Google and Its Desired Repositories

November 21, 2009

I find “desired repositories” quite enticing. I was going to call this write up “A Repository Named Desire” but I was fearful that some lawyer responsible for the Tennessee Williams’ play would object. Most of the Sergey-and-Larry-eat-pizza Google pundits follow the red herrings dragged by the Googlers toward the end of each week. Not me. I pretty much ignore the Google public statements because those have a surreal quality for me. The messages seem oddly disconnected from what Google’s deep thinkers are * actually doing *. When Google does a webinar, it is too late for the competitors to do much more than go to their health club and work off their frustrations.

desired repository

That looks simple. From US20090287664. Notice that the types of repositories are extensible.

If you want to see some of the fine tuning underway with the Google plumbing, take a peek at 20090287664, Determination of a Desired Repository. This is a continuation of a 2005(!) invention in case you thought the method looked familiar. You can find the write up at your favorite US government Web site, the USPTO. (Don’t you just love that search interface. Someone told me that the search engine was from OpenText, and I am trying to verify that statement.)

Here’s what caught my attention:

A system receives a search query from a user and searches a group of repositories, based on the search query, to identify, for each of the repositories, a set of search results. The system also identifies one of the repositories based on a likelihood that the user desires information from the identified repository and presents the set of search results associated with the identified repository.

Seems obvious, right? Now think of this at Google scale. Different problem? It is in my book. What has the Google accomplished? Just one claim. Desired repositories at Google scale.

Stephen Arnold, November 21, 2009

Again, I want to report to the USPTO that I was not paid to write yet another cryptic comment about a Google plumbing invention.

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