Google has shut down, turned off, and disabled, its new page annotations feature. The feature where Google hijacked your content, placed links in your content, links you didn't add yourself, and directed your content to Google Search. It is no longer, Google shut it down.
As a reminder, the page annotations feature worked in the iOS Google app when you are browsing a web page in the Google App native browser, Google can "extract interesting entities from the webpage and highlight them in line." When you click on them, Google takes you to more search results.
GREG FINN GETS FULL CREDIT FOR THIS HAPPENING for his Change.org petition :)
Here is what the Page Annotation feature looks like:
Google now posted a notice that "The Page Annotations feature is no longer available." Google removed it from its documentation because it is no longer.
This should make everyone happy - I mean, I don't even know what Google was thinking when they decided to launch this feature. What did they expect from content owners...
Sure, there was an opt out of page annotations but it was delayed and a hack job.
Here is how Google initially announced this page annotations feature:
We’ve created a new feature called Page Annotation in the Google App browser for iOS. It extracts interesting entities from the webpage and highlights them in line. When the user clicks on the highlighted entity, it will direct the user to the search result page for this entity. Web publishers are able to opt websites they manage out of this feature by submitting this form.
In any event - the feature is gone, dissipated into the Google ethers.
Forum discussion at X.
