Google Patents Browser Highlight All Button

An anonymous reader writes "Google has picked up another patent on a technology that you might think basic to the web: the highlight all button for searches in browsers. The patent will backdate to 1999 and presents an interesting problem for such software as the Firefox browser and FeedDemon RSS reader. And, in an interesting twist, Microsoft uses a similar mechanism in Windows Explorer. But Microsoft itself said that browser technology can't be separated from the operating system. Does that mean the company owes a royalty to Google for all those copies of Windows?"

Comments

Re:Does that mean the company owes a royalty to Go

[Sarten-X]

Claim 1:

...provide a tool bar within a web browser application window, the tool bar including a button, for activating a highlighting operation...

Yep, they're patenting a browser feature. Three slight variations (claims 1, 7, 12), but all browser features.

It appears they're patenting a browser button that will highlight the things you searched for, in any page. I don't use Google Toolbar, but it appears to be already implemented.

With no browser additions, the user has to search for something with Google, go to a page, then open find and search for the exact same terms to find where the relevant information is on the page. With this patented idea implemented, one only has to search for pages, go to one, then click a single button to go to the information on the page.

The summary is, as usual, misleading. To my knowledge, Windows itself has no such feature, nor any other program I've seen for that matter.