Let's start with a brief summary. This article written by Paul Graham in 2006 and revised in 2009 explains how patents are obtained and the thoughts behind this process.

He mentions that he applied for a patent for his own invention, the revenue loop technology,

ranking search results by the number of transactions multiplied by advertising bids, and that this

patent was approved in 2003.

He also states that this technology was not very popular in 1998, but is now the most

optimal ranking method for search engines.

His story provides an interesting perspective on both the patent process and the evolution

of internet advertising.

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Yigit konur.

Now, let's turn our attention back to the essay.

Shingrid3130072, how did the revolutionary idea emerge in search engine advertising?

Original title, 6,631,372.0.

Date March 2006, Rev August 2009.

A couple days ago, I found to my surprise that I'd been granted a patent.

Http://patftuspto.govs.netthparser.pto1andsec2pto1andsec2pqfnetfnefnetofptos.fsarchnum.htm and rq1f50sql6.631.372osqlpnrs66631.667631.7.

It issued in 2003, but no one told me.

I wouldn't know about it now, except that a few months ago while visiting Yahoo, I happened

to run into a big cheese I knew from working there in the late 90s.

He brought up something called Revenue Loop, which ViaWeb had been working on when they

bought us.

The idea is basically that you sort search results not in order of textual relevance,

as search engines did then, nor in order of how much advertisers bid, as Overture did,

but in order of the bid times the number of transactions.

Ordinarily you'd do this for shopping searches, though in fact one of the features of our

scheme is that it automatically detects which searches are shopping searches.

If you just order the results in order of bids, you can make the search results useless,

because the first results could be dominated by lame sites that had bid the most.

But if you order results by bid multiplied by transactions, far from selling out, then

you're not going to get the results you want.

You're getting a better measure of relevance.

And what could be a better sign that someone was satisfied with a search result than going

to the site and buying something?

And of course, this algorithm automatically maximizes the revenue of the search engine.

Everyone is focused on this type of approach now, but few were in 1998.

In 1998 it was all about selling banner ads.

We didn't know that, so we were pretty excited when we figured out what seemed to

be the optimal way to do shopping searches.

When Yahoo was thinking of buying us, we had a meeting with Jerry Yang in New York.

For him, I now realize this was supposed to be one of those meetings when you check out

a company you've pretty much decided to buy, just to make sure they're okay guys.

We weren't expected to do more than chat and seem smart and reasonable.

He must have been dismayed when I jumped up to the whiteboard and launched into a presentation

of our exciting new technology.

I was just as dismayed when he didn't seem to care at all about it.

At the time I thought, boy is this guy poker-faced.

We present to him what has to be the optimal way of sorting product search results, and

he's not even curious.

I didn't realize till much later why he didn't care.

In 1998, advertisers were overpaying enormously for ads on websites.

In 1998, if advertisers paid the maximum that traffic was worth to them, they would have

been able to sell ads on websites.

Yahoo's revenues would have decreased.

Things are different now, of course.

Now this sort of thing is all the rage.

So when I ran into the Yahoo exec, I knew from the old days in the Yahoo cafeteria a

few months ago, the first thing he remembered was not, fortunately, all the fights I had

with him, but revenue loop.

Well, I said, I think we actually applied for a patent on it.

I'm not sure what happened to the application after I left.

Really?

Really?

Yeah.

I figured that it was just $250,000 worth of massive tyranny.

Yeah.

But throwing up on t- teeth didn't seem like a stupid thing either.

So I worked for something else, too.

I worked at a tardiac store, and then I found out that date was originally dated in the

Nantucket Dichotomyод to have been a long and expensive, popular time trial.

And I did that, regrettably.

Whatever의

All of this was decided by aiscnez, the person who created the patent.

Indeed, I need to get some accolade first.

Now I need a third one.

users searching for compact disc player end up spending considerable money at sites offering

compact disc players, then those pages will have a higher relevance for that search phrase,

even though the phrase compact disc player is not present on those pages. That compact disc player

wasn't a typo, guys. For the fine pros of the original, see the provisional application of

February 1998, back when we were still ViaWeb and couldn't afford to pay lawyers to turn every

a lot of into considerable.