As I wrote on my blog, the Java and .NET divide proves that software patents are not a good thing for software development. Another major fallacy of the argument that Ross and the other guy put forward is that closed source applications don't need patent protection because they can in most cases reliably hide behind trade secret protection. The only people who could actually see Google's algorithms would be the people working on their products who could be bound by a NDA and other measures to keep silent.
You know what's really funny, Tim? Ross and the others there missed the fact that the real innovation is in how Google made their search system so powerful, flexible and scalable.
Cog
· 3 years ago
In all likelihood, some variation of PageRank's key ideas are now standard subroutines in every major search engine. Yet I am unaware of any patent licensing fees paid to Google by Microsoft, Yahoo, or Amazon. This doesn't mean that no such fees are being paid; on the other hand, I suspect that the existence of such licensing agreements would have leaked to the public by now. (Certainly, if Yahoo's paying PageRank license fees to Google, then Yahoo would be criminally negligent not to state in their SEC filings that they are paying license fees on their core business to their most successful competitor.)
Furthermore, Google's revenue is clearly based on ad sales. Patent licensing fees, if Google's even collecting any, constitute an eyedropper-size trickle next to the firehose of ad revenue. Duffy's crazy to give the PageRank patent credit for Google's market valuation. The existence of the PageRank patent might make investors feel better, but its business utility to Google beyond psychological palliative is questionable.
Finally, as a technical matter, I have heard firsthand from a developer of Nutch (an open source search engine) that PageRank unadorned doesn't get you very far, and that you need to toss in a bunch of other tricks to make your results reasonable. PageRank gets a lot of attention from computer scientists because it's mathematically elegant, and from the public because the core idea captures the imagination. But its importance is probably overestimated.
Patrick Ross
· 3 years ago
I'll confess, Tim, when you asked for these materials I wondered why you didn't go directly to Professor Duffy; after all, I was just an observer of his Sao Paulo presentation, and as a college professor he is hardly difficult to track down. Now I see why -- you wanted to ridicule his example without having to get the full argument straight from the horse's mouth, nor did you want to have to approach the person you were planning to attack. A blog is not journalism, I know, but the journalist in me is appalled at the recklessness and intellectual irresponsibility of this blog entry, particularly when you acknowledge it's "not fair" to base your criticism on a single PowerPoint slide. When you want to launch a kamikazi attack on a respected academic in the future, do it without my help.
Tim
· 3 years ago
I contacted you because I happened to have you in my address book, and was already planning to write to you to follow up on the Linux DVD player question. I was also hoping you might have a transcript of the talk and/or a past PFF publication making his case. And I figured you'd give me his email address if you thought it would be better to contact him directly.
In any event, I've emailed him and look forward to getting more detail about his argument, and if I've misrepresented that argument, you can expect to see an apology in a future blog post.
Look, I don't have the luxury of working on technology issues for my day job, so I blog in my free time. I just don't have time to track down every potential angle as I would if I were writing as a professional journalist. Whenever possible (as in this case) I try to acknowledge cases where I might be making an off-the-cuff generalization. And when I make a mistake or draw a hasty conclusion, as I have on several occasions in the past, I acknowledge that too and apologize for it. But if I waited until I had time to research a subject exhaustively before posting anything about it, I'd hardly ever be able to blog at all.
All Comments
As I wrote on my blog, the Java and .NET divide proves that software patents are not a good thing for software development. Another major fallacy of the argument that Ross and the other guy put forward is that closed source applications don't need patent protection because they can in most cases reliably hide behind trade secret protection. The only people who could actually see Google's algorithms would be the people working on their products who could be bound by a NDA and other measures to keep silent.
You know what's really funny, Tim? Ross and the others there missed the fact that the real innovation is in how Google made their search system so powerful, flexible and scalable.
Furthermore, Google's revenue is clearly based on ad sales. Patent licensing fees, if Google's even collecting any, constitute an eyedropper-size trickle next to the firehose of ad revenue. Duffy's crazy to give the PageRank patent credit for Google's market valuation. The existence of the PageRank patent might make investors feel better, but its business utility to Google beyond psychological palliative is questionable.
Finally, as a technical matter, I have heard firsthand from a developer of Nutch (an open source search engine) that PageRank unadorned doesn't get you very far, and that you need to toss in a bunch of other tricks to make your results reasonable. PageRank gets a lot of attention from computer scientists because it's mathematically elegant, and from the public because the core idea captures the imagination. But its importance is probably overestimated.
In any event, I've emailed him and look forward to getting more detail about his argument, and if I've misrepresented that argument, you can expect to see an apology in a future blog post.
Look, I don't have the luxury of working on technology issues for my day job, so I blog in my free time. I just don't have time to track down every potential angle as I would if I were writing as a professional journalist. Whenever possible (as in this case) I try to acknowledge cases where I might be making an off-the-cuff generalization. And when I make a mistake or draw a hasty conclusion, as I have on several occasions in the past, I acknowledge that too and apologize for it. But if I waited until I had time to research a subject exhaustively before posting anything about it, I'd hardly ever be able to blog at all.