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Google (Patent Pending)
Jason Eric Pierce writes "I just noticed something interesting while using Google, considering how much it has been praised here by those that tend to denounce software patents:
'Unlike other current generation search engines, which rely heavily on keywords or meta-search technology to find information, Google offers an advanced patent-pending technology called PageRank(TM) to deliver the most relevant results. PageRank ensures that the most important, relevant pages always come up first and that your users will always find what they are looking for.' I love Google, but I hate the idea of patenting a search algorithm/implementation." Good point. Thoughts?
I am not surprised. You gotta go with the flow. Patenting everything including the kitchen sink is the thing to do these days.
Not so perfect, you cockmonkey
Just like Nancy Kerrigan you never gave up til you got TEN. You are a wienner sir.
It doesn't handle phrase searches properly, like most search engines. First, when a word in Initial Caps is typed in, it should default to a phrase search. For example, any three words typed in (Hillary Rodham Clinton) should be assumed to be a phrase first, and all results with this phrase should show up at the top of the page. Then the results in which the three words are not contiguous should appear. Try searching for "World New York." Do you see any pages with "World New York"? No. Now try searching for "related:www.worldnewyork.com" The "World New York" pages are in there. Why don't they come up in the phrase search? I use phrase searching equally as much as majority-word results, so this is a real shortcoming to me. [Majority-word results are when you type in a bunch of words that you'd like to appear in the results and the pages returned for your search are ranked with those having the majority of the search terms you entered at the top.]
BTW FIRST Plagiarized post
STFU!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.google.com/search?q= more+evil+than+satan and see the first hit?
I don't know how this technology works. But it surely has some funny "relevant results". Take a look at this one: http://www.google.com/search?q=bugs+picture.
It's a fact: they should be first... Google rulezz!
StarTrek.org Free Webmail
Although software itself is not patentable (and should not be), technologies and algorithms definitely are. The distiction is (and should be) made by the patent office. Self-discretion in this context just means lack of money ;-)
I dunno. I agree that the vast majority software patenting that's been going on lately is silly; "One click ordering" is a pretty obvious thing.
But from what I've read, Google's search logic is pretty ingenious, and not very obvious at all.
Is this not an example of a case where a patent makes sense? At the moment I'd say that I am not troubled much at all by this one.
Patent #93,593,376:
A method of testing web servers by writing an interesting story for nerds, adding a few large JPG's, and then posting said link to slashdot.org. The result of posting is a large and immediate increase in web traffic, not for purposes of advertising (because said nerds don't have any money to buy things) but only to test the reliability of one's web server.
Licensing will be a no-brainer. If a company wants to test their servers, they can just mirror a six-month old news story and tell Hemos about it. "Psst - there's an article on here about why Linux web servers aren't as good as NT. It's only six months old - it's still news!"
- Sorry, Hemos, you walked right into that one.
What's your damage, Heather?
a message from jesus! repent!repent!repent!repent!repent!repent!repent!r epent!repent!repent!repent!repent!repent !repent!repent!repent!repent!repent!repent!repent! repent!repent!repent!repent!repent!repen t!repent!repent!repent!repent!repent!repent!repent !repent!repent!repent!repent!repent!repe nt!repent!repent!repent!repent!repent!repent!repen t!repent!repent!repent!repent!repent!rep ent!repent!repent!
Why is it that companies I praise for a while, suddenly turns bad and start patenting ideas? I've recomended google to everybody I know for the last 6 months or so - And now they screw it up. Thypically.
.. is it 25 years? That's .. stupid .. plain stupid.
Patenting software ideas is a bad thing. Now the ranking system will be patented for
Of course they should be praised for having a nice idea. And patents could've been OK - if they lasted a year or something. But 25 freaking years? yargh. I'm out looking for a new search engine, that's for sure. (and sending some cute emails to google, of course..)
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
I don't think most Slashdotters are against all patents, but more against patenting the obvious (like the icon for these stories indicates). One-click shopping, or banner ads are so obvious (to one 'skilled in the art', eg. a geek) that they shouldn't be patentable.
What Google uses is far from obvious, so this merits a patent. I think this was the original idea behind the patent system, but somehow the USPTO seems to have lost the definition of 'obvious' along the way.
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
Before all of you go screaming for blood, remember that we don't actually know what they do. It might be something incredibly clever that is indeed patentable. Anybody have any idea if it's something more interesting than weighing words in titles and headers more heavily? -Lars
Actually, 7 is very far from a perfect number. A perfect number is one whose aliquot divisors add up to itself. 7 does not even come close, being a prime. 6 is a perfect number.
1 + 2 + 3 = 6
See? Hope this helps...
*borkborkbork*
This is the crux of the question is do slash.dotters object to the principle of patenting ideas full stop, or, just the patenting of dumb ideas.
If your priciple objection is to the patenting of dumb ideas then you should have no problem with the google patent. Thier search algorithms are certainly different from all the others and produce good and consitent results. It seems like they are patenting something "original, not obvious, and which works". There may be some prior art here as a ton of work has been done on search algorithms over the years, but generally speaking this looks like a "good" patent.
If the main objection is to patents per se, then I would say we are a bunch of hypocrytes. The whole high tech industry which produces all the goodies we love to play with is driven by patents. IBM is not going to spend billions researching "copper" etc. and give as those lovely gigahertz processors if some company in tiawan can rip off the design as soon as it is working.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
I'm not saying that this is the case here...
When I have what I think is a good, innovative idea, I get selfish and I want to make sure that everyone knows that it's mine. Haven't you ever been somewhat indignant when someone retells a joke you told them and doesn't give you credit?
I suppose that this could be covered by software licenses, etc, but patenting one's idea seems like a comprehensive method of asserting that it is yours. I'm not too knowledgeable on patents, but you don't have to demand royalties, restrict use, or anything else, do you? Can't the patent office just be used as a place for keeping a nice record of who came up with an idea? (yeah! Exploit! Exploit! ... :-)
Yes google is low key - ok fine you win.
Yes google shows promise - ok fine you win.
Yes google "can" deliever some results other engines can't - ok fine you win.
Yes google is linux driven - ok fine you win.
HOWEVER, Google is committing the greatest act of copyrighted content theif in all of history since the Bible. The caching of full pages on a search engine is wrong wrong wrong. When is someone going to play lawsuit lottery with these guys? You *will* win! I think, there is the makings of a full class action lawsuit against google. I can't cache and serve up the super bowl, why should google be able to cache and serve up my website?
The reason I ask is if the search routine can be patented is because it has been three years in the development and most likely already made public previously. Remember with worldwide patents you may not make any disclosure and with American only six months are allowed.
i ndex.htm. Why I found this interesting is because funding was partially provided by DARPA and NASA. Does this not mean that this stuff cannot be patented? I thought there was a clause that when either DARPA or NASA provided funding it should be for the common good...
And the other question is I did some research and found an interesting link http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~lw0/research/papers/p09/
Just some thoughts...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Search engine admins are constantly in a cat and mouse game with the Web. It's not just cat and mousing with word spammers (first rank down pages with words in alphabetical order... word spammers strike back... then try to parse pages a bit.. word spammers strike back... et cetera...). Styles of web page writing alter over time, and there are issues over the mutability of pages and the such. (Frames fall into fashion.. frames fall out of fashion..)
Search engine admins should have the freedom to tinker with their ranking algorithms without getting nailed by patent sharks. Besides, copying a search algorithm is a bit difficult if the algorithm isn't published. Search enginges don't have to publish their methods to build a user base. They just have to do a good job.
So, Google is probably justified in seeking a patent. One can't be too carefull. But if Google starts pulling an Amazon, it's time to boycott them.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Nope, caching of pages is cool, cool, cool. Quite a few times when pages were yanked, you could still grab them from Google's cache. Or other times, when a server is not responding I'm quite happy with the cached version.
Copyright? That's just a word in a dictionary to me.
*borkborkbork*
I love Google, but I hate the idea of patenting a search algorithm/implementation
Well then how selfish are you? You love Google but you're opposed to them trying to make a buck from the technology for which you love them. You'd rather they didn't patent it, and someone like Lycos could come along and say "Thanks for doing all the research Google, this technology will work great in our new search engine".
And you know the masses will all go visit Lycos and click on their banner ads, because instead of wasting money on "research" and/or "development", they've been spending their money on ads on the sides of buses.
