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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.
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
But, when I see this, I have this feeling of overlords or something.
Wierd.
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".
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...
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?
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
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.
Google good.
Microsoft bad.
"..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..
Does this cover autolinking of URLs, like every decent mail or IM client does with text messages ?
Is Google finally... EVIL? ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
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).
unless...
(anti-MS paranoid mode ON)
1) get ex employee into a competing company (as a "mole")
2) the employee, as previously instructed, comes up with an idea the ex-employer has already patented
3) wait until idea is deployed
4) sue
5) (no ???)
6) profit!!!
BTW I don't like smart tags, Google's or anyone else's.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Yes.
I love it when Slashdot uses headlines that can be answered in a single word. Makes commenting so much easier.
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.
Apple had an API some years before the entire Microsoft "smart tags" mess which allowed programs to sign up to flag certain types of text anywhere in the system and define operations you could do on them. It was an experimental/research thing, like OpenDoc, and I don't believe it ever was allowed into an OS release, you had to download it. The only plugin that this API came with-- and as far as I know the only one that anyone ever bothered making-- was one that recognized URLs and email addresses whenever they were printed anywhere in the system, and turned them into functional hyperlinks. I am afraid I can't remember the exact name, it was something really generic like "Apple Text Activation Services".
The only thing this patented Microsoft system seems to add is the idea of the link being calculated on a remote server rather than locally; this is a truly trivial step from what Apple's system explicitly did, and one that may not even exactly describe the google toolbar system.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
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'
Better come lock me up! I know how things work and how to program; I'm a dangerous fellow!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The new toolbar creates links on specific text if no links exist, but you can shield this text with a null link and make the toolbar look like it's broken. Instructions here.
This patent should not be granted.
c m.html
I can't for the life of me remember the name for it, but back in the days of MacOS 9, Apple had some software that would parse any text on the screen and present you with a contextual menu that would be full of links to various things you could do with it.
It would be able to recognize a physical address and present you with a map. It could recognize email and web addresses in any application. It would add dates to your calendar and any number of other definable things.
Thats the name...
Apple Data Detectors.
http://www.miramontes.com/writing/add-cacm/add-ca
Would this not be exactly what the SmartTags patent is all about?
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.