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Google Wants Patent On Splitting Restaurant Bills
theodp writes "In a classic example of parody coming to life," writes GeekWire's Todd Bishop, "a newly published patent filing reveals Google's ambitions to solve one of the most troublesome challenges known to humanity: Splitting the bill at the end of a meal." In its patent application for Tracking and Managing Group Expenditures, Google boasts that the invention of six Googlers addresses 'a need in the art for an efficient way to track group expenditures and settle balances between group members' by providing technology that thwarts 'group members [who] may not pay back their entire share of the bill or may forget and not pay back their share at all.'
It's probably a part of Google space efforts. I've heard they've funded some research into bistromatics.
Ezekiel 23:20
Picture in your mind for a moment, that someone actually typed this shit up, had lawyers obfuscate the inanity within and filed this application in the name of em.... "innovation". 'nuff said?
I think Douglas Adams worked this one out a while back:
http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Bistromathics
The third and most mysterious piece of nonabsoluteness of all lies in the relationship between the number of items on the check, the cost of each item, the number of people at the table and what they are each prepared to pay for.
You'd have thought that Google, of all people, would have checked to see whether there was an app for that already...
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=restaurant+bill+app
"She's furniture with a pulse"
In a lot of places in Europe, the waiter/waitress does it for you. Like in Germany, for example.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
This is a perfect example of why patents should be abolished. Maybe in the 19th century they had some value but that time is long, long past. Now patents are a block to innovation.
These kind of bullshit patents spring up when a company incentivizes it's employees to generate as much IP as possible during their day to day development, so as to mine the path for any other company trying to reimplement the technology and follow the same (obvious and non-innovative) path.
I don't know how Google does it, but my company offers a 2000$ monetary bonus for each submission that reaches the filling stage, the vast majority of which are accepted by the patent office. That's right, anything from inventing public key crypto to splitting the bill is patented and squirreled away in the defensive portfolio. The innovatory aspect does not even matter any more, it's all about quantity, they set up all sort of "innovation targets" that entail reaching a certain number of patents. A patent per year is required for any senior wanting to get a good year-end rating.
This is the most anti-competitive, anti-science and anti-progress way to do R&D that I can imagine.
I already use a voice recognition/voice activated app for this. It uses a two word 'trigger' phrase.
When the waitperson is within range, any party at the table faces them and say the trigger phrase: "separate checks."
When the meal is done, multiple bills arrive that are delivered to each dining party, with the amounts for each of their food & beverage items listed, tax and total. Each party can calculate a gratuity based on their own opinion of the individual service they received.
This app also allows for the parties to arrive, and leave, at staggered times.
This is fairly advanced tech, so don't expect to see it on phone/tablets for a while...
This is in fact how PayPal came to be. These four guys would go out to eat often, and when it came time to pay, one guy would cover the meal, and the other three would reimburse him by whipping out their PDAs and transferring the funds to his bank account. They quickly realized that this concept of quickly and easily transferring money electronically was the wave of the future, formed a company called Confinity, and launched this product called PayPal a year later. Within only a few months, Confinity was bought out by some guy named Elon Musk.
I just wish Google would buy out PayPal and have it all under one damn roof. Plus, how cool would it be if Google made space ships? :D
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
This isn't just "splitting the bill". The patentable part of Google's code is how it stores the information on who ordered what...
And the not-so-fine print is that anyone who is that creepy about itemising his/her expenses to that extent at a social gathering will be the individual who will not be invited again. The sociable thing to do (unless one member of the party consumes just half a leaf of lettuce) is to divide the bill by the number of people at the table. Sure, there will be imbalances, but over multiple occasions (in normally reasonable and congenial company) they should pretty much average out.
You weren't invited again, were you?
I couldn't be bothered to read the whole application but I did read part. As far as I can tell, it's not online at all. In fact, it appears that the problem it's solving is the one in your third paragraph.
Ironically, the fact that you identified group payment as a real problem and dismissed out of hand the idea that it could have been solved here actually implies that this could be legally patentable (assuming you are a person of at-least ordinary skill in the art).
It talks about moving money between the financial institutions of the users to settle the accounts. It talks about on-demand settlement of accounts, as well as periodic (with monthly as an example), or when the balance reaches a threshold.
