Google Patents Search Algorithm

blastedtokyo writes "Google gets the first web search patent. According to this News.com.com article, Google was able to patent how they crawl and rank web pages. They claim "an improved search engine that refines a document's relevance score based on interconnectivity of the document within a set of relevant documents.""

Comments

Good for them...

[DCowern]

They thought of a way to improve upon an existing invention. They were the first to do it. They want to make money from their idea. It's only logical for them to seek a patent. I guess congratulations are in order!

Re:Good for them...

[Qzukk]

The problem with the patent system today (in my view) isn't whether or not software should be patented, it is the complete crap that comes out of the PTO. They have no incentive to do things right, no disincentive against doing things wrong, so they just grant patents on crap.

What needs to be done is first: fix the backlog so that it no longer takes years to grant a patent. Open new patent courts, hire more people, charge more for the patents, whatever it takes.

Second: The USPTO needs to be responsible for its output. If a patent is overturned as invalid, court fees and the original cost of filing the patent should come out of its pocket.

Third: Mandatory implementation. For a patent to be valid it must be implemented by someone, somewhere. If the holder of the patent is unable to implement the patent, it must accept at least one request to license the patent for implementation under generally accepted RAND practices. This prevents people from patenting something with no intention of ever producing that invention, for the purpose of preventing that invention from being produced.

Fourth: establish a class of patents specifically for software. Things not in this class of patents cannot be used to claim software infringes. Turnaround must be quick, and part of the patent process should be "does someone else sell this product already" which should be relatively easy, compared to looking through millions of patents.

Software patents will expire after two years, renewable once (at the price of the original patent) for another year. This better matches the reality of software development. It provides people a head start without granting them an essentially perpetual monopoly.

Prevent the spread of a deficient technology.

[expro]

So, the bright side of this patent is that perhaps it will keep others from focusing on Google's obsession -- the reference popularity contest. But like any patent, it is subject to abuse, not that we know at all how Google intends to enforce it.

I have requested improvements to Google's algorithms for years to make it more possible to search for a specific thing, rather than just a popular thing, but they don't have engineers, apparently, who understand these basic needs.

AltaVista lets you wildcard, search for one word NEAR another word, use common words as part of a phrase, and construct a variety of very useful filters that are impossible with Google's popularity engine.

AltaVista used to be the best out there, but compromised their own usefulness. If AV indexed more pages and had not dropped their usenet coverage, it would still be the most useful engine by far to an advanced searcher -- one looking for very specific things. I still go there often. Just because the masses use Google does not make it quality or best for advanced users. They have stagnated for years now. The masses use a lot of things produced by monopolists who are no longer required to innovate or even improve to the level of the competition.

Re:Mis-title

[johnnyb]

What I found particularly cool about their algorithm was that they can return results for pages that google has not read. If there is a link to a page google has not read on a page that google is reading, it can still return results to the unread page based on the context of the link, and the popularity of the link on other pages. Really nifty stuff.