And then Google will go bust, and all their workers will go home and have no money to put food on the tables of their families.
But it's ok, because patents are bad, because Slashdot said so.
So the answer is simple: if you invent something cool, put it to good use and make a nice product out of it. By being the first on the market you'll have a big advantage over the competition. If in the end someone using your idea beats you anyway, he probably makes better stuff than you do (and earned his top spot in the same way you earned being the first to release it.)
So I can't see Google's algoritm and Google's lawyers can't see mine. Where does a patent help? Patents are protecting published and licensed techniques. If its secret, then a patent is useless. (see Coca Cola)
Google might be justified in seeking that patent, but it won't help them, cause by the time they get it through it will be yesterdays techique.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
...and I'm a patentaholic.
It all started very innocently, with some cool-looking inventions, completely original stuff. It felt good to know that I had power over the way my inventions were used, so I started doing it more often. First it was just a couple a year, then every few months... before I knew it I was a regular at the patent office.
By that time, I no longer restricted myself to original items - anything was fair game. Algorithms, software, ideas, concepts, even names that I saw on billboards - nothing was beyond my patenting frenzy. I was a lost man, I tell you.
Then one day I overdosed. I came to the patent office at 10 AM, as usual, with a box full of stuff that I thought was patentable. The clerk (a funny-looking Jewish guy named Al), eager to help me protect my intellectual property and trade secrets, started the usual job of cataloguing application, banging the "Approved" stamp on them, and storing them in the files.
That is, until he arrived at my application for patenting the scientific method. I thought it was a good idea. He looked at me, shook his head, picked up some scribbled papers at his desk, and showed them to me, while, grinning, he said: "Prior art."
The feeling of having one of my patents challenged, at a time when I was still in serious withdrawal, drew me over the edge. In a mad frenzy, I jumped over the counter and onto Al, trying to strangle him. Before I could, though, the security officers showed up and dragged me away, saying "I think you've had enough patenting". Next thing I know, I'm at the Henry Ford clinic for patent addicts.
Whew! I'm glad I got that out of my system! Now, with the help of some extremely powerful drugs, I feel completely recovered, and don't have the urge to patent anything... say, is that cool-looking wall clock taken?
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
> Google might be justified in seeking that > patent, but it won't help them,
It helps them in that they won't be beaten to the punch by some other patent and then sued into non-existence.
Anyone whose search engine returns this result for More Evil than Satan Himself can have a patent. That's one SMART search engine.
No Zen is good zen
There is a great deal of difference in someone owning a patent and wielding it when they shouldn't be. I think whilst we live in a world where there are software patents it is a good idea for google to make sure that they have the one for the technology they created, rather than let some ignorant person manage to give it to a competitor, who might use it against Google.
I know that's a bit unlikely, but do you really think Barnes and Noble were thinking 'AHA! we've pulled a swift one on Amazon - they won't realise we've stolen their technology? Of course not, they were just using an obvious idea - the fact that they didn't get the patent process started quick enough must be the only reason Amazon got the patent and not them.
So rather than let someone else try and get it, Google should get it themselves, but not be aggressive with it...
Since we're going to discuss PageRank and it's patentability, You might want to read about it first.
No Zen is good zen
It should be more... like not if its obvious, but if it can be cleaning independantly developed clean room by some one else with in 1 year of the application or so.
If two people independantly can invent the same thing, then that should be grounds for unpatentable. Only if its truly unique and cant be done by someone else, then its valid.
the problem is when they're enforced where they shouldn't be... what amazon did was less protecting their rights, and more trying to look like Microsoft and beating up their competitors.
/. folk seem to put a lot of faith in them, I think they'd do the right thing if it came up.
If Google didn't patent this, whose to say Altavista wouldn't patent it tomorrow and sue them? Hopefully, if someone wants to make a search engine similiar to Google's, they'll be nice enough to keep from ripping them to pieces...
I don't really know, I don't know the Google folks too well. But a lot of
Devilled Eggs - A disturbing little creation of mine.
To most everyone out there, patents are meaningless. I use google because it is the best search engine I have found so far. I don't care about patents. I care about search engines that return good results. I use the best tool that I am aware of to get the job done.
It's the same with amazon.com. Some are advocating boycotting amazon because of the lame patent on one-click shopping. To be sure, the patent never should have been issued, but I'll let other corporations fight that battle in the courts. As a consumer, I like the convenience of one-click shopping and will therefore take advantage of it.
If you create something worth patenting and don't patent it, you are a fool. In the current system, you can not get away with not patenting something. If you fail to patent someone else will. (Anyone remember the case where some hacker made a mod to some roland synths, and then roland patented the mod and told him he couldn't use it anymore.)
The real question is what does google intend to do with the patent. Since google is trying to make money, they certainly look more profitable to investers if they use "patented search engine technology". That is fine with me. Perhaps they patented it simply to protect themselves from other search engines patenting it.
Unfortunately, to be on the safe side, you have to patents new technologies that you create. But that doesn't mean you have to use them for evil.
What we need is the GNU Public Patent. That way we can protect ideas from falling into the hands of EVIL!!!
TROLLING FOR FUN AND PROFIT!
guess what software empire I work for?
I've had about enough of these damn patents. Time to file The Patent to End All Patents - yes folks, I'm patenting LIGHT. Sure, you may _think_ it's obvious, but I assure you that I invented it FIRST (no need to investigate this or anything - the patent office already did a thorough job of that - really!). So from now on, everyone with their eyes open has to pay me royalties. Hmm, now how can I get at those blind people...? Ah! I'll also patent LACK OF LIGHT. There, that should do it. And don't think that just because you're off-planet you can avoid it - if you're an alien reading Slashdot, cough up the dough! If you don't want to pay, well then I guess you me and JUDGE JUDY are gonna have a little chat. Now then, you can send these royalties to...
(a pathetic attempt at humor, I know... :)
I dont see any problem with them patenting the specific algorithim as long as they are not trying to patent the idea behind the alogorithim. I think its good buisness practice to make your competitors work a little. No need to get beat at your own game
That comment was sure worth a load of "funny"-points, not just one as for now... If you have moderator acces, please give it some, because I don't have such access for now...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I agree, but due to excessive naughtiness I'm not allowed to moderate you up (hell I'm barely allowed to post). I love slashdot, but like I've mentioned MANY times before, the fact that they deleted a first-posting perl script that somebody posted here shows that their primary goal is not the furtherance of technology.
The original thinking behind patents, IMHO, is to encourage the development of novel products. Google has a superior product based on a search algorithm that is head and shoulders above the rest, both in originality and accuracy. In order to fully benefit from their superior product, they need to have their bread and butter insured against the actions of parasitic organizations that would otherwise leech ideas off of pioneering companies (in this case Google). Patents are not bad, they are just more susceptible to abuse than they could be. Fault lies with the USPTO, not the intrinsic concept of patents itself.
.{redmist}.
-------------------------------------------------
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The relevancy of hits in Google seems to be pretty good, but the "I'm feeling lucky (TM)" thing IMHO is a dumb feature.
The fact that no-one else was doing this doesn't mean that no-one else thought of it or that it isn't obvious.
It would be nice if someone familiar with patent laws could tell us whether "it's obvious, but I'm the only one who believed in it" is grounds for a patent. I'm not sure how I feel about that myself, but I'm leaning toward "no".
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
I agree. Cached pages are a great feature. If someone were attempting to make this a vorbotten practice, I would be most unhappy. If one does not wish the public to view information, he should not commit to posting it on to the internet in the first place. Once such a transaction has been established, it is in public view. Some people wish to subject us to a bunch of silly laws for to further their own greed and cause problems for the rest of us. I say get rid of those silly people and make them publish books.
Yuck, I am disgusted. No! not by Goggle, but by the vast amount of cheap remarks I have read so far. I cannot believe how many of you recoil at the thought of patening software algorithms. Hah!, I dobut you could code! If you could, you would realize how important and hard it is to come up with original software algorithms. Anyone who discovers a software algorithm is free to patent it, I just hope the patent in the software world will have a limit of 2-3 years, because the software world moves at an incredibly pace. The problem of text data mining on the web is not an easy task. I have been doing slight research on it, and I will tell you, that it takes great skills to come up with something. Look at goggle, look how small they are, compared with altavista, yahoo, excite and infoseek. Imagine if these other competitors could grab their algorithms and stiff them out of the search engine world. How fair will that be? Not at all! I know I rather see goggle survive, than another lame search engine survive cuz they have money and ripped on the poor guys.
