Alta Vista ----> Google

whoooosh!

[msgraph]

Jeffrey Dean, Monika Henzinger, and Krishna Bharat applied for this patent back in November 1999 for Alta Vista.

The patent was just issued today November 20, 2001 but all these people currently work for Google.

What happpens now?

Method and apparatus for preventing topic drift in queries in hyperlinked environments [164.195.100.11]

[agerhart]

That is pretty interesting.....the Inventors are Jeffrey Dean, Monika Henzinger, and Krishna Bharat, but the patent is given to Alta Vista.

But, will they be able to bring AV back from the dead by using it?

[msgraph]

>>>But, will they be able to bring AV back from the dead by using it?

What are the rules in patent law? I forgot the basics of it.

Does the company have to pay royalties to the inventors or do the inventors take the technology with them?

[IanTurner]

Probably depends on how much they can sting Google for!

[agerhart]

I think that the patent stays with the company that it is issued to.

[msgraph]

Just to make clear all three of these people did research at Compaq's Systems Research Center before moving on to Google. Compaq's SRC is one of the research backbones of Alta Vista.

[agerhart]

Good List Of Info On Patents [uspto.gov]

[WebGuerrilla]

I think this almost makes it a certainty that we will see Google move in the near future to aquire AV.

AV has done a ton of quality SE R&D and owns several valuable patents. They just don't have the funds to implement any of the ideas. Taking over AV not only prevents the patents from being sold to a potential competitor who does have some funding, it also gives them a decent enterprise search application that would help them gain some ground on Ink.

[msgraph]

>>>AV has done a ton of quality SE R&D and owns several valuable patents. They just don't have the funds to implement any of the ideas.

Definitely! If these two joined forces I think we would see them become the M$ of the search application world. With all the research these guys have done, you could have one technology that would be both hard match and compete with. INK would become the equivalent of WebCrawler compared to these guys.

[Tapolyai]

I believe this patent won't do much good for Alta Vista.

The idea is nice, and might be useful, but I believe it will have almost imperceptible impact for searches for the general user.

To experts, such as.. well us it will make an impact. The drift in the Kleinberg algorithm is well known, and there are several methods to combat it.

So, nice - now AV can place the number 6,321,220 on their web site. To best compare it is tire thread.

You might be surprised but almost all tire thread patterns are pattented. But do you really care if your tire stamps a smiley on the snow or a banana? What you really care is that it holds good. Now the one that stamps the banana holds about .02G better at 70MPH on dry pavement, with a 5 degree banking. Do you really care? You care that it holds.

This is where the drift doesn't really matter. Most searches return several pages of results. Preventing topic drift helps with really really bad search terms or really really obscure topic. In both cases I believe the user expects to see some drift.

It will help them because some, (and I mean very few) people will read a press release and want to see how it works. That would be us - we will drill and see how well it works. Then when we are done, we go back to the old SEs we are used to.

[bigjohnt]

Topic drift is unavoidable due to ambiguity of language. <i.e. identically spelled words that mean totally different things>
Apple <computer>
apple

Amazon (River)
Amazon (books)

A SERP that doesn't contain both is probably not very good.