Google Search Updates

[Sushubh]

wikipedia runs on mediawiki which they provide as an open source offering.

----------

there is a difference between patents and trademarks.

 

[amish]

yes design unless it is really extra-ordinary shud not be allowed to be patented. google's design is simple and its not extra-ordinary.any1 who wants to develop simple low bandwidth consuming search frontend will just have one box and button.

 

[amish]

Google targetting older people 😀

 

[Sushubh]

its a surprise it was not done earlier. 🙂

 

[amish]

oh, the fonts are so large/

just goto Google - India and then on same page go to Google.com

then use back and forward button, they have made it HUGE!

 

[Sushubh]

the greasemonkey fix is here!

 

---

[anishniranam]

Yes, its bigger now

 

[amish]

just happened to go to -- link removed --

and their design is so close to google's.. infact they even have "i am feeling lucky" button!

so does that mean, google can target link-removed too?

 

[Sushubh]

the patent would be applicable in usa i guess for now. tpb is not hosted in usa. 😀

 

[amish]

yes but USA can ban it. remember UK was forced to ask gmail to change their name to "google mail" because gmail was trademark of some other company in UK.

 

[Deleted member 10390]

I think it is just a precautionary measure. Just to avoid replicas that confuse users.

 

[Sushubh]

of course. google is going to generate a lot of BAD PR if they go on targeting just for the sake of it. its not a trademark that they have to protect. its a patent which are generally gained to prevent misuse.

 

[amish]

Comeon, today google has done it. tomorrow microsoft will patent their page designs, then yahoo.. and then many other companies will follow the suit.which means eventually, almost every type of user friendly design will be patented and hence almost every other page wud be illegal by patent laws.patenting web page design shud not be allowed. and as far as fooling users, it is called phishing and there are already good enough laws to make phishing illegal. and if google wants to block someone pretending to be google, those laws are more than enough.

 

[Sushubh]

the problem here is no has felt the need to challenge the patent in the courts. if google targets some company and that company has a good reason to fight back... the court would eventually decide that you cannot patent page layouts. tons of patents are given out on a regular basis which are practically non-implementable. this is perhaps one of them. the funny thing is that google.com no longer looks like the design they patented. so they are going to lose in the courts anyways. coz they are not 'using' the patented design themselves any more.

 

[amish]

i dont think its necessary that u use that design if u want patent to stay valid.