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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.
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.
"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.