Google: don't be evil

I've been so busy lately, that I almost missed the news that Google had filed a patent around RSS advertising. Then I saw this post pop into my Technorati watchlist. These words definitely caught my attention:

Now that I look at it again, the patent application WAS filed Dec. 31, 2003 but what then does that say for the obvious at InfoWorld where they talk about their experimenting with RSS advertising beginning more than 6 months before Google?

Now, we definitely knew we were onto something new back then, so I posted about it immediately, even following up recently on the two-year anniversary of our jump into RSS advertising.

Anyway, I find this particular patent very strange considering what we had been doing at InfoWorld when it was filed. Here's the abstract from the Google patent ("Embedding advertisements in syndicated content" authored by Nelson Minar) -- as Mark noted on his blog, file this under "Things that make you go hmmmmmm. . . ":

Incorporating targeted ads into information in a syndicated, e.g., RSS, presentation format in an automated manner is described. Syndicated material e.g., corresponding to a news feed, search results or web logs, are combined with the output of an automated ad server. An automated ad server is used to provide keyword or content based targeted ads. The ads are incorporated directly into a syndicated feed, e.g., with individual ads becoming items within a particular channel of the feed. The resulting syndicated feed including targeted ads is supplied to the end user, e.g., as a set of search results or as a requested web log. Embedding of targeted ads into syndicated feeds and/or user response to the embedded ads is be tracked in an automated manner for billing. The automated targeting and insertion process allows ads to be kept current and timely while the original feed may be considerably older.

. . . and here's the brief description of the system we built here at InfoWorld that I posted on my blog on July 23, 2003 just over five months before the Google patent was filed (December 31, 2003), going so far as to compare the automated auction-based system we were using to populate our RSS feeds with advertising and provide metrics to our advertisers (Industry Brains) to Google's:

On the advertising front (see pointers to earlier discussion here about ads for NewsGator), we are trying out a new way of advertising using an auction-based system (similar to Google) called Industry Brains. We're already using Industry Brains on our site (see "InfoWorld Marketplace" at the bottom of our homepage, for example), but it will work in our RSS feeds like this: Advertisers currently bid on links in our News section. The top bidder will receive ad placement in our Top News RSS feed for the first feed of the day (i.e. not every time the feed is updated). The ad link and copy will appear in the description of an entry after the editorial content and indicated by "ADVERTISEMENT" text. As I said in our early trials of RSS-based advertising, we're experimenting and look forward to your feedback, either via e-mail or in your own weblog.

Strange, huh? I don't have any comment on patent issues, but I will say that when InfoWorld was very publicly experimenting with RSS advertising before Google filed their patent, we engaged the community in the discussion, took some heat, and made some adjustments along the way. This is the right way to do it -- doing this type of thing in hiding and then bursting onto the scene with a patent could be considered. . . well. . . . evil by some. (That being said, I want to -- again, like I did in July 2003 -- thank Chris Lin on the lean-and-mean InfoWorld development team for pulling this together without the benefit of 20% time. Nice work, Chris!) Posted by Chad Dickerson at August 1, 2005 11:10 AM