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Google Wireless Patents Published
Ian wrote to mention a ZDNet article about several patents on wireless technology held by Google employees. From the article: "The patent applications, filed by Google employees Wesley Chan, Shioupyn Shen and former Google product management director Georges Harik, propose lowering the cost of wireless access by offsetting the costs via advertisements on the service. Google, which receives the bulk of its revenue from advertisers, is seeking to expand its potential advertising base by moving further into the wireless market."
I will be master of the obvious- Giving things away for free is not a business model that leads to big profits. Give away ad supported free stuff is a different story....
I would take free wifi in exchange for looking at some ads-
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Patents on business model ideas, not working machines, are evil.
--
make install -not war
I'm not a programmer, but it sounds like Google is trying to patent a business model rather than an actual technology.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
I understand why patents and IP rights are crucial for innovation, and why the problem is lousy patents, not patents as a whole. These filings, though, sound like textbook cases of lousy patents. So, are all the GSycophants here going to engage in the same hysterical screeching we're getting two stories down on the E-Bay case, or is Google going to get the same approval Transmeta got?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Will Google Ads replace normal ads on a page if you're connecting with Google? That seems to be the only way I can really see Google making money off of this, and that seems to be slightly against their "Do No Evil" policy.
And I don't think they'll have users install a bar that shows ads at the top of their screens at all times. Remember services like NetZero? They didn't work, so how would Google manage working this?
Defensive patenting or not, this kind of crap has really got to stop.
I don't like monopolies, but linksys is free, ad-free, and conveniently ubiquitous. I sometimes have to deliberately tell my PC to connect to my own secured wireless AP so I can get to my files. It's almost annoying.
BTW how *does* linksys make their money, anyway?
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
now that the FCC has thrown their weight behind ATT and other service provider, Google has one option, become an even bigger service provider without using "Their line". By their lines of course I mean lines which were paid for with tax dollars on public lands.
There is a reason why google is picking up all those hardware guys and buying up dark fiber...it's not just for fun.
I guess if someone had patented the airing of commercials to offset tv and radio operating costs or print ads in magazines and newspapers, they'd have a monoploy?
Maybe I'll patent the wearing of logos on my clothing to offset the operating expenses of life...
... from having their entire business model come crashing to the ground. I have been thinking about the masses, the grandmas, etc. that don't have ad blocking software and that actually do see these advertisements, but how long will it take before the Operating System makers *cough* Microsoft *cough* start trying to "help" the user by blocking competitor ads by default through the OS and Windows Updates and deploying their own ads instead?
Many corporate enviroments already filter out ads through content blocking on their networks and that's a huge consumer market that aren't being reached (heck, I do all my "work" from work). How long until Cisco, Dell, etc. turn on this content filtering as their default policy?
Do these actions (blocking competitor content at either the network or OS level) constitute anti-trust activities?
I have a man crush on Google, no doubt, but I really wonder how they plan on succeeding with their current business model 10 years down the line. Or maybe, by then, everyone will be vested and no one from there will really care.
Hagrin.com
Drop the motto or start practicing what you preach.
Sincerely,
The-Not-Easily-Fooled
No, but I made cartoons of muslims having sex.
Does anyone know how many patents google has? And how many patent applications they've filed? How many are hardware and how many software? I tried googling for it and (ironically?) found no answers.
We know how many patents Microsoft has and that they apply for an average of 10 per week (at last count). So I'm curious how Google compares.
Developers: We can use your help.
Does no one at Google remember the NetZero days? Browsing with a sliver of window cluttered by advertisements?
Maybe they were all too rich to need free internet...???
Everything I say is a lie.
Except that. And that. And that. And that.
I remember quite a few dial-up schemes that were supposed to be "free" and "ad supported".
They seem to have all failed.
Why was this patented?
I am pretty sure that they aren't going to be worried about everyone having ads plastered on their screen. I would guess that they will let you play your games ad-free, and you will be subsidized by the 90% of web users who are going to have a browser open.
Let see patent 20060058019 if for changing your browser display to show the vendor or ad, Cisco has been providing this for years. The only thing that may make it different is that it requires that it is for free access.
Then 20060059044 in there words "the appearance of a screen presented on the client device is modified to reflect the bran associated with a provider of the access point. " This is what was seen in free dial-up services a long time ago, only difference now it is wireless.
Finally 20060059043 is one to provide free access by displaying ads. Again this was done at various times through dial-up and cable organizations.
It should not rate a patent to get something that was done under dial-up and cable and change it to wireless.
The game is to get your site into the top couple of links of actual results, and then display ads on your content pages upon which random users will inevitably click.
