often highlight as I scroll to keep my focus on where I'm reading and every time I accidentally trigger these.
Apture breaks the web in many ways. As you note it screws up and steals/hijacks mouse behavior. It also round trips to their servers any selection you make, making it a privacy leak. They make it hard to opt-out of their javascript menace, and it clutters up a page.
"a browser extension" if it were solely a browser extension I wouldn't mind it so much. The behavior that is most borrowsome is the stuff they license to folks like the NYTimes, the Apture Hotspots.
My concern is as to if/when this gets rolled into core Chrome. As long as the functionality is loading over the wire, I'll remain hopeful that I can block it and that sites will remain usable in that state. If it's an extention or plug in that I can disable, I can live with that as well, I guess. If it's baked in... Well, I guess it won't be baked into Firefox et al.
I don't mind useful, opt-in lookup features. For example, the Babelfish Firefox extension that does select and click translation. But such features continue to be killed off. I suspect initiatives like this purchase are instead intended more to "game" me into further staying/interacting with "blessed" sites and their subsidiary or partner content.
It's their content, I guess. But I'll probably "opt out".
I hate anything that puts underlines / icons into the texts I'm reading. Not to mention, it is borderline spamvertisement and even virus-like.
I wish someone would track which kind of acquisition is made and let me track it by acquiring company. From my limited vantage point, Google seems to make mostly talent acquisitions and that generally makes me sad.
Anyone know which this was?
http://www.yarone.com/2011/02/rocketmenu-unobtrusive-search-...
Apture Science, we do what we can because we must.