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Amazon Takes Pikachu To The Patent Office
theodp writes "On Tuesday, Amazon was awarded a patent for Search Query Autocompletion. From the Summary of the Invention--'For example, if Pokemon toys are currently the best selling or most-frequently-searched-for items within the database, the term POKEMON may be suggested whenever a user enters the letters "PO," even though many hundreds of other items in the database may start with "PO.'" See, Amazon practices the mantra "Gotta catch 'em all" with patents.
The only exception is that browsers autocomplete based on a previous entry rather than based on speculation about what it thinks you're looking for.
"Want in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up first." - My Dad
Actually, it's not just a simple spell check. I can't find any current examples, but when you used to search for "nekked", Google would say, "Did you mean nekkid?" (I was having a debate with someone as to whether "nekked" or "nekkid" was more commonly used... no, really!)
It probably has more to do with the number of hits that a similarly-spelled word word has - if there are a lot more for that one than the current one, it makes a suggestion.