Nilay obviously knows a whole lot more about patents than I do, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading his take on the whole situation (especially regarding software patents, which, he points out, are not currently given any special status under our laws). I liked this specific example of the triumph of a software patent:
We also can’t simply forbid entities that don’t “make anything” from asserting patent rights. Not only would that that veer into uncomfortably unconstitutional territory, it would also prevent institutions like universities and research firms from gaining any value from their patents. That PageRank patent is actually owned by Stanford, which funded Larry Page’s grad student research; when he and Sergey Brin left to start Google, they signed an exclusive license to the patent in exchange for 1.8 million shares of stock that Stanford later sold for $336 million. That’s a major success story — we want more of those.
I learned a whole lot reading his article, and agree with almost every idea he posed. He approaches the issue from more or less the same angle I did, but backs it up with a lot more background and knowledge of the system.
Danny Sullivan describes the way Google Search’s new integration with Google+ changes the presented results. I didn’t realize how pervasive it was. He picks some great examples to demonstrate how ridiculous the results sometimes are.
The headline says it. I would dismiss it as an early spike because it’s new, but even then, it’s still a high number. What would this number be if Google had announced the same software for Android? Would that number even be in the thousands?