I'm not sure why I haven't gotten involved in this myself (to pay the rent), except that it smells slightly evil.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Maybe I'll patent the wearing of logos on my clothing to offset the operating expenses of life...
Funny, most people with those logos on paid a hefty premium on their clothing to be able to wear them.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
that is the goofiest thing I have ever heard. I intend to file papers today patenting swallowing, blinking, and the movement of liquids, such as blood, through a device to pressurize one side of the system and lower pressure on the other side.
and then start enforcing those patents on some of these airhead MBAs....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
As far as I can tell these are just patent applications. No patents have been awarded for these proposals.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I've used systems in Hotels where you need to use a browser to activate the service. Displaying *any* webpage results in the hotel's subscription webpage (a DNS trick?). Google's could work in a similar way.
I remember back when it was FREE and I didn't have any ads plastered on anything, thanks to the multiple easy hacks available. Considering how much better adblocking gadgetry is nowadays, I doubt it'll be long until someone hacks out a way past these ads.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Sooner or later the advertiser pool is going to dry up and Google is going to have to look to other sources of revenue. They can't keep banking their entire business profile on advertising. There are so many other sources trying to get your advertising dollar these days. One day someone is going to figure out a way to undercut Google and then it's all over for them.
Here's a copy of a story on slashgeo.org earlier this morning, there's a link to see "Google GeoAds".
Remember this story about location-aware AdSense? Google is still working on various ways to geolocate ads. All Points Blog shares their patent application for Wi-Fi location ad delivery and Google Local ads. Shimon Sandler explains the link between Google Base and those GeoAds and adds: "Wanna see it? Go to Google Local and type in the search box, booksellers nyc. You should see a little coffee cup in addition to the little red ballons. Click on the coffee cup, and an ad appears for Barnes & Noble with their logo, hyperlink, street location, and phone number."
Animoog.org
After reading this, it reminds me of the late 90's when people were handing out "free" internet access in exchange for showing ads on your screen. This is how NetZero got their start. I think the offer of free wireless internet is more appealing than free dial-up simply for the speed increase. Also, screen resolution has gotten higher, allowing for more usable space than with the ads from before. Anyone who actually used the free dial-up services knows what I'm talking about. The ads took up close to 25% of the screen. It was a little ridiculous.
If Google does what they did with GMail and have small, text-based ads that are relevant to what's being viewed, then I think it would be a viable option. Google doesn't like flashy banner ads, so I think this would be a better service. Only time will tell.
I think that with free Wi-Fi from anyone, and especially Google, would mean that more people see more ads. People that would normally pay for dialup, can now have a free and faster connection, seeing more pages, and more ads. I wonder if the revenue generated from more ad viewers would offset the cost of providing the Wi-Fi.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
That's a business plan JFC! I am starting think the extreme position of disallowing patents on software period makes the most sense. It will encourage innovation, create more competition for monopolists, and speed up delivery cycles. Although there will be downsides, in balance it seems the correct approach. This nonsense must stop. Now.
It's not the Linksis monopoly I'm worried about, it's my computer telling me I'm connected to the Fackovf network!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
From my point of view google has so far be a nice company, Why do they what to mesh up their reputation with patent? And mark my words a good reputation is theone thing a company can't buy for money! And don't say that is the only way you avoid others from doing so, and the they wont i enforce it... Cause if you publish the service first, considering you name is google, it will hit slashdot, and nobody will ever doub that you were first!!! Anyway, that a thing like this can be patented, is completely insane, from this day of I do truely believe that the majority of americans are stupid! ( If you are american and do see the madness then why do accept it? as far as I know you are the ones trying to create democrazy in Iraq, or what? )
As long as your relatives aren't stuffing, your Thanksgiving isn't totally evil.
--
make install -not war
If I were Google, which I'm not, I would give away the free wireless without any special patent because it's only going to help me. Why? Because Google ads are already all over the mother-loving internet. I don't need to create new ad space, it's already there, but what I can do is fine-grain my targeting so that instead of serving up an ad for a national mortgage broker, I can serve up the ad for the mortgage broker within 1 mile of the hotspot. It seems like a brilliant plan to me. You are reading an Email through Gmail that mentions Dentist, what is in the ad space? Dentists in your area. Even without creating new space the premium price that Google could charge for this would offset the cost of the WiFi. Sure, it assumes that those using the WiFi would be coming in contact with existing Google ads, but that's pretty much inevitable... and just for good measure, make the user sit through a 30-second rich media advertisement before they can roam free (like Salon's Day Pass). But that's just my 2-cents. Google doesn't even have to do anything like NetZero. They already have presence throughout the internet and once they can offer targeted ads by hotspot, they will have an advantage over overture and everybody else doing contextual advertising and once they've taken over the market they really will have a monopoly and then they can do whatever they want. But if Google doesn't already have this patent, I'm claiming the IP right now for the good of a competitive market.