If software algorithsm shouldn't be patented, Why the hell should hardware? Cuz hardware takes work, and software doesn't take work? Good software algorithms takes years of painful, hardworking research just as software. If you don't think so, you are not a programmer and have no say in this, go take a seat my friend. Anyway, to end this off, I will like to state, that I am against stupid patents, patent of one shop clicking, something that is very obvious, something that takes no brain cells to implement, The technology behind slashdot is original and unique, if there was a patent behind it, I will not mind! Now on the other hand, if someone puts a patent on guest books, now they have to get in the same pant with me.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Speaking of ``the right thing'', wouldn't it be ingenious of them to pull an RSAREF on PageRank -- but rather than say ``for noncommercial use only'', require use of the algorithms to be GPL'd?
Kind of a silly idea, and certainly will not sit well with quite a few OSS folk (I personally find some fault in it), but it's a neat idea nonetheless.
Yes, the tutorial is available on line. But the full imlementation contains innumerable number of nontrivial algorithmic hacks to improve the quality of results and response time. The problem with PageRank being patented lies in the fact that it has been used for ever! the earliest paper about a similar technique was published in 1968.
The techniques used by bibliometrics(The study of literatures by analyzing citations.) are much much more sophisticated, but lack only one thing--automation. So the technique has long been used to analyze corpus of papers that contains references(links) to determin relative goodness, the only original thought here is to apply it to the web. Fundamentally, it does the same thing as Latent Semantic Indexing(LSI), by performing SVD on a matrix. The only difference is how the matrix is formed, and how the results are used.
PageRank is hard to spam. Though getting it to work right is not so easy just looking at this tutorial. Go and try it, I can almost guarantee that you'll have problems getting the naive version to even come close to its results. Hrm, though I guess bigger search engines like yahoo, and altavista has the resources to "steal" it.
I do wonder about one thing though, will the google business model work out? What company uses their search engine on a local site?
Some people might find it funny. Some don't. Regardless of one's sense of humor, it was still way offtopic. If you find this type of post funny, browse at -1.
void recursion (void)
{
recursion();
}
while(1) printf ("infinite loop");
if (true) printf ("Stupid sig quote");
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Yeah I agree with your sentiments. It's not as if they really gain anything from them - if J Random Company does some nifty stuff they'll get the reputation that means people go to them, patents or no. In this case, the patent would (if they got it) actively dissuade some people. Sheesh.
Different search engine: Hubat - Yahooish but the summaries are entirely 'puter generated (spotted on TBTF).
lest someone like Amazon patents the technology instead, and then sues Google. There's nothing inherrently wrong with patents, just misuse of them. Let google patent the technology, just as long as they're willing to let others take advantage of it in the true open source flavor.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
The other day, someone was asking how long the internet boom could continue. I think the boom is part of a natural shift into an information based economy. Countries that restrict the flow of information by artifical means, be it censorship of the net in Australia or artificial restrictions imposed by patent and trademark laws which require anyone with a web presence to have a substantial and expensive legal team, will end up killing the boom in their borders. Said countries will end up being the new third world countries, strangling the wealth that the information age offers. Countries that make an effort to embrace the internet and assist the flow of information will most likely enjoy the boom indefinitely.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You are right, of course. I forgot that they operate in lawyer-space.
"Oh what a nice little web site you've got there. Wouldn't it be a shame, if something,... happened,... to it? Maybe you should pay us, just for,... protection you know?"
All opinions are my own - until criticized
That's why the Google technology would be better handled as a Trade Secret.
Unfortunately, it may be too late for that if they didn't stress secrecy from the start.
Google seems to have an aversion to advertising and keyword sales. Why are they bothering with a patent if they don't seem to be interested in generating a cent of revenue through normal means? Is it because of terms of some government funding they've gotten?
If Google's search engine is so original and they manage to keep it on tracks then there will be minimal problems. Maybe we will loose some dynamism in its progress but it is hard to level this point. Meanwhile if they do not touch similar algorithms that may slightly resemble their engine then we have all doors open to progress and an healthy competition.
However if they jump on the bandwagon on "how unique" their search engine is and stop making any serious developements on it. If, beyond this, they start playing lawsuits over similar systems. And if they simply try to hold market tighten to their original idea then we will have a lot of trouble. We have tons of examples on how such policies killed whole technologies. I cannot evaluate what benefits/losses we got from such thing as STAC vs Microsoft. But we can be sure that this story placed "disk compression" systems into a marginal alley. Today we have 6, 9, 13, 20, 28 Gb disks. Most of us may not feel how critical such systems can be sometimes, even if you have a lot of space laying around for most of the time. However, there are situations when a flexible, fast and light compression system would do a lot of help, specially in some extreme moments. However there are a lot of caveats on those systems that exist today. And I believe that this happens because disk compression is still healing from this conflict.
Let's give them the benefit of the doubt for a moment and assume that they have a legitimate non-obvious patent claim here. Then from a practical point of view, wouldn't it be great if we could persuade them to allow use of the patent in all free (speech) software projects. It would aid their PR, and would still protect them from people like Altavista. Note that due to the very nature of patents, this would enforce a form of copyleft on any software using their patent - making the software non-free would impinge the patent licensing agreement.
I might add that this is simply a practical compromise to the situation, and not a general solution for patents. If anyone here were ever to patent anything, then I would strongly recommend them to put the patent in the intelectual public domain. Patenting, unlike copyright, takes away more that just the right to someone's work - it takes away the right to someone's thoughts. Now whether you live in RMS's communist (from community) society or ESR's anarchist one, this impinges on your basic communal/individual freedoms and is hence a Bad Thing.
Still, until we can persuade the (US) government that software patents in their present form don't work -- and many of the upcoming court cases should hopefully help us do that -- approaching the company involved seems to be the only alternative to putting our head in the sand and hoping they don't see us.
Two examples: RSA and LZW. RSA is patented, and that produces not only the (patented, heh) Slashdot Fear And Loathing but also leads to insecure software. Consider RSAREF and ssh. There are other public-key implementations available, like Diffie-Hellman. It's no longer burdened by any patents. But we haven't seen a large-scale switch from RSA to DH, even considering the burden (for commercial vendors, a license fee; for non-commercial vendors, not doing development in the U.S.) that it inflicts. We're still finding new and interesting things to do with RSA even now, aren't we?
Then there's LZW. It's obviously still useful, especially in GIF. Even the most prominent anti-patent sites haven't made the trivial effort to switch to PNG yet. Even the threat of a five-thousand-dollar hammersmack in the head hasn't made a big difference. LZW's usefulness has obviously lasted a lot longer than just two to three years.
In both cases, we have better alternatives. They're even free in all senses of the word: free of cost, free as in GPL brand freedom, free as in BSD brand freedom, free as in Microsoft brand-- okay, that's going a little far :-) But the world hasn't really picked any of them up, even we (term used widely and loosely) haven't really picked any of them up. (Yes, I know that you and all your friends use gzip or bzip2, but have you removed all the GIFs from your webspace, or made sure to delete that copy of libgif.so you've got lying around?)
There's an argument to be made for shorter patents, sure, but it's not that "technology moves too fast". We only wish we could outrun the dinosaurs, but Ron Rivest and Abraham Lempel are still winning the race.
Sen när har fjortisarna hittat /.?
it takes away the right to someone's thoughts
How the HELL do you reach this conclusion?
The only thing a patent grants the owner is a limited ability to prevent others from using an invention. Google comes up with a new search engine and patents it. Anyone can still think all they want about the methods used, and in fact do R&D on it without infringing. In fact, without patent protection the chance is you WOULDN'T be thinking about the Google algorithms because they would be kept as a trade secret.
Governments take away your rights every time they make a law. The laws against murder take away your rights to shoot somebody just because you have a headache.
The point of laws is that the OVERALL gain is supposed to outweigh the loss of freedom associated with having a law. Back in the 17th century governmants worked out the principle that granting patents in exchange for requiring the inventor to publish his technology was a benefit to society as a whole. If it weren't for patents, the Google inventors WOULD NOT be publishing their algorithms and you would have no idea how their search engine worked unless you tried to re-engineer it yourself, a needless duplication of effort.
until we can persuade the (US) government that software patents in their present form don't work
I won't argue with that - any system can be improved.
