Old Microsoft ties to new Google feature

Google, the "Brad and Jen" of the Internet industry, caused a commotion in the blogosphere and among Web veterans last week with the release of a toolbar feature that inserts hyperlinks in Web pages.

Parallels were quickly drawn to Microsoft's Smart Tag technology, which was yanked in Internet Explorer years ago for trust and trademark issues. Now it is circulating that the key employee behind Google's autolinking feature, called AutoLink, also had a hand in developing Microsoft's Smart Tags.

Jeff Reynar, former Microsoft product manager and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, currently works as a product manager at Google. His interests lie in statistical natural-language processing, a key facet of Web search.

Thickening the plot, Microsoft might have the patent on an autolinking method for e-commerce, which Reynar authored. Is this a link to a future court tussle?