Google and Content: Way Back in 1999
September 13, 2008
Nine years ago Google was a search engine, right? If you said, “Yes,” you were not wrong but not correct either. Google was worrying about static Web pages and ways to inject content into those Web pages. The idea was to get “some arbitrary input” from the user, and Google would take it from there. In 1999, Google’s wizards were working on ways to respond to user actions, create methods to assemble pertinent content likely to match the user’s need, and generate a Web page with that disparate information.
Why do I care about Google in 1999? Two reasons:
- Google was thinking “publishing” type thoughts a long time ago
- A patent with information on the specific system and method just popped out of the USPTO’s extremely efficient system.
The patent in question is US7424478 B2. Google filed it in 2000, received patent 6728705 and now this most recent incarnation. The title is “System and Method for Selecting Content for Displaying over the Internet Based upon Some User Input.” With the recent release of Chrome, the notion of assembling and publishing content from disparate sources is somewhat analogous to what Ziff Communications Co. used to do when it was publishing magazines or what its database units did when generating job opportunities in its General Business File product.
With Google scanning books and newspapers, it seems logical that it would take user input and assemble a Web page that goes beyond a laundry list. For me, the importance of this invention is that the GOOG was thinking these thoughts before it had much search traffic or money. Postscript: the mock screen shots are fun as well. You can see the sites that were catching Google’s attention almost a decade ago. Anyone remember Go.com?
Stephen Arnold, September 13, 2008
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