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Is Google AutoLink Patent-Pending By Microsoft?
theodp writes "While Google pooh-poohed any comparison of its controversial AutoLink feature to Microsoft's SmartTag technology, Google's generation of dynamic links to maps and use of ISBN numbers to trigger links to booksellers cover the same territory as Microsoft's 2000 patent application for Providing electronic commerce actions based on semantically labeled strings, whose sole inventor - Jeff Reynar - was the lead SmartTag Program Manager while at MS and is reportedly now a Google Product Manager who's being credited as AutoLink's creator. Reynar's patent applications that have been assigned to Microsoft, including one for Smart Links and Tags, describe a world of 'recognizer' plug-ins that automatically look at every document a user creates, receives or views, transmitting messages to 'action' plug-ins - and even to the plug-ins' authors - that can be used to decide what info you'll be presented with, what options you'll be given, what price you'll pay for goods, and even who you'll be permitted to buy from."
For the love of michael, just make a legal section. This is not about our rights. Not yours, not mine, just Google's. Sheesh.
Sure. Everything gets patented these days. Do we really need a separate story every time someone digs up something like this?
> that can be used to decide what info you'll be presented with,
> what options you'll be given, what price you'll pay for goods,
> and even who you'll be permitted to buy from.
All the better reason to not let anyone online know who you are, where you've been, and where you come from.
RST
...who cares?
Eventually, as in every other case like this, there will be a lawsuit.
One side will win, the other won't. In either case, the loser will just change some small piece of the technology, and it will no longer infringe, if it even did in the first place.
The lawyers will get rich.
None of us will be affected in the slightest.
Cynical? Maybe. But before moderating, ask yourself if I'll end up being right.
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Perhaps Google should now come out against patents in Europe.
Afterall their patents on search technology are worthless, anyone could use Pagerank and Google could not show they had used it -> failed attempt to protect invention.
Their newer search technology (they changed the algo last year), hasn't been disclosed in patent form and so the SEOs & competitors don't know how it works and MS couldn't copy it -> successful defence of invention.
They don't hold enough patents to join the "big company patent exchange club".
At this point it doesn't matter if it is a breach of the NDA. As soon as Google starts making money form it, Microsoft will send them a take down and sue them for "lost revenues".
In Microsoft vs. the DoJ Microsoft won (even though it doesn't say that in the court documents)
In Microsoft vs. Google who will win?
I for one, welcome our new price gouging, thought controlling overlords.
What is this new that you speak of? They've been there forever, this is just a new form of it.
"..that automatically look at every document a user creates, receives or views, transmitting messages to 'action' plug-ins - and even to the plug-ins' authors - that can be used to decide what info you'll be presented with, what options you'll be given, what price you'll pay for goods, and even who you'll be permitted to buy from."
...
Interesting that anti-spyware has shown fresh installs of MS windows OS has spyware that tracks online use
Where are our privacy laws and fair competition laws?
Or do we really know who has bought them away from us?
The only way for this to be faired up is to allow any and everyone who wants to use such a thing, to be able to. Just like the solution to the "trillion dollar bet">/a> was faired up, via exposure and wide scope use.
Or in other words: nobody gets an unfair (anti-competition) advantage in marketing via patenting some automated privacy invading information collecting marketing process.
Most software is NOT patentable as shown by abstraction physics", and that certainly includes this.
Would anybody care if this feature was pulled from Google's toolbar? In my opinion this is a non-issue.
This doesn't seem like a malicious feature intended to force users to visit certain sites whenever Google should so choose: users don't have to download the toolbar or use the feature. The fact that people use the Google toolbar in the first place suggests that they appreciate the usability enhancements it offers, and auto-linking is more likely to help than hinder. Google Maps, for example, is the most user-friendly map service around, and it's a choice that most people would make anyway. The same argument could be made about Amazon.
from a search engine to the worlds largest e-commerce engine.
When I search for, for instance, HP Laserjet schematics, I get 40 pages of assholes peddling toner cartridges and refill kits.
That's NOT what I asked for, I want to find schematics that I can view. I don't want to buy a frigging CDROM with schematics on ebay, or laddersearch or toner carts or any of the other nonsense that google throws at me.
God I despise google. It has become the most useless of all search engines but the most profitable of all investments for online peddlers..
Is Google finally... EVIL? ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Good and bad companies alike will be forced to dance this silly legal jig.
The only real voice we have in this battle is our wallets. I'm sending my spare dimes where they can best help fight this stuff.
Don't hate the players - fix the game.
Rob Enderle's excellent new book: Everything I needed to know about Computer Science I learned in Marketing School
Personally, I find your post disturbing. Reading it, it is clear your only conclusion is that anybody who is pro-Microsoft is merely doing it to appear as an independent thinker, which is absolute rubbish.
You misunderstood me then. This is not about "hating Microsoft". I've defended Microsoft plenty of times. They do get bashed a lot here, sometimes fairly, sometimes not. When people attack them simply for selling closed-source software, for example, I always defend them. But look at the context here. The story is about Microsoft holding a patent. The OP says this has nothing to do with us, only Google. I remarked that we are all in the same legal boat as Google, along with anyone else who is not Microsoft, because Microsoft is the patent holder. Which is entirely uncontroversial, I'm thinking, because it's a simple statement about patent law that happens to be true. The same applies to Google and their patents.
That elicits this response: "So, because Google is still 'good' (but for how long???), they can own a stupid patent like this, and because MicroSloth is 'bad', they can't???" I read that and thought, huh, is this guy even responding to the right post? Did he RTFA? Google hasn't even filed a patent. All they've done so far is implement a stupid feature.
To Microsoft's credit, I see nothing about a cease-and-desist, and I expect that the two companies will simply trade patents. But I'm not going to sit back and pretend for anybody that Microsoft's software patents hold no legal significance when they do.
What you're advocating is that everyone adopt your viewpoint because you just so happen not to consider it groupthink as you do for someone who might--gasp--not personally hate Microsoft, a computer software company. Such people should really get a life.
No, I was really just surprised that the great-grandparent was moderated -1, Troll while a factually misleading non-sequitur immediately sailed up to a 5, Insightful. I've seen this a lot recently- "pro-MS" posts (including my own) get modded up immediately, in a way that they didn't seem to a few years ago. I don't think MS or its employees are purposefully gaming the system (what a complete waste of time that would be) but I do think that geeks and nerds, being a relatively independently-minded set, tire easily of opinions that they hear expressed very frequently or uniformly, and will commonly adopt an opposite opinion at least partly for that reason. So I suspected groupthink was at work. Maybe the attitude shift simply reflects an influx of Windows users with high-numbered IDs in recent years, but I doubt it.
The other post (the "troll") may have presented a rosy view of Google's legal department but it made a crucial observation that keeps evading Microsoft's defenders and Google's bashers in this "smart tags" saga- that Google has not registered or applied for any smart-tag patents. I started writing the grandparent mostly just to quote that with a +2 bonus, since you guys certainly won't see it at -1.