Really, this doesn't seem to be about splitting bills. It seems to be a system for ensuring that "I'll got this one, you pay for the next meal" comes out fairly in the long run.
Assuming everyone is on roughly the same income level. If not, then some people may order cheaper things (or, for example, skip a starter) because they can't really afford it. If you then make them pay the same amount as everyone else, then they are likely to not join in the next time. If your peer group includes some vegetarian teetotallers then you'll be in a similar situation: without meat or alcohol, their meal cost is likely to consistently be lower than everyone else's and unless they are a lot better off than everyone else they're likely to resent having to subsidise everyone else every time you go out.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
A Dutch bank already has this built into their mobile banking application stack. One person foots the bill and the app takes care of splitting things up and billing the individuals that are splitting the bill. It also tracks their payments and helps send out reminders.
Is that why they call it going Dutch? ;)
The quality of German tapwater is highly monitored and thus the water usually is microbially and chemically at least as clean as bottled water. There is dispute whether it is even monitored /better/ than bottled water.
The risk of contaminating it with a filter is way higher than drinking it directly from the tap. You might have some issues with lead piping in old houses if you have soft water, though.
Concerning taste YMMV, some places have harder water, some temporary add some chlorine after heavy rain, but usually it's tasty.
Over all your warning is complete bollocks.
Sure, there will be imbalances, but over multiple occasions (in normally reasonable and congenial company) they should pretty much average out.
ROFLMAO
You've clearly never gone out to lunch with groups of co-workers on a regular basis. There's almost always one douche who orders the most expensive thing on the menu because he knows the check will be split evenly and others will wind up paying most of it. It doesn't average out. Everyone just gets sick of that guy and stops inviting him.
Math
The actual problem are the passive-aggressive douchebags who make it a contest to see who gets to pay for everyone's meal, and later whine about how some people never pay for everyone's meal, so that they can be both the altruistic Christian hero and the exploited supply-sider hero.
this isn't about splitting a single dinner bill as the headline (Google Wants Patent On Splitting Restaurant Bills) suggests.
it's a little more complicated.. where, say, 5 people hang out together for a week, where multiple bills are paid individually by different people over the duration of the vacation or whatever and you need to "settle up" when you get home.
Yes, no matter how you slice it, it's just math (so whether or not you should be able to patent it is arguable) - but, if the patent is for the means by which it's tracked, and the design of the (i assume) app that you use to solve the equation, then a patent may have some merit.
You can solve this using Excel, but a dedicated app to to track the scenario mentioned in the original piece could be very useful to some.
"As an example, assume that a group is created to track and manage the expenditures of four friends (Friends 1-4) while on vacation in Miami. While on vacation, one of the days only three of the friends (Friends 1-3) go eat lunch at a restaurant because Friend 4 is not hungry at the time. The bill for lunch is $60 and Friend 1 pays the bill using a mobile payment service available on his device 104. Friend 1 adds the lunch as an expenditure of the group. When the form is presented to Friend 1 for the lunch, Friend 1 indicates that the lunch should be allocated to Friends 1-3. The lunch is not allocated to Friend 4 because Friend 4 did not participate in the lunch. Further, Friend 1 provides the following amounts of allocation in the form: Friend 1 $25, Friend 2 $16, and Friend 3 $19. In this example, the amount of allocation for each friend is based on what each friend ordered during lunch."
could be further "complicated" if your group of friends has vegetarians (where entrees are usually less than those with meat), and people who don't drink - so the cost of that bottle of wine should be split between the 4 of 6 in your party who actually had some. if someone brought their kids, that introduces yet another variable.
it'd be pretty cool to be able to take a picture of the itemized receipt and assign each line item to a person (drinks and entree), or the group (shared desserts, appetizers) - whatever is appropriate.
Banks are getting in to person to person transfers (using nothing but a mobile number or email address).. https://clearxchange.com/
the natural evolution of paying each other is to be able to request money FROM each other.. so i can use my credit card to pay for lunch, then send a note telling my friends they owe me $.
google couple potentially integrate with clearxchange, and card.io (take picture of CC instead of entering the number manually) to settle up once the costs are calculated.
this isn't a patent for a system to do math (addition, subtraction and division). this is a patent on a system that makes it so you don't have to think about the math.