RE: Google Sidewiki: Do [No?] Evil

Really interesting post.  Although I would argue that "loss of control" of the conversation by a published (blogger, web site, etc) is not  a "bad thing" per se.  Just as a publishers "owns" their content, readers have a right to "own" their feedback and comments.

If you have something to say that is at odds with the web site owner - you may have no recourse to having your comments deleted.  You also may not find it easy to find all the comments you created across the web (unless sites are using Disqus or similar commenting services).

But I would agree that there could be a problem with loosing focus - if conversations are distributed in too many places, it can leave some readers out of the loop.

Hopefully, Google will make it easy to integrate SideWiki comments into the display of a page itself (of course, with additional moderation capability by the site owner).