A patent does more than just prevent you from using somebody else's invention. It also prevents you from using your own invention if somebody else came up with it independently and patented it first. Of course, by releasing details to the patented process, it often doesn't even give you the chance to think of it yourself.
I'd much rather have a company rely on obscurity to protect their inventions, and allow me to code anything I think of, safe from patents that I didn't know existed.
Of course, I'd prefer it even more if the company decided to publicise the information that it came up with (after a certain period of time, say) as this would be the optimal game-theoretic state for everyone.
Duh!!!! They can license the algorithms to others for a small fee! Duh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
- Everybody knows about more evil.
- Interesting results are brought by crappy office suite, as well as by crappy os and crappy software in general.
- Guess where it'll land with bill the borg?
- But try bloated browser for a change.
Moderate this down (-1, Underwhelming)--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
I hear your cry, I feel your pain!
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
It'd be a shame to give up Google just as I hated giving up Amazon.com after ten thousand dollars' worth of business.
Now's the time to implore Google to use their patent wisely, assuming they get it. It's cool to have a patent just to be sure you yourself can continue to use an idea. It's a Really Bad Thing(tm) to use it to stop others from using it with so simple a concept.
Write their press contact. You can be sure they're listening to that address.
Anyway, if you took the time to setup an account and set your prefs you wouldn't have to be bothered by stuff that doesn't interest you. You only have yourself to blame.
IMO, your attitude sucks. You're offensive, so why should I even give your opinion any weight at all? You're obviously not "above it" as clearly indicated by your childish rant and personally this "I'm a normal programmer/engineer/knows what's going on in the real world" hedge doesn't wash.That type of person would have enough experience to know you don't hit the submit button on a post like yours and would have written something halfway civil if they had a real point to make.
So under further review I suggest that the moderators give you troll and flamebait as well. Normally I would not feed a troll but I'm in a fanciful mood today. Moderate as needed.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Granted, if I were building a search engine, it might take me a few tries figuring out the best ranking algorithm to use, but anyone would assuredly brainstorm this one sooner or later.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Woops - just pressed Submit instead of Preview. Here's the rest of my reply:
Just wanted to add that I agree with you completely about the idea of rights. Only in an anrchy are rights absolute (you do whatever the hell you like, but so does everyone else). In fact, the most difficult point that has to be addressed by government is that of conflict of rights. My right to free speech is limited by your right not to be slandered.
On the other hand, I believe that the present balance of rights, especially as far as freedom of knowledge and expression are concerned, is very pro-corporation and anti-community and individual. It appears that today's capitalistic society views the benefits of large corporations and individual greed as sufficiently important to outweigh the loss of freedom associated with many of these laws.
Laws should be made to create a happy sane society, not just an economically successful one.
As best I can tell it fits into their business plan. They won't sell ads, but i'm betting they are planning to license their search technology. All they need is to license somehting unpatented and have someone reverse engineer it and sell it without paying licensing fees. This is just the thing that a patent is supposed to prevent.
Something new should be created to protect software. Hybrid copyright/trademark/other rules. None fit quite right.
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
Well, perhaps their enthusiasm for free/open source software (unless paid mercenery astroturfers count as slashdotters these days), but beyond that I doubt you'll find slashdotters agreeing on much of anything.
Some of us (such as myself) believe that patents should be eliminated entirely, that they are a diservice to humankind and do more to harm and slow down technological progress in all areas of scientific endeavor than any other single thing.
Others are against software patents, but do not feel the same reasoning applies to other disciplines.
Others are simply against the pathetically obvious patents being issued by the USPO, and would like to replace the people issuing these patents but keep the system as it is largely unchanged.
Still others feel the same as above, except they would like to see the system reformed in various ways. How exactly it would be reformed is a conversation that, among slashdotters at least, will result in numerious, boistrous, and often mutually exclusive opinions and suggestions.
Finally, there are some here who ardently support and approve of the patenting system just the way it is.
All of these points of view probably stack up as a minority opinion when taken against all the others.
The myth of a "typical" slashdotter is one being bandied about by Microsoft-paid astroturfers and the like, and has little if anything to do with reality. It is as nonsensical as arguing that a crowd of people who unanimously expect the sun to rise in the east are therefor conformist and can be expected to agree on just about everything else. As with most things, we mostly disagree on the issue of patents and what to do about them and the problems some of us believe they cause. Hell, we even argue about the implimentation of the one thing we all do agree on -- how best to create and nurture free software (BSD vs GPL, Gnome vs. KDE, etc.). If we can't agree on that, it is highly unlikely we'll agree on anything, except maybe that the sun, probably, will rise in the east tommorow, unless of course it doesn't.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
http://www.google.com/search?q=best+operating+syst em
Why is this patent bad? Google's people invested their hard work and time into developing a page analysis method, and they are more than within their rights to patent it.
Patenting a concept (i.e. the "concept" of banner ads) is relatively questionable business behavior. Patenting an IMPLEMENTATION of that is not - it helps the developers protect their investments, and it forces everyone else to find a better way to do the same thing.
Here Google's authors can rest assured that nobody will steal the fruits of their hard work, and it prompts the rest of the community to come up with a different implementation of a page rankings algorithm that may be better or serve a different purpose.
I'm sure that if someone were to release a competing search engine using Google's algorithm, this entire community would be up in arms about it. So why don't you allow Google the chance to protect their work?
I've used yandex.ru with excellent ranking based on entered phrase for years.
Patenting, unlike copyright, takes away more that just the right to someone's work - it takes away the right to someone's thoughts.
That is why software patents are so insidious.
Patents are suppose to be protection for an implementation not an idea. Thomas Edison couldn't patent the idea of a light bulb, only his specific implentation (and those based on it). With software, however, it's impossible to separate the implentation from the idea. Software is like language and should be handled solely by copyright law.
If someone steals your code they are breaking the law just as if they plagarized your novel. However, Arthur C. Clarke isn't allowed to stop anyone from writing about an alien structure found on the moon - software coampanies shouldn't be either.
Robert Wilde
[ Posted under the influence of massive quanitites of leftover Xmas candy. :-) ]
There's nothing wrong with taking out a software patent, in today's crazy world. It's a good way to make yourself look good to investors, for example.
The problem is suing other people based on that patent.
That's why a patent is a limited time thing. You have a short monopoly, then it's public domain. Without patents, you would (an did, before patents) keep a process secret, still have a monopoly, and the knowlege dies with you.
It's really hard to tell without seeing the patent how broad its claims are. On the whole, this patent doesn't seem any worse than a lot of other software patents. Depending on its claims, however, I think there may be some published prior art.
Incidentally, take a look at NorthernLight (www.nlsearch.com); they have a patent on their search folders, again something that is very close to widely used techniques.
On the whole, startups don't have a choice: VCs want patents. Those patents are needed for defense and negotiation with other companies in cross-licensing deals. Almost everybody (other than the lawyers) would be better off if these software patents didn't exist, but as long as the patent office will grant them and courts will enforce them, everybody has to get them.
Cool! This post needs to be moderated up just for pissing enough people off to achieve such an impressive negative ranking. LOL! (No, I'm not the author, I just thought this was kind of amusing)
The point of patents is not so much to protect the IBMs of the world; it's to protect the little guy from the IBMs of the world. If I'm Joe Littleguy, and I invent copper interconnects, then I would never be able to develop the idea because some other company with bigger dollars would instantly steal it and beat me to market. This is a huge disincentive to invent anything, and promotes monopolies.
I'm actually glad you brought this up, because there is far too anti-patent thinking on Slashdot. Patents are your friend.
Now software patents are different. Personally, I think the problem is that the "science" of software is so new that we are still inventing "wheels" so to speak. My thought is that we should allow no software patents until an arbitrary date (say, 2029), and after that when the industry has presumably matured, we'll assume that everything obvious has been invented and start allowing software patents again.
---
Hi,
:-)
If you are right with your statement here (I expected something like that algorithms but did not dig into it), than the algorithms are are realy old.
I read about very similar stuff in linguistic research areas (published in scientific american) about 15 years ago.
They described heuristics and algorithms for distinguishing relavant occurances of words in documents from irrelevants.
The topic/problem is very close related to automatic abstract generation from scientific texts. An very old and partly well understood problem.
Usualy you will combine those algorithms with an attached thesaurus.
BTW. should I patent an thesaurus based search engine?
What makes me realy wonder is that none of the existing search engines tried to get some experianced linguists for choosing/implementing analysis algorithms and building the index data base.
All the search engines are realy dump and nearly unuseable for scinetific research/seeking in the web.
If you know some good ones, please mail me
Regards,
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Also, I'll bet there are those in the USPTO who have been shamed into reading Slashdot for a tech education. Let's give them a nice quantitative assessment. After all, nothing moves in the gov't without some numbers to quote.
They had a few patents in their day. My favorite is the Multi-player, multi-character cooperative play video game with independent player entry and departure. You've probably played it. Its Gauntlet!
Feelin' kinda Steely Dan today....
Software patents are a Bad Thing. It's good to fight to change them. But until they actually are changed, we do have to respect the system.
However, until the patent system is changed, it can yet prove useful. Consider: The GPL uses copyright, which is supposed to prevent people from copying works, to instead allow such copying. Something similar could (albeit more expensively) be done with patents relatively easily. Get the rights to it, then give others those same rights freely.
Last I checked, Google was Open-Source. Since OSS and the typical uses of software patents are antithetical, my guess is that this is what Google is trying to do. It'll apply a GPL-like license to the patent: you may use this technology in your products, provided that either 1) those products do not involve any other patented technology or 2) any other patented technology used is licensed is distributable and usable under the terms of this license.
It's a shame that Google has to do this; patents are expensive. But when you have a system that people twist to knock others out, you have to twist it too in order to survive.
I like Google because they
- Load quickly
- Have good results
- Run on Linux (anyone know if this is still true?)
though not necessarily in that order. I used to like AltaVista's text-only page for the first two reasons, though I think Google has better results. If Google starts to suck (note that my evaluation of whether they suck might be different from yours!), I'll go back to AltaVista.I don't care if you're trolling. It's really pathetic how many people wear "nerd" like some kind of freakin' badge of honor.
.45 caliber bullets with their teeth, we could cut the traffic on this site in half.
Get a life. Computers are fun. You can get paid for knowing stuff about them. That doesn't mean your whole life has to revolve around them.
If we could just get RMS or Torvalds to publicly announce that REAL hackers like to catch
Its true. Patents and propriatory stuff is not a Bad Thing. Thats what keeps people going and developing new stuff. Its prevalent in everything from fast food (does McDonalds release the recipie for its fries?) to Physics (do scientists give out research before they have had a change to publish a paper on it?) I have no problem with Open stuff, as long as OpenStuff people don't complain about other people keeping their stuff closed. Its their technology they can do with it whatever they damn well please.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You guys really have to lighten up about this patent stuff. Google has made big efforts to keep the site advertiser-free, therefore their business model is made around licensing their technology to other search engines. People *DO* have to make money at some point, and selling it is way better than bothering me with ads, in my opinion.
http://www.logient.com
I suggest you look at Fatbrain for your next book order and not reward Amazon.
It matters to my son, because I would not order the astronomy book he wanted from Amazon. Instead he chose another book, we ordered from Fatbrain and got a better price.
It wasn't Google's idea to analyze hyperlink structures in general as the primary determinant of page relevance, so it will be
interesting to see how the Patent Office and the lawyers determine if their ideas are too incremental to patent. In fact, scholars have
been using something called "citation analysis" long before the Web to determine the significance of legal briefs, academic and scientific papers.
The proliferation of obvious patents (windowing, one-click shopping) is starting to make us lose sight of the core issue: software patents should never have been allowed.
Algorithms cannot be patented. No matter what you may think about that; that's the law. The idea that you can't patent an algorithm, but you can patent the concept of implementing that algorithm in software is simply absurd, and we won't get out of this mess until software patents are rejected.
If the algorithm behind google can't be patented, then it makes no sense to patent the implementation of the algorithm in software. The specific implementation can be protected by copyright law. The *idea* of implementing an algorithm in software is an obvious one.
So even if you think Google has done significant and non-obvious work here, that's irrelevant. The algorithm may be impressive, but that's not patentable. And the implementation may represent significant work, but that's protected by copyright. There's simply no place for patents here.
Now, I'm not really attacking google here. The law is a mess and Google has to play the game. But this madness has to stop soon. The Internet would never have come into being if this mess of patenting every idea in sight existed 25 years ago.
I like patenting things like this. I think it will make a critical technology advance faster, and make the relevant businesses more efficient.
Patenting makes the technology known to the public. The patent explains how to make and use the thing, and puts the world in a position to figure out improvements to it. It is a way of facilitating "open source" for ideas. Sure, you have to pay the piper for the idea that is disclosed, that is, respect the monopoly for the period of years. You can license, but then, the inventor is just getting paid.
The alternative just makes my skin crawl. The alternative is that everyone in technology keeps secrets. They restrict who they hire, and where those people can go when they leave. The sue former employees and their present employers when it might look like a secret got leaked. Keeping the details of technology secret would in turn limit the number of people who have the access to make improvements. I think that trying to distinguish between general knowledge that an employee learned while working at a place can be hard to distinguish from the the secrets the company has, or that the person was paid to develop. I bet such judgments are just as hard for juries to make as obviousness is for patent examiners.
At least with a patent, there are electronically recorded and searchable lists of what you can't do without someone else's permission. Then you can find out who you pay to be allowed to do it. Keeping track of the off-the-books trade secrets that float with contract employees, and making sure you can't get sued for their contributions can be darn hard. (And one of the ironies of trade secret suits, the person complaining WON'T TELL YOU WHAT SECRET YOU'VE STOLEN, in case you actually didn't steal it. Heh. That makes for some fun during the lawsuit.)
Personally, I prefer open information, and the ability of employees to move freely, and companies to hire and fire as needed to pursue technology. That means patents instead of trade secrets. I don't think that search engine developers keeping their advances tightly secret will make the internet a good tool as fast as patents will.
I'd much rather have a company rely on obscurity to protect their inventions, and allow me to code anything I think of, safe from patents that I didn't know existed.
The problem with this is that a lot of scientific research has commercial applications. Suppose you are AT&T and are sitting on the invention of the transistor and laser. Would you publish your results in the scientific literature knowing that you would lose billions in potential license fees? Or would you keep these breakthroughs secret for as long as possible, resulting in the postponing the information revolution?
The patent system was developed in the late 17th century in England, and was almost immediately followed by the industrial revolution in England. While it is tough to prove cause and effect, there is a powerful correlative fact here.
The patent system was developed as a result of corporations and trade guilds keeping technologies secret to protect their technologies. If you look at the histories of the time, the lengths that were taken are astounding and definitely harmful to both commerce and the progress of technology. The developers of the patent system believed that free exchange of ideas in the form of publication of the technology is well worth the price of a temporary monopoly.
These days there are entire industries that might not exist if not for patent protection. Who is going to invest a billion dollars in development of a small molecule drug that can be easily reverse engineered without the availability of patent protection?
Here is the letter I wrote them. I'm not sure what email address you should use for this sort of things; anyone?
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 1999 18:50:02 +0100
From: Vilhelm Sjöberg
To: help@google.com, press@google.com
Subject: Concerning the Patent on PageRank.
X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.6i
Dear Sir,
I am writing to you, since it has been called to my attention (through the
recent Slashdot article) that you are applying for a patent for the PageRank
measure. I urge you to reconsider this decision. If you feel that that is
impossible, at least consider granting use of this technology to everyone,
without licensing fees.
When I first learnt about Google I was excited, not only about the remarkably
high-quality results it returned, but equally much about the fresh attitude
exhibited in for example the paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual
Web Search Engine". Quotes like
"Up until now most search engine development has gone on at companies with
little publication of technical details. This causes search engine
technology to remain largely a black art and to be advertising oriented.
With Google, we have a strong goal to push more development and
understanding into the academic realm."
gave an impression of a company which took true "community responsablity" (to
use a marketing word): rather than being content with some market share, you
aimed to improve the state of the art in web searchers. The academic
background seemed to vouch for a free dissemination of information, following
a tradition much older than IPOs and Market Relations.
With its connections with the academic domain, Google would be clearly aware
of the damages patents on algorithms has done to the level of technology used
in many fields. Research itself might not be hampered (since the academic
study of an invention is not covered by patents), but its adoption in everyday
life is critically hampered.
