A Glimpse of the Google Collaborative Plumbing
June 19, 2009
On June 18, 2009, the ever efficient US Patent & Trademark Office published US2009/0157608, “Online Content Collaboration Model”, a patent document filed by the Google in December 2007. With Wave in demo mode, I found this document quite interesting. Your mileage may vary because you may see patent documents as flukes, hot air, or legal eagle acrobatics. I am not in concert with that type of thinking, but if you are, navigate to one of the Twitter search engines. That content will be more comfortable.
The inventors were two Googlers, William Strathearn and Michael McNally, neither identified as part of the Australian team responsible for Wave. I like to build little family trees of Googlers who work on certain projects. Mr. Strathearn seems to have worked on the Knol team, which works on collaboration and knowledge sharing. Mr. McNally, another member of the Knol team, and he has written a Knol about himself which is at this time (June 19, 2009) online as a unit of knowledge.
The two Googlers wrote:
A collaborative editing model for online content is described. A set of suggested edits to a version of the online content is received from multiple users. Each suggested edit in the set relates to the same version. The set of suggested edits is provided to an authorized editor, who is visually notified of differences between the version of the content and the suggested edits and conflicts existing between two or more suggested edits. Input is received from the editor resolving conflicts and accepting or rejecting suggested edits in the set. The first version of the content is modified accordingly to generate a second version of the content. Suggested edits from the set that were not accepted nor rejected and are not in conflict with the second version are carried over and can remain pending with respect to the second version.
What’s happening is that the basic editorial system for Knol and other Google products gets visual cues, enhanced work flow, and some versioning moxie.
Figure 2 from US2009/0157608
Is this a big deal? Well, I think that some of the big content management players will be interested in Google’s methodical enhancement of its primitive CMS tools. I also think that those thinking of Wave as a method for organizing communications related to a project might find these systems and methods suggestive as well.
What’s the timing on these functions becoming available? Based on my research, there is a two to four year gestation period prior to filing the patent documents with the ever affable USPTO. Then the USPTO grinds along on a review process that sucks up a year or more. Once the patent document is in queue for publication, the Google begins to make some of the invention’s features visible to some extent. About a year or two after the publication of the patent document, the invention finds its way into various Google services. If you think the Google shoots from the hip or acts at random, you are pretty much wrong.
What happens when one uses the Google content management system within a Wave? We will have to wait and see. If you are impatient, check out the About section of this Web log to find out how I can show up, feathers and all, to run through these Google Lego blocks. In the meantime, enjoy this 17 page patent application.
Stephen Arnold, June 19, 2009
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