That depends. If an average person wears the logos they have to pay a big premium. If a person who makes a lot of money wears the logos, THEY get paid to display it. Sounds perfectly fair to me.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
I think there is significant merit in the fact that this patent focuses on wireless access where previous incarnations were wired. The USPTO seems to agree. Read the Background section on application. This is most definitely about wireless access. Indeed, it seems to me that the entire raison d'etre for this one particular patent is that wireless access is too expensive, and therefore roll-out and adoption has been slow. Looks like they aim to address that with ad-based wireless. They obviously want to protect themselves by securing a patent.
Whether more people with WiFi access and broader wireless roll-out are intrisincally "good" or not, I don't really know. Seems like a nice thing to me, even if it does have the evil stigma of patents surrounding it (disclaimer: I've got 19 applications currently pending). But if Google brought unpatented, ad-based, free WiFi to a couple hundred thousand people in San Diego (for example) and another company patented that service out from under them and aimed to charge a fee, would that be "better" than Google never having had filed a patent at all? Seems to me there's some folks wouldn't mind having that guarantee that their free WiFi wouldn't be going away. I guess it boils down to trust. I trust the ads or whatever will be fairly unobtrusive.
Your statements about demographic databases and spending habits are non sequitur, and I'm unsure how they're on-topic or how they relate the patents discussed in the story.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Of course, these are merely PUBLISHED patents and are NOT enforceable patents unless they are ALLOWED and ISSUED.
Stop undressing me with your eyes. I'm ugly naked.
Minor correction: These are published patent applications. Patents have numbers like "6,123,456." Patent applications have numbers like "20060000001."
In fact, given the current length of pendency of software-related patent applications (nifty chart here), it's unlikely that the patent examiner for these patent applications has even read them yet, let alone responded with a rejection. The USPTO is just swamped (in large part, because Congress keeps diverting its funds, such that it can't hire enough patent examiners.)
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
It'll cost the same in the long run. Low prices in the beginning - possibly a year or two then back up to what cable companies will charge.
Just remember - the beauty of cable TV when it first rolled out was no commercials since you were paying for it. MTV used to advertise music without commercials. Now look at them.
Architectural Renderings
Either they patent it, or Microsoft/Yahoo/Somebodyelse does. It's not like they could afford to get hit by another 1B patent infringement lawsuit.
Interesting comment. Let's consider each:
Other mechanisms:
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
I've not read the patents, just the basic idea in TFA. The first one talks about modifying a browser's appearance to serve up ads when connecting to a wireless access point. So here's what you do:
1) Modify DNS so that every request gets 'wifi.google.com' appended to it (so 'slashdot.org' becomes 'slashdot.org.wifi.google.com'). Make sure DHCP is pushing your DNS servers. Correllary to this, block access to port 53 off your network.
2) Have every request get rewritten with the same IP address, or group of IP addresses.
3) Have a proxy server on that/those IP(s) serving up pages. The proxy discards the 'wifi.google.com' bit and gets the actual page from the real site, then rewrites the HTML, putting the original content in a frame beneath a smaller frame serving Google ads based on the content of the original page.
There's some fleshing out to be done there, especially regarding cookies and https, but nothing that couldn't be hammered out with a whiteboard, two markers, and a six pack of Diet Berries & Cream Dr. Pepper (yumm, tastes like happy!).
Considering pretty much every broadband provider I'm acquainted with is doing something similar (at least they're doing points #1 and #2), how much of a stretch is it to do #3? (Normally, the only do it for the first request, requiring you to accept their TOS. Hotels usually require it on every initial connect.)
Now, I don't know for certain that this is what the Google engineers have come up with. Maybe they're much more clever than I (nah, couldn't be). But whatever it is, it's going to look very similar to this. And if I can come up with this solution two minutes after reading the words "show ads on a browser to pay for wifi", how in the world could they think it qualifies for a patent???
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Google came into the online advertising world late and they are lucky no one patented online advertising before them. Yes Overture did something disgusting but that was late into the game, we're talking advertising, banners, CPM, CPC, not just bidding. Google is morphing into a disguting filthy animal. I don't care if "they're just as bad as anyone else", they are actually worse than the pioneers who paved the way for them and didnt set up patent landmines.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
- Web servers report the IP address of all connections to any CGI aware script interface.
- websites currently identify domains owning the IP address through an automated call to internic &/|| nslookup
- The concept of targeted web advertising is based on knowing who is submitting the request.
- The concept of providing 'free' advertising supported internet access has been used previously - (Juno,NetZero).