The clearest example of this is in the field of data compression, where
algorithms like PPM (which has existed for decades) remain unused due to
patent problems. Some more current algorithms _were_ in fact adopted, for
example Ross Williams' variations on Ziv-Lempel coding which were implemented
by GNU, only to be forced to withdraw. Instead, the commercial field remains
dominated by LZ77 (Zip, Gzip), or LZ78 (compress). Imagine if Ziv and Lempel
also had patented their results; then we would still be using per-symbol
huffman coding like the Unix utility pack(3).
The Google founders should be well aware how new inventions in this area must
depend on older; indeed the paper mentioned above itself acknowledges this when
it describes the PageRank:
"Academic citation literature has been applied to the web, largely by
counting citations or backlinks to a given page. This gives some
approximation of a page's importance or quality. PageRank extends this idea
by not counting links from all pages equally, and by normalizing by the
number of links on a page."
Patenting the PageRank would frustrate further development in text searching
and block its actual adoption, in the same way that would have been the case
if the "Academic citation literature" had been covered by patents.
By filing for patent of PageRank, Google has chosen Profit over Progress. If
more users become disillusioned like I have, you might find you will gain
neither.
Sincerely Yours,
Vilhelm Sjöberg
--
-Vilhelm Sjöberg "355/113 -- not the famous number,
vilhelm@home.se but an incredibly good imitation!"
It's been mentioned in a few nooks and cranies here, but I feel the need to say it plain: what Google implemented, namely, citation indexing, has been around for decades at least. It's a great library/information science tool, used to index scientific journal articles. It is not orginal as far as Google is concerned. Now, what they have done is created a very nice implementation for web pages. Whether that implentation can or should be patented is the question, and would that preclude other people from creating their own implentations of citation indexing for the web?
Worst case scenario: the idea of applying citation indexing to web pages gets patented. Not substantially different from patenting 'search engine' itself as a concept.
Although software itself is not patentable (and should not be), technologies and algorithms definitely are.
The above-quoted statement is a restatement of a common misconcetion about patent law. It mistates the law, at the same time, by overstating and understating the scope of patentable subject matter. It overstates the scope of patentable subject matter, in that there exists a narrow class of abstract "mathematical algorithms" which are non-patentable. It understates that scope because software, "itself," is most certainly patentable in some cases. Claims directed solely to software have been allowed by the PTO and enforced by the Courts under the United States Patent Act.
The modern standard is basically, "anything under the sun made by man." A patent claim directed to software is patentable, even if it recites a mathematical algorithm, if it constitutes a "practical application of a mathematical algorithm, . . . [by] produc[ing] 'a useful, concrete and tangible result.'" See AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications, Inc., No. 98-1338 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 14, 1999).
If the lawyer properly framed the claims, it is these days almost frivolous to argue the validity of a software patent claim on subject matter grounds. The only issue is the traditional question as to whether the invention was novel, useful and unobvious, as those terms are used in the Patent Act.
> (noone else has done it yet, and the big search
> engines have been out long enough to come up
> with it on their own).
That is not true. Inktomi has been doing something similar for many months, and now Fast is doing it too. Click on "web pages" at yahoo's search results for terms like "mp3" or "games" and you will see for yourself.
Here's the other side of it...what if, every time you sit down to program something for someone - whether it be as a contractor or employee, you have to worry about whether or not you're violating someone's patent? For the creative software engineer, this would seem a very easy thing to do. All software patents will do is drive up the cost of doing business...if you're not paying someone royalties, you'll be paying for patent searches to make sure you're not inadvertently infringing on someone else's idea - not because it's particularly brilliant, but ONLY because it's patented. To put it bluntly, this sucks.
The standard is not whether the invention was obvious to "one 'skilled in the art', e.g. a geek'." To the contrary, the standard is whether "the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains." 35 U.S.C. s. 103(a).
The issue is not whether in hindsight an expert would think the issue is obvious, but whether a dull, ordinary, hack familiar with the art without the benefit of knowing the solution -- or even a requirements specification of the problem -- would find the differences obvious.
So what, then, if we are to charge Amazon with invalidity, is the relevant prior art that makes obvious the one-click solution? And if the solution was so obvious, given the need to do it, why wasn't it done by others before Amazon did it? It is interesting to note that B&N's lawyers couldn't come up with a plausible answer to that question during the preliminary injunction hearings. Where is the "clear and convincing" evidence of invalidity, then, apart from the naked assertion of obviousness so frequently asserted in these letters?
I do not assert that invalidating prior art does not exist. I merely note that no one has come close, so far, to presenting any.
What, pray tell, are patents good for other than restricting your competitors from doing what you have patented? What value does a patent have if there is no threat of a lawsuit? Maybe if you had said "only defensive lawsuits" I would've agreed with you. As it is, I can't distinguish your statement from a hypothetical one like "It's not the sun that's the problem; it's that giant celestial body we orbit around that's the problem."
Even investors, who are overvaluing everything in sight these days, wouldn't touch you on this one.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I seem to recall a group at Watson Labs working on a similar eigenvector-based ranking system for citation analysis. I believe that research was discussed in a Scientific American article sometime in the last year or so.
Is this the same guy, or am I conflating technologies?
I think what you say illustrates the difference between scientific patents and software patents. The thing that makes free software possible is the low investment cost - a bit of time and a fair amount of brainpower. It is also why we should be more cautious in providing software the protection afforded by patents.
In the case of medical and scientific advances the (financial) investments are that much greater, and I agree that patenting is a vital means of encouraging research. Ideally, all research would be funded by the government for the good of the community, but I am aware that this is a somewhat impractical utopia.
Isn't the window closed? Wasn't the paper originally published in sometime in 1998? If I understand the requirements for patents, the work is only allowed to be in the public domain for a year before your right to patent it goes away. They would only be able to patent a nonobvious extention to the original work. But, I am not a lawyer, so I amn probably wrong.
On a seperate note, this idea is not original, there was an research paper search engine that used to extract the references and bibliography sections of indexed papers and used them to rank the best papers. Give me a break. What dicks, stealing other peoples' ideas and trying to pass them off as their own.
There are two successful methods you can choose, depending on your own creativity, to create a search result that will point to microsoft.com.
The first is to go to microsoft.com and find some words that you can string together and take out of context. Remember: Google doesn't preserve the order of your words, and Microsoft.com is one of the most linked websites on the web, so whatever string you put together will likely point to them first before others, and this is even more true if you reference Bill Gates.
To illustrate this, we can put together a simple string of words like Bill Gates eats customers in his office. All of those words are found on Microsoft's site, and lo and behold, microsoft.com is the first site to come up.
The second technique is really just a variation on the first: when Google encounters a word in your search that it doesn't understand, it just drops it and proceeds with the rest of your search. Thus, if you are creative and come up with a word that sounds like an obscene sexual act but which doesn't actually exist in the English language, like for instance "oingoboingo", you can make a lovely search like Bill Gates oingoboingoed your mother. Again, microsoft.com is the first site to come up, after "oingoboingoed" is dropped.
Now you too can explore your own personal brand of juvenile humor.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Months? Google has been around longer. Where do you think these other search engines got the idea?
At the search engine company I worked for, there were two dozen coders plus project managers, etc. working on nothing but the search engine for years and they didn't come up with this.
Google's technique is only obvious *after* you read about how Google did it. They deserve protection from technology thieves.
Couldn't there be created come kind of "Free Patent" that could allow anyone to use the technology, but not charge for the use of it? I understand how patents works, but with the onset of open source and what not, couldn't those ideals be put in to practice with patents as well? The Patent owner could be the maintainer and those who wanted to use the ideas would just have to give written credit to the maintainer. No more suits for $$$ and what not. It is a naive thought, but hey, you never know.
You invent a widget. It's not trivial; you spend five years and mosy of your money making it. There are no patents. You are selling your widgets mostly by word of mouth, since you have little capital for advertising. I can't buy your widget because I don't know you or it exists. Micro$oft finds out about your widget and starts selling widgets. They make another forty billion selling them. You die a broken, impoverished man. Serves you right for thinking patents are evil!
If what google patented is useful, infosuuk should have to pay to use it- for the next 18 years.
Quit bitching and whining about some socialist utopia with no money. Instead, realize that when someone invents something its *THEIRS*. They get to keep it and sell it only to people who can afford and agree to their price. Instead, you want to put a gun to their head and insist that they give everything away. Google.com is the best search engine on the net. I've been using it for a few weeks and it finds the best pages unquestionably. Now you tell me, why in the hell should the slack-asses at the other search engine companies who were too stupid to invent such technology or have the balls to get behind it get to use it? You think Alta Vista is going to pick up on Google's technology and improve it? They couldn't even create it in the first place!
