Google’s PageRank Patent Has Just Expired. Here’s What Happens Now.
In this article, the author explains how the original PageRank patent, developed and owned by Google, has expired on January 9th, 2019. In the United States, patents only expire after twenty years. In the case of PageRank, it expired on January of 2019 since it was created exactly twenty years before that. PageRank, which we covered in lecture, is the algorithm software Google uses to rank pages and display them on browsers. Google utilizes PageRank by considering at least two things: The number of links “endorsing” a page and the quality of these pages displaying the link. Google has relied on some form of PageRank since its inception, and, as the article puts it, “Google was built on PageRank.”
I found this article to be especially interesting because Google, using the PageRank software, has revolutionized the world. With search engines, information is literally at the tip of our hands. Since the patent expired, the PageRank algorithm is now in public domain, meaning anybody can utilize it. One can expect a wide array of new products and services that use PageRank or some close algorithm to be available in the coming future. Who knows what potential life-altering services will be born now that PageRank is available.
It is important to note that while the original PageRank patent did expire, Google holds an updated PageRank patent titled “Producing a ranking for pages using distances in a web-linked graph.” This patent uses more inputs that the original PageRank algorithm, and the patent is still effective.
Here is a link for the article I used: