[LINK] New Google patent may improve image search, AdSense, maps

[Ivan Trundle]

On 09/01/2008, at 4:08 PM, Roger Clarke wrote:

> [Here we go again:  another rubbish patent, whose purpose is  
> primarily to slow down the company's competitors and force up their  
> costs and risks, and secondarily to contribute to the company's war- 
> chest of counter-patents.
>
> [Are there any Kiwis around who are familiar with the history of OCR  
> technology and have the energy to attack the big G?  Wikipedia's  
> entry starts with "In 1929, Gustav Tauschek obtained a patent on OCR  
> in Germany ...".
>
> [To be clear - good on Google for applying technology in fairly-new  
> ways (they're almost always a second-mover, not an originator), and  
> on a largish scale, and with plenty of money to put into it.  It's  
> the anti-competitive aspect, glossed by the pretence of a halo,  
> that's so very annoying.
>
>
> New Google patent may improve image search, AdSense, maps
> By David Chartier | Published: January 08, 2008 - 11:45AM CT
> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080108-for-a-new-google-patent-a-picture-truly-is-worth-1000-words.html
>
> The days of manually adding things like keywords and location  
> information to images could soon be behind us, thanks to a new  
> Google patent published this week detailing the company's move into  
> extracting text from images and creating keywords from it... <snip>

I doubt very much that we will ever be *thankful* for any patent. But  
I live in hope.

iT