But I know why you all support ideas like stealing concepts and inventions from the geniuses in the world so that the mediocre can use them... you know that you don't have the ability to produce anything anyone would ever want to pay for. You've realized that in a capitalist society you'll drown because you're an inept loser. Either that or you know a lot of inept losers and you sympathize with them. They tell you that the rich people got rich by exploiting people and you agree with them. What you don't realize is that GREED is the #1 driving force of innovation and the improvement of life for everyone. If car companies weren't greedy, we'd all be driving Pintos. If computer companies weren't greedy, we'd be using 286s. What kind of software do you think you're going to end up with if Linux replaces Windows? it will stagnate completely. The capitaism you all hate so much is the only thing driving development. Once Open Source is the standard, no one is going to stand up and start making bust-ass software. because theres no greed involved, it will die.
But, luckily, we'll never see that day. Linux users are such an extreme minority (about 4 billion people on the planet use computers in some way, 10 million use Linux) and their arguments are so weak and touchy-feely that they will be crunched under the boot of capitalists. Thank God. It won't be Microsoft. It will be a small company that decides to out-MS MS. They will create an OS that is totally and completely integrated and automated. It won't even seem like using a computer, it will be like using a microwave oven. It will be so mind-blowingly simple that millions of households all over the world will switch over immediately. Development for the system will be completely proprietary. To get the platform SDK you must buy a license. There will be 1 word processor. There will be 1 email program. There will be 1 web browser. It will be an enormous company, employing more programmers than any company in history, and the updates will be constant. Development and bugfixes will make Linux look like a snail. Because of the standards imposed, applications will not crash. Even the most advanced games will be working in a known environemnt and there will not be problems. There will be no "computers are complicated" stigma any longer, 50% of the world will be online.... get the idea? If you continue pining for this socialist dream of yours, you are going to be the force that creates what I have described.
Esperandi
Start thinking of money as life (because money IS life) and you'll realize what it is you actually hate.
I'm not sure what draws most people to google, but for me it's the decent hits it returns when I search, and they do that using the algorithm that they were the 1st to implement.
Sure they did it with an algorithm developed at Stanford, but that's how graduate research works. Usually the university would get the patent on the idea and license it to a company.
And as for google being ad free. That will change soon. It's part of their business plan to start selling ads, probably as soon as they build up a decent user base. Nobody wants to pay to advertise on an unknown site. As soon as they get enough eyeballs they can use those numbers to woo advertisers.
They claim the ads will be clearly differentiated from the search results and will in no way affect the results, but the ads closest to your query will be displayed http://www.google.com/advertisement.html
I say good for them. If it took a few years to develop and test the algorithm and they were, they should get the patent.
As for the ads, even the best websites have ads. Just scroll up and you'll see what I mean.
It seems like google search engine does something fundamentally different. At least it works for me like no other engine. In fact, once I've started using google, I'm finding things rather quickly and always on the mark. Apparently there *is* something they'are doing which is not trivial at all, and this probably should be patented. This is patenting the obvious which causes the negative reaction on slashdot.
I think the patent office should send all pending technology patents to Hemos or CmdrTaco to be posted as polls on slashdot...If I worked at the patant office I would welcome this kind of open discussion...I must suck having to try and be an expert in everything. I bet the officers that cleared the amazon patent are like "doh!" right now...then again they may also be even more clueless than I expect.
Google does not only look at the result pages (micros~1 in this example) for the search terms you entered, but also at the links that point to that page! This is in fact one of the reasons why Google is so good.
I don't think the words evil and satan appear on their homepage, but instead they probably appear on some (or many) links to them.
Look here for more about this.
- Stephan.
Carpe diem.
Damn right, IANAL, but how about this:
A physical device that implements an algorithm is patentable: nobody else can sell such a device without paying royalties.
A list of instructions that carries out an algorithm is non-physical (can be written down on paper, on a floppy, etc.) and is no more patentable than a recipe in a cookbook.
When the list of instructions is written down in an executable file on a PC's hard disk, and that computer then carries out the algorithm, it has for the moment become a patentable device.
HOWEVER, as a practical matter, it is wrong to define a general purpose computer as a specialized device that was designed to carry out one particular algorithm. The PC is really a general-purpose algorithmic simulator that happens to have become very fast.
If I write down a "patented" algorithm on my PC's hard disk, and sell it as a "device", all I'm really selling is a general purpose computer (non-patented) with some instructions on it (non-patented), and BTW it can also run Quake (copyrighted, but non-patented). Do I pay the patent holder 1/2 royalties? If I add Windows (copyrighted, but non-patented) to the "device", I've added thousands of algorithms, so do I pay the patent holder 1/1000th royalties?
I would have to DISABLE all other capabilities from the computer, so that it could only run the original algorithm, and hence become a single purpose "device" that implements it, to be liable under the law.
And as a user, what I run on my PC is my own damn business. I'm not selling it; I'm using it. If I own a web search company and write a google-like ranking engine, I'd be serving up web pages from a general purpose web server. I have bought nothing illegal, and am doing nothing illegal. Get a warrant and all you find is unpatentable components. Would the cop yell "Don't turn the computer off! Without electricity, the evidence will disappear!" ?
As a fantastic example: a crescent wrench is patentable, but a blob of liquid metal that can morph into any shape cannot be called a crescent wrench, if it can also be every other tool in the box. Would the patent holder hire a guy to stand over the blob and wait for it to become a wrench again? "You see? I own that. Pay me!" If the metal blob was in my living room, I'd consider that an invasion of my privacy.
(I've already patented the blob, so you can forget that idea.)
I'm cool like a fool in a swimming p-p-pfft-pool
Does anyone know if those challenging a patent can use "expert witnesses" (obviously, IANAL) to demonstrate or testify to prior art? Many /.ers would probably qualify. Any thoughts as to the usefulness of explaining these things?
And I agree with previous posts, that the patent should be for a unique process describing how to do something, not for a result. Prior art aside, if someone else can come up with a new and better way of doing the same thing that Amazon does, why should Amazon be rewarded and the consumer punished because they came up with an inferior process earlier than anyone else?
[command INSERTWITTYQUIP failed: insufficient wit]
I'm sorry to say
Your sig has one too many
"there is" should be "there's"
It depends on their intentions... if they get the patent and then 'open source' it (i.e. make the license $0.00 to prevent others from doing what Amazon.com did), then it's a good idea. On the other hand, if they're planning on doing something like what Amazon.com did, then I say fuck 'em. queco
"PROFANITY is the inevitable literary crutch of the inarticulate MOTHER FUCKER." -- some PC user
What I'm wondering is how Google differs from IBM's Clever? According to a Scientific American article, clever determines relevance based on how many pages that are also considered relevant link to a given page. The process iterates several times, re-assigning the weight of each link until the solution "settles out", not unlike a bi-directional associative memory type neural net. That sounds familiar!
Patents serve (sometimes) a good purpose - to prevent others from ripping off your innovative ideas, and leaving you holding the bag of R&D, while implementing your ideas, and profiting from them.
If Google indeed has an innovative technique of searching and ranking, then they should patent it. This doesn't mean that just because it's patented no one can use it. It simply means that one would require a license to use.
Licenses do NOT need to cost money, as many companies issue gratis licenses for ceratin individuals or situations (like educational institutions), but that this also means that if a competitor to Google wants to use this algorithm, they will be required to possibly pay Goggle for it.
In this particularl case, this would be absolutely fair, as Google *IS* in this case, protecting their intellectual property - and it's not like they patented a way to click on a link, or something stupid like that.
Patents aren't always a bad thing. Just those filed and administered by morons.
Harry
At least by my reckoning of the English language. The resulting search puts an American-football team on top.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
PATENTS are not really a personal battle.. To me and you they wont ever truly matter. If you develop something that is patentable. Be wary. Until then why bother.. Its a corporate war-fare thingy. Patnets are just being beaten to death here guys.. I am sick of hearing about them.. Its the same DISCUSSION every time you post a patent.. *sighs*
IMO, the real problem lies with a patenting authority that allows people to patent ideas (which is essentially what an algorithm is). It's one thing to patent a specific and clearly distinguishable implementation of an idea, but quite another to say that so-and-so has the only right to an idea just because he got it through the patenting process before everyone else. I'm sure all of us have had some fantastic revelations that we later discovered were already passé. Me, I thought up solipsism and the radio LAN, then found out that someone else had beaten me to it, but does that make those ideas any less mine? Should I have any less right to pursue them to their conclusions because I was born later than someone else who also thought of them?
