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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."
Google, the world's most widely used search engine, denied that the AutoLink feature is an attempt to control which destinations Web surfers visit.
I haven't looked that deep into the Google toolbar. How customizable is it? I can only imagine that it doesn't allow you to use any site that you want for maps, directions, etc -- you probably have to choose from Google's list, right? The article mentions a choice between Yahoo and Mapquest. Can I input my own URLs in there (similar to the way Konqueror's URL replacement works)? Can any company that provided maps/driving directions be added to that list? If neither of these are the case, then it's a form of control...
Then again I could always just get the damn map myself without using the Google toolbar...
Slightly off-topic, but I can cite prior art for use of ISBN numbers to trigger links to booksellers back to the mid/late 90s, when Amazon first created their affiliate program. One of the first Wikis would look for ISBN in the text of pages and automatically turn them into links to Amazon.
I have not used the Google toolbar - I use Firefox under linux - however I have RTFA and what is described to me sounds rather dirty play on googles part. The action of modifying web pages containing addresses or ISBN to drive click through traffic seems pretty low to me. While im not sure what to make of the patent infringements allegations (inserting smart tags into html at development time is rather different from using search technology to do this on the fly - although the result may be the same) Im not keen on google using theses kinds of pratices it blackens their reputation and seems more like the kind of stunt Microsoft would pull. Google need to be extra vigilent now that Redmond have stepped up the fight. My advice to google would be to keep their face clean. Its not just surfers that are going to be miffed with this but developers and their customers too.
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Does this cover autolinking of URLs, like every decent mail or IM client does with text messages ?
Randomly musing here, but surely Google is creating a derivative work by modifying the pages before they are seen by the user? This would make them in breach of copyright if true (unless they have the permission of the author of the page, which seems pretty unlikely).
Of course, you could argue that the user is creating the derivative work and just using google as the means to do this, but I think modifying content to this extent falls outside fair use.
Ironic then that they are (allegedly) infringing on Microsoft's patent (a form of intellectual property) while they infringe on other people's copyrights (another form of IP).
SmarTags is not an 'obvious' thing, and definately should be granted a patent.
While SmartTags for IE were THAT as useful (though still useful, IMO), SmartTags for Office is probably the best feature that has been added to Office thus far.
Google is snapping up Microsoft employees (current and ex) left and right. While there's nothing wrong with that, in this case it is a problem for the part that you failed to quote:
In other words, he's breaking his NDA and knowingly violating a pending patent by carrying over the same ideas he had at Microsoft to Google. It sounds silly, but when he filed for a patent while a Microsoft employee, he gave those thoughts to Microsoft. To use them now at Google would require a licensing agreement with Microsoft.This is the kind of problem I'm surprised we haven't seen more of in the software industry. Developers are highly mobile, often changing jobs (voluntarily or involuntarily), and part of the reason to hire you over someone else is your skills and ideas. If the main idea you're bringing to the plate for my company is the same idea you patented at your last job, I don't want you. You'll only get me in legal trouble (and get yourself in legal trouble, violating your previous NDA).
It'll be interesting to see how this turns out, whether Microsoft goes after the person as well as the company. (The majority of Microsoft's legal history involves them as the defendent. They haven't often initiated lawsuits of their own.)
Whenever I get a google search result that is full of spam, I usually try several other search engines, but the other engines results are normally worse than what Google gives me.
If you know a search engine that is less susceptible to spam than Google, please share!
Doug Moen.
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
.......to the worlds economy. It hasn't happened completely yet but that is what all the indicators say are coming soon to a reality near you. Here me out on this, this IP patent nonsense is tied to global power play economics in a big way..
We no longer are the premier manufacturer, and soon we won't be the largest customer/consumer base either. Within this decade this is happening, all the think tank analysts have said more or less the same thing, because the raw data is just raw data and it's just not that hard to see it.
Software can be written anywhere, it is no longer the arcane and exclusive province of a few thousand people in high level corporate or governmental/academic circles. It's a cheap commoditised "product" that x-millions create daily and x-tens of millions will be doing shortly within a few years. And most of the rest of the world is going to a FOSS model a lot quicker than we are, because of the benefits they see in it. That's not my call, just what you can see happening and read about.
Manufacturing of tangibles goes to those who care to do it, see Asia,the west made a decision via their "leaders" to minimise that because it was "too hard" or something, so there ya go. And despite people thinking software is all that important, tangibles still rule economically and in geopolitical importance, people eat real food, not virtual food, they drive real cars, not video game cars,they live in real homes not some ridiculous sim city environment. And etc, etc, etc.
Software is important,no one will deny that, but it's still the tool, not the product. Software more exists (outside of "entertainments") to facilitate production of Tangible Stuff mostly, of and by itself it's not as important except for that task, and the freer the better the faster the gooder it is,and patenting really balls up that process, s-o-o-o-o, software is coming from the FOSS world now, and it will only get better. and the two just don't mix, patents and FOSS. It's a bad idea really to even try.
Raw materials and energy come from where they come from, the US uses a lot more than we produce, so we fail it there as well economically. Just this year we even switched to a net ag products importer from exporter, the last thing we were the world leader in.
In short, all we have are weapons and hollywood and music as exports of note,all the other traditional exports are in decline,they are not going to recover, and patents on dubious software advances are a phony way to say we are still producing ultra valuable commodities, and are a last ditch paper work shuffling effort to make that fantasy come true, but the rest of the world ain't buying that. It's like calling all the stock market numbers the same as real money, it just ain't so. Patented "IP" is beyond a "tech bubble" phenomenon, it actually serves as a form of economic strangulatory suicide, except for a few people for a relatively short period of time. It's a smokescreen to feed to the US public to keep them faked out we still produce much.
Really, the only thing keeping the US afloat and uberimportant economically right this second is we have a force projection expansionist based military, a doofus at the top who is more than willing to use it, for all practical purposes a mercenary military dedicated to a small handful of transnationals and their controllers (I am sorry for that but it's true and I wish it weren't so...sorry), and the amount of our global debt we have accumulated. And we are in no position to actually pay this debt with anything real or intrinsically valuable, so they came up with this whopper fantasy game of "patenting" IP so that we could demand real stuff-money,goods and services for it, from "everyone else", that guy, and coincidently help to assuage the day of reckoning with this debt and no-tangible-work fiasco they got us into.
And it won't work, because the rest of the planet just ain't that dumb no mo' no mo'