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USPTO Grants Google a Patent On MapReduce
theodp writes "Two years ago, David DeWitt and Michael Stonebraker deemed MapReduce a major step backwards (here are the original paper and a defense of it) that 'represents a specific implementation of well known techniques developed nearly 25 years ago.' A year later, the pair teamed up with other academics and eBay to slam MapReduce again. But the very public complaints didn't stop Google from demanding a patent for MapReduce; nor did it stop the USPTO from granting Google's request (after four rejections). On Tuesday, the USPTO issued U.S. Patent No. 7,650,331 to Google for inventing Efficient Large-Scale Data Processing."
They already burned their karma adding the "fade-in" menu bar.
This sounds more stupid than evil, which is interesting, because Google doesn't do obviously stupid things very often.
The patent won't do them any good, because it won't stand up in court. They could use it to attack someone small -- an open source developer who would have to back down because they couldn't handle teh legal fees -- but they don't have much of a history of that sort of thing, and there's no reason to think they would in this case, either.
It won't do them any good at all against someone big -- MS and Bing, for example -- because MS would have good lawyers who could demonstrate prior art to a court.
So what's the point?
A somewhat optimistic guess is that they'll be restricted to using this defensively. Are they really going to sue Hadoop, the open-source implementation of MapReduce? Hadoop not only implements a version of MapReduce, it even uses its name, so is not at all coy about being a direct infringement of this patent. And yet, I would be surprised if Google sued them, or the many people using it. They certainly haven't said anything yet, as far as I can find--- when things like Amazon Elastic MapReduce were launched, I can't find record of Google saying, "hey, you're stealing our tech!"
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Isn't that awful? I can't understand why they did it.
Moving stuff on web pages sucks. Especially on that web page.
The bad thing isn't the fade in itself. It's that Google used to be run by people who knew what sucked and what didn't. Now it seems like there are people who don't know in positions to call some shots. It's a bad omen.
They're probably about 10 years away from their own version of Microsoft's "Bob".
It is not true that if Google doesn't patent it, a troll will. A technique that is well known, such as MapReduce, is the property of the general public and is unpatentable. Any technology that has been sold or in use for over a year is unpatentable.
Behold: the one true undeniable positive trait of the current broken patent system. Keeping horrible ideas expensive.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
The point is probably to create and keep a nice big portfolio of patents to be used the next time Google gets sued for patent infringement. It's common practice for big tech firms (and others, of course) to hold a reserve of patents at the ready in the event that they need to defend against a patent suit. The aggressor company sues for infringement, the defender digs up a few patents that the aggressor is violating, and they settle out of court for a mutual licensing agreement.
Of course it's ridiculous, and sounds stupid, but it's a symptom of the broken patent system, not a peculiarity of Google.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
"A technique that is well known, such as MapReduce, is the property of the general public and is unpatentable."
Someone should really let the patent clerks in on that secret...
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
The fade-in is nice. Not so much because it's a fade-in (which is just visually more pleasant than an instant-display), but because you can visit www.google.com and get a very clean page (google logo, search field, and currently a Haiti relief notice), and just type away (as focus is set to the search field) and be done with it. This is very much like how google.com -was- in the very early days.
If you want to access any of the other services that google have started to offer since then, you can move your mouse anywhere within the screen and hey presto those options become available to you. If you don't need them - why clutter up the screen with them?
You can always customize your own google page and set that as your bookmark/start page/whatever and display exact what you want to have displayed from the get-go.
If anything, the change from direct URLs to google redirects at some point is what I find most annoying. I guess it's what enables them to track clicks better / present "We believe this page is dangerous for your health"-warnings, etc. and I can see how that can be good for them as a business, and for users who go clickhappy on fluffy little bunnies promising them cash. But it annoys me that I can't just 1. google for something, 2. recognize the right place, 3. right-click the result and get the basic URL out of it anymore. Now, I just get this (for slashdot):
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CBgQFkAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fslashdot.org%2F&rct=j&q=slashdot&ei=KAtXS8CCLeLMQAeSx8CbDg&usg=AFQjClHLEL_tF-6ZxylM44KJH54-gaJRnQ&s1g2=U223qDAEXHFbHyOw_p2PzQ
wtf.
I'd much prefer they put the actual URL in the link, and let their redirect flow through an onClick.. yeah, they'd lose the javascript-disabled lot.. tough.
I'll reserve judgement until this patent is involved, offensively, defensively or otherwise, in litigation.
Google has got a good reputation so I'm not as quick to condemn them as I am to condemn Microsoft which has a PROVEN track record of evil.
It's entirely plausible that this patent is part of a defensive patent portfolio whose sole purpose is to protect Google.
And considering the zany IP landscape, if anyone's going to have a patent on this, I'd rather it be Google than anyone else. If Microsoft had this club in their arsenal you can bet your bottom dollar they'd make their assault on Tom-Tom look like a puny peashooter.