[We Have No Product] [The Swindle
Yes, we're all opposed to patenting the obvious (who isn't?) but there are other big problems with software patents that go far beyond obvious stuff.
And the big one is this: software creation doesn't require much capital. It mainly just takes time. In spite of what some people say about "The Software Crisis" or whatever, programmers can be extremely productive. We consider that to be a Good Thing and one of the neat features of this industry. If you have a mind, you can actually create something useful fairly quickly.
Software patents change all that. Every time you write a program or even part of a program, you may be violating dozens of patents and not even know it. Even non-obvious stuff is way too easy to independently invent.
GM can afford to do a patent search on every moving part in their next years car model, but I sure as hell can't afford to do a patent search on every loop in my code. If I have to do that, then the rate that I have to bill would jump from $50 per hour to $5000 per hour. There goes the productivity. That is what makes software patents such a bad thing.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You moderators are on drugs. The fact that you don't agree with the sentiments doesn't mean you should moderate it down - that is the attitude of an infant.
Hah! Look up "mud wrestling" on Google. What do you see on the first page? "Vatican Mud Wrestling", a (really) short piece a few freinds and I did way back in college.
I really doubt that most of the people referred by Google to my site are looking for what they find on my page.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Try this search: More evil than the devil himself
g00gle rocks!
There definitely is prior research on this concept. Google is nothing more than a reworking of the Hubs and Authorities concept discussed in the SA article. All they have done is settle on links and backlinks and surrounding text (the 50 characters on either side of the link I believe) as reliable sources of information.
Google simply reiterates the same principal while focusing on the authorities pages rather than the hubs as far as I can see.
Patenting an algorhythm is a rediculous concept and needs to be ended as a legal fiction. What would happen if Albert Einstein had patented his theories and formulas? Would every Nuclear powerplant in the world have to pay royalties to his estate?
An algorhythm is just a mathematical formula and should be available to everyone freely.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Patenting an algorhythm is a rediculous concept and needs to be ended as a legal fiction. What would happen if Albert Einstein had patented his theories and formulas? Would every Nuclear powerplant in the world have to pay royalties to his estate?
Actually, his colleague in Chicago, Szilard (sz?) held a bunch of the seminal patents relating to nuclear fission and associated technologies.
And, in case you hadn't heard, every "Nuclear powerplant in the world" did pay many dollars in royalties, directly and indirectly, to patent holders in the underlying technologies during those patent terms.
I have seen dozens of postings in Slashdot recently along the following lines:
Algorithms cannot be patented. No matter what you may think about that; that's the law. The idea that you can't patent an algorithm, but you can patent the concept of implementing that algorithm in software is simply absurd, and we won't get out of this mess until software patents are rejected.
This is a wild overstatement of the law. While it is true that there exists a narrow class of abstract "mathematical algorithms" that are non-patentable per se, the more general statement about algorithms is clearly false. The term, "mathematical algorithm" as used by the courts is not the same as the term is used by "computer scientists," and refers only to claims directed to the most abstract account of a narrow class of mathematical algorithms. This issue has now been well-settled by the courts in Diamond v. Diehr, State Street Bank and the cases, and is no longer considered an open legal question (except, it would seem, on Slashdot).
And even then, the application of an algorithm to a problem (whether in software or otherwise) can be patentable even though the algorithm itself might not be patentable. Indeed, an unobvious selection of a prior art algorithm to solve a particular problem can itself be patentable. The "mathematical algorithm" rule is no more a bar to patents on applications of a "mathematical algorithm" than the "law of nature" rule is a bar to patents on an apparatus that relies on the law of gravity. While it does still have force, the importance and practical import of this rule is still wildly overstated by opponents of software patents.
If you wish to be an effective advocate for your cause, it is imperative that you learn what is, and what is not, the law so that you can criticize it intelligently.
The modern standard is basically, "anything under the sun made by man." A patent claim directed to software is patentable, even if it recites a mathematical algorithm, if it constitutes a "practical application of a mathematical algorithm, . . . [by] produc[ing] 'a useful, concrete and tangible result.'" See AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications, Inc., No. 98-1338 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 14, 1999).
An algorithm is not innovative. It is a discovery.
Just because you are the first to depict a naturally occuring horse in a painting does it mean you should have the right to collect license fees from any other painter because they also depict a horse in a paining.
Software is no different. It may be the _first_ time someone implements an algorithm, but algorithms exist outside of your implementing them even before you discover them.
Suppose that you're a promising young programmer who really stands to make a contribution to the state of the art. You're good at developing new ways of doing things, and you deserve a reasonable reward for your honest, hard work.
Unfortunately, you face two threats. First, large corporations -- Microsoft comes to mind but is by far not the only relevant example -- may copy your work. Via bundling, giveaways (e.g. Microsoft's "cut off their air supply" strategy which so effectively destroyed Netscape), and/or sheer mass, they use your own ideas to destroy your livelihood.
The second threat comes from the GPL. If your products become pervasive, the ideologues who have bought into the notion that all software should be freely copyable and available at no charge will release GPLed software that provides the same function. As with Netscape, you cannot compete with free -- not even enough to maintain a workplace in which you and others can labor over future innovations.
Worse still, a competitor may well sponsor the development of a GPLed product that competes with yours. This strategy has two advantages for the competitor. First, your funding for the development of competing products is sapped, so you're unlikely to be a threat in the future. Second, the competitor can skirt claims of predatory pricing and unfair competition by pointing to the nebulous and transient band of developers who wrote portions of the GPLed product. "It's not us," they'll say; "We only provided a little help. It's that ragtag bunch of programmers that did the deed."
The only defense against all of these potential calamities is a strong software patent. I once opposed software patents, and I still believe that they last too long. However, I now recognize that, especially, they are necessary to prevent the GPL -- which was created specifically to destroy commercial developers -- from achieving its malicious and spiteful goals. (Yes, I know that not everyone who uses the GPL does so out of spite and malice, but its use furthers the same agenda nonetheless.) While we should fight overly broad and erroneously issued patents, we should be on the side of developers who have legitimately created something new. Otherwise, we will be steering rewards to the copycats, the marketers, and the already rich and powerful -- and away from those who deserve our thanks for advancing the state of the art.
--Brett Glass
Anyway, I agree with you on the last bit. America is going to be fucked cos of the stupid patent laws allowing software patents. Hahaha.
why is this noticed just now ?
how was this not noticed before ?
why the big fuss over the other patents but with
this no outcry ?
If people are willing to donate their labor to make certain software available, clearly civilization is better served by letting them do so than by allocating resources to you in return for work that didn't even satisfy those people.
Your points are only "threats" if one does something stupid like proprietary development with an attempt to recover costs by wielding the exclusive right to charge per copy. This inappropriate model is a bad fit for information (where all the cost is up front, not per copy), rewards interfering with takeup of someone else's superior software, screws the consumer (who cannot get the software fixed or repurposed unless the authors cooperate), and cripples the profession (we're expected not to let each other learn from our work), and its decline comes not a moment too soon. Your promising young programmer should be paid for writing good code by the people who want to run it; he shouldn't expect to sit back and cash checks forever.
You want to be able to correct typos after posting? Right under the text box I'm typing in, it says:
"Use the Preview Button!"
Do it!
Ah, yes... Patents for banner ads.
In my roamings for a free i-net provider (I'm cheap, so sue me), I ran across dotNow, who has professed freely (and quite proudly) to have notified "...Alta Vista, America Online, Microsoft, NetZero and others of software's pending patent rights to the methodology of ad-supported Internet access used in its dotNow! suite of free Internet services."
Pardon me, but how is it possible to patent free internet service? Both television and radio function on the same premise of free services paid for in part by advertising, so they are certainly not the first company to have this idea, and certainly not the first company to tailor advertisements to the the individual consumer (other mail and internet services have already done so). So what makes this company think it has any right to a patent?
Can you imagine how much television and radio would blow if the first stations had decided to patent the way they do business?
Can you say "The remote control only has one button"?
With a name like "Kinbote" how normal could I be?
Wet.Mosaic