- Website interception and modification is/has been done by many major free hosting sites - used to brand all of the sites as coming from them.
Non-Obvious -- FAIL- altering web advertising based on customer identity is the core model for Google.
- CSS was developed to allow the skinning of websites without distorting the core of the pages.
- Google currently pays content providers for using GoogleAdds.
Face it all Google is doing is defining 'customer' as the WiFi owner instead of the user and claiming it's a whole new patentable idea. It's neither new nor novel - a corperate paradigm shift perhaps - but one that a huge number of companies have already made. I can't think of the third criteria off the top of my head but if you fail the first 2 does it matter?IM: I think that it would be difficult for a company to "insert" anything via IM. Don't all IM services encrypt their traffic? - Perhaps it's not end-to-end encryption (I'm sure that AOL and MSN want the capability to spy on your conversations), but it's likely encrypted between you and the IM service provider. So the advertiser would have to decrypt and re-encrypt messages in order to insert advertisements - but this would cause an uproar (and undoubtedly would violate the TOS of the IM service provider.) Alternatively, the advertiser could host an IM bot that spams you with ads - but its bots would very quickly get blacklisted.
You could do what several other companies have done, create a frame with the useful information and a small frame to display pushed adds in. Qualcom had a mail client like that I believe. To employ it, you intercept all IM traffic not sent by your IM client.
P2P would be a bigger issue, if you created a P2P client to do that with, you might be potentially at risk for suits from **AA for facilitating copyright infringment. Not entirely certain how they would do it, but I am sure they would try - ignoring the Torrent level of linux distro's, non copyright/artist approved music, etc - we all KNOW the ONLY possible [roll_eye style:exagerated] use of P2P is pirating corperate produced music.
Is that patentable?
For years "Free" ISPs have been offsetting their costs via advertising, and branded browsers.
And "Free" web-based proxies dynamically modify browser contents to include inline advertisements.
If the combination of two or more prior ideas constitutes a patent, mine is:
"Using a mouse to navigate" a "browser which is dynamically modifed when connecting to a wireless access point".
What a farce.
Software patents are a complete joke.
I don't think most IM services are encrypted. And I know IRC isn't encrypted. It's all plain text, just telnet in if you want.
See subject
They have not even been examined by the PTO and they probably will not be examined (due to the current backlog) for three years or so.
In effect, all that has been published are the original patent application papers filed by Google 18 months ago.
They are not "held by" Google employees any more than Google employees "hold" the title to the Google campus. No, they are "held by" Google, I can assure you. They are "invented by" Google employees.
WHAT? Hello. 2 million people watch Battlestar gallactica. Thats it. So the cost just to produce the show is $1million dollars per episode. Of your $50 sci-fi gets at the MOST 25 cents. (50 / 100 channels for basic cable and comcast probably takes 1/2 so 50 cents a channel) Then Sci-fi takes some of that money for its share of the profit and lets be generous and say they only take 10 cents of that. So the show is getting 15 cents per person watching. ( This number is lame because you probably watch more then one sci-fi show if you watch the sci-fi channel but you still only pay the 25 cents) so .15 x 2,000,000 = $300,000 Hmm we seem to be a little short of the cost of putting the show on the air. What is your solution? Please tell me.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
Well, I just thought that each channel the cable companies carry gets a piece of that monthly subscription fee regardless of how many subscribers watch any specific channel. For instance, say I am away from home for a month and don't watch any TV. I'm still paying my cable bill for that month. So since I didn't watch any shows on any channels, how is my money I paid to the cable company being divided up?
It's not like they have any way to actually monitor my viewing or lack of viewing habits and sending that info back to some big database to determine which channels get their share of my subscription.
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Ugh. I misread your post and just realized too late that I essentially repeated what you already said. Disregard my reply to it. (Blame sleep deprivation.)
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Man..i didnt know i had patent-quality material on my hands.
-- the pennyless inventor
Bombs like Google did, huh? I was just saying, that free Wi-Fi could ensure that more people see more Google ads. Doesn't that directly make them money?
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I read articles like this old one
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16697
and more recent ones
http://inquirerinside.com/?article=28914
And it is apparent that Linux needs to have a patent group to think about and get patents for Linux use and license to others on a quid pro quo basis
The linux community is every bit as smart, or even smarter than microsoft and IBM and others. What they lack is a large structure to administer and apply for the patents thought up by those inside Linux.
Since most tasks for getting patents(once thought up) are fairly low in cost, as long as there is volunteer lawyering and other labour in a few years a patent poirtfolio could be amassed to stave off licence demands from microsoft, via cross licence or even sale for use outside of the linux appzone.
Pardom me if this has been done, being a newb, I do not intend taking coals to NewCastle.
Bill