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Google Seeking Patent On Ads For Street View

Posted by Soulskill on from the virtual-billboards-on-pictures-of-billboards dept.

theodp writes "CNET reports that Google is 'musing' about placing ads in Street View. The search giant reportedly floated the idea in a presentation to marketing and ad agency types in Europe a few months back. So will virtual billboards be popping up in Google Street View? A Google rep said the company had no current plans to put ads in Street View, but you might want to take that with a grain of salt. On Thursday, the USPTO revealed that Google is seeking patent protection for Claiming Real Estate in Panoramic or 3D Mapping Environments for Advertising. From the patent application: 'The street view display server can locate an ad image within the image database and overlay the region of interest with the associated ad image.' Connect the dots, and it sure sounds like a plan, doesn't it? Selling the Brooklyn Bridge is a pretty good scam — selling a view of it is even better!"

8 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. How is this new? by tomhudson · · Score: 2, Interesting

    TV broadcasters have been doing this with football games and the billboard in Times Square for years, and game publishers have also been doing it with their virtual street views.

    Google - for all your patent troll needs.

    1. Re:How is this new? by Theaetetus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      TV broadcasters have been doing this with football games and the billboard in Times Square for years, and game publishers have also been doing it with their virtual street views.

      They have? I haven't seen a TV broadcaster that has a "online property management system". Have you? Nor have I seen a TV broadcaster that provides a user-selectable link associated with the region of interest in a geographic view. In fact, there's a whole bunch of things in the claims that I've never seen a TV broadcaster do. You know about claims, right? They set the boundaries of the invention, not the title, or the abstract, or some naive slashdot summary.

      Google - for all your patent troll needs.

      You don't actually know what a patent troll is, do you? Here's a hint - Google, a company who puts out a lot of products is, by definition, not a patent troll. A patent troll isn't just "some company who patents something I don't like" or even a company who patents something that already existed in the prior art. It's a company whose sole business model is patent litigation.

      How you got an interesting moderation, I'll never know.

  2. Re:Way to completely destroy utility by je+ne+sais+quoi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Thus far, Google has not displayed this sort of lack of taste. We'll see though. What I'm guessing is that it will be the form of a little transparent pop-up window with text ads relevant to whatever your looking at, e.g. if you're looking at a Border's, it will give you ads for a B&N or something. The kind of metadata to make these types of context specific ads has been creeping into google maps for some time. E.g., just look at this link. You can clearly see the name of each business and an icon about just what kind of business it is there (hotels get a little stick person in a bed, restaurants get a knife and fork, etc.). Hopefully they would put them in a transparent window and somewhere unobtrusive, like on the street or in the sky.

    Though, it does kind of give new meaning to the Futurama quote, "Behold.... the Internet." "My God! It's full of ads!"

    --
    Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
  3. This is one of those areas where patents are good by melted · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is one of those areas where patents are good. They prevent everybody else from doing this shit. :-)

  4. Re:Redaction through advertisements! by ascari · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Problem is the Google ad model is an auction model. How do you know you win? Your arch enemy might put your license plate/face etc in all the wrong places simply by outbidding you...

  5. Then I want compensation by penguin_dance · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you're going to use a picture of my house to place advertisements, then I want to be compensated for the use of my house. Either that or take the photo down. And I'm sure businesses are not going to want a competitor's ad placed in or around a photo of their building!

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    If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
    1. Re:Then I want compensation by Theaetetus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you're going to use a picture of my house to place advertisements, then I want to be compensated for the use of my house.

      I assume your house is on a public street. If so, maybe you should construct a high fence or plant a row of trees, since you have no right to prevent other people from looking at it, or even taking a picture.

  6. Billboards by Mantrid42 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I assumed they would be overlaying ads onto existing advertising space; i.e., billboards. After all, the companies who wanted to advertise on the billboard did so with the expectation that their only audience would be people driving by. By leaving these images as they are, those companies get free advertising, which is not something Google is required to give them. Similarly, if the content of a billboard has changed since the image was taken, it's unfair for the earlier company to receive free advertising while the newer one does not. If they want to superimpose new, relevant ads over old, useless ads, that's fine by me.