Search Wars: The Patent Menace
by Aaron Turpen of Aaronz WebWorkz
Weird Al Yankovic was only slightly off when he sang "It's all
about the Pentiums, baby!" In reality, it's all about the patents.
Ever since Yahoo!'s acquisition of the Overture pay-per-click engine,
it's been rumored that Yahoo! planned to drop long-time partner Google
in favor of its own, internal algorithm. This finally happened last
month when Yahoo! announced it will no longer be using Google as its
back-end provider and instead has debuted "Yahoo! Search Technology"
(YST).
In a press release on February 18, Yahoo! made this announcement and
has since been changing and updating their site with new search options
and changes. These include
XML/RSS syndication links and other relevant technologies.
Well, now battle lines have been drawn in the search engine patent
battle. A new "search engine arms race," as one insider put
it, pits the largest of the search engines (Google and Yahoo specifically)
against one another in a warto see who will control the technology that
is one of the Web's largest assets - and promises to be important for
the foreseeable future.
For months now, Yahoo! and Google have been quietly fighting over ownership
and viability of a patent covering search-related advertising - something
both companies base a large portion of their incomes on. Yahoo, for
instance, showed an earnings growth of 84% last year due in large part
to this.
Yahoo! owns patents from several recent acquisitions as well as their
own: including those held by recently-absorbed Inktomi and Overture.
Overture, before the purchase by Yahoo!, also received some of the oldest
patents on the Web, gained by their acquisition of AltaVista.
Google is no slacker either, holding patents in such obscure (and important)
things as methods for information extraction from a database and for
detecting duplicate files. Google also holds a patent, via its founder
Larry Page, for PageRank, which is a formula for calculating the importance
of pages based on the number of other pages which link to it…
Not to be left behind, Microsoft, IBM, and even Amazon.com hold patents
relevant to search engine advertising and rankings.
Some of these claims have already gone to court, most notably Overture
in its aggressive protection of its patents on pay-per-click advertising.
Most in the industry believe that these fights are just the beginning
as the various "Big Boys of the 'Net" jostle for position
and superiority. We shall see where this leads.
Aaron is the proprietor of Aaronz WebWorkz, a full service online
company providing consultation, development, and more to small businesses
online. You can find him at his website http://www.AaronzWebWorkz.com
