Google’s Janitors: Clean Up Crew Ready for a Clean Sweep
April 15, 2008
At my Buying & Selling eContent keynote this morning, I discussed briefly Google’s invention of “janitors”. You can get the full text of the patent from the USPTO site. Search for US20070198481, “Automatic Object Reference Identification and Linking in a Browseable Fact Repository.” The inventors are Andrew Hogue and Jonathan Betz, Google, Inc.
The patent is of keen interest to me. It makes use of functions that Google is now making available via its App Engine service, among others. My suggestion is that you read about the App Engine and then look at US20070198481. If you have read about Google’s Programmable Search Engine, you may see linkages among these inventions that the individual patent documents do not make explicit. Google is not hiding any of these technologies, just using its infrastructure in fresh, intriguing ways. Keep in mind that a patent document is not a product. I believe it is useful to look at open source information in order to keep a finger on the pulse of a company’s innovation heart beat.
Now look at this illustration, which I used in my keynote. I want to direct your attention to two things. First, the query generates a report about the topic, in this case, the named entity “Michael Jackson”. Second, this result is not a hit list; it is a report. If my research for my new Gilbane Group study Beyond Search is accurate, Google’s US20070198481 seems to address some of the problems that users experience when confronted with results lists.
You will need to draw your own conclusions about this type of automated report generation. Google is not just in step with what user wants, the company appears to possess technology that makes it possible for the GOOG to jump into professional publishing, expand its reach as a business intelligence tool, and make users happy who want a distillation, not a laundry list of results.
Stephen Arnold, April 15, 2008
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