Google Patents: Trending News, App Suggestions and Online Ads

The American multinational corporation Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), headquartered in Mountain View, CA, is a market leader in the development of computing services and products for Internet users. In the upcoming weeks, Google will be releasing a streaming music service to compete with similar services available from Apple, Spotify and others. Students will be able to benefit from improvements to the Google Apps for Education program, which will soon offer unlimited storage for free. Google is responsible for some very innovative Internet programs, and there is some speculation that the company is developing a drone program for providing wireless Internet access to mobile device owners.

But for us it is time for another check-in with Google’s recent innovations here on IPWatchdog’s Companies We Follow series, and software inventions from this major technology developer are abounding. We found a couple of patent applications involving technologies which present topics of interest to computing device users, including methods for activity planning to see a concert or an event. Another patent application describes a method of providing insight from local experts about an unknown destination. We were also intrigued by a method of presenting digital advertisements to individuals which is designed to encourage retail sales at brick and mortar stores.

Google has a very strong patent portfolio and we share a few of its more intriguing recently patented technologies below. A couple of patents regard improvements to digital keyboards used by touch devices, including a keyboard interface that adjusts to minimize typing errors. A couple of other patents relate to improvements to user interfaces, and we explore one patent aimed at reducing latency when loading applications with multiple windows. A couple of other patents relate to improved methods of providing news content to individuals.

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Google’s Patent Applications: App Recommendations, Better Activity Planning and Online Ads for Brick and Mortar Sales

The innovative nature of Google’s Internet technologies has spurred a greater presence for the corporation in many fields, including online advertising, cloud storage, e-mail and more. Some of Google’s research and development activities are incredibly secretive. Some of the company’s most high-concept technologies are developed at a facility known as Google X, a laboratory at an undisclosed location nearby the corporation’s Mountain View headquarters. Although we didn’t find anything in Google’s recently filed patent applications as outlandish as the elevator to outer space discussed in the above article, we did note some intriguing technologies that will be useful to customers accessing Google’s services through computers, smartphones and tablets.

A few of the patent applications that we explored today detail some intriguing new techniques for presenting applications to an individual for download or to complete an activity. Methods of collecting lists of applications of interest to a user are discussed within U.S. Patent Application No. 20140280079, which is titled Creating Lists of Digital Content. The patent application would protect a method of a server receiving a list of a plurality of content items from a first device. The server associates a recommendation ranking with the content items and sends the list with recommendations to a second device. The entire system functions as a way for users to curate lists of applications or other digital content to be shared among friends, colleagues or other contacts. A method of linking digital content across electronic devices owned by a single user are expressed within U.S. Patent Application No. 20140280877, entitled Providing Actionable Content to a Computing Device Based on User Actions. The computer-implemented method that would be protected through this filing identifies computing devices of a user as well as content of interest that may be actionable through applications on a second device. This could allow a desktop computer user to more quickly call a phone number displayed on a web page through their mobile phone, for example.

From U.S. Patent Application No. 20140280877, entitled “Providing Actionable Content to a Computing Device Based on User Actions.”

Determining user interests for more personalized computer experiences is another focal point for Google’s development activities which we noticed in a couple of other patent applications. An improved system for providing personalized recommendations to search engine users when user history information is not available would be protected by U.S. Patent Application No. 20140280221, filed under the title Tailoring User Experience for Unrecognized and New Users. The patent would protect a method of mapping users to attributes and mapping users to products to determine a set of top scoring products for the attributes. Products may include video content, a suggested activity or other digital items and would allow a service to access detailed information of interests and online activity from other products in instances where users have consented to sharing this data. Providing information of interest to the user of a computing device is the focus of U.S. Patent Application No. 20140280575, which is titled Determining Activities Relevant to Users. The patent would protect a method of receiving user profile data that includes information about when the user is available and notifying the user about an activity of interest in which they can participate. This technology could be used for activity planning for a concert or some other event and could aid the user in taking care of steps required for participation, such as purchasing tickets.

The online advertising solutions developed for businesses by Google are usually designed for the generation of online sales. However, we noticed an intriguing technology for promoting retail sales in brick and mortar stores disclosed by U.S. Patent Application No. 20140289037, simply titled Local Advertising Responses. The data processing apparatus method that would be protected involves the receipt of a content request from a computing device user and information pertaining to the user’s geographic location. This technology would enable a user who clicks on an online advertisement to be brought to an alternate landing page that can display directions to a retail store from a user’s location. This enables businesses to have another method for converting online ads into actual sales.

We noticed a couple of other patent applications assigned to Google which give users some interesting new tools for exploring and communicating with others in foreign lands. Device owners who want to obtain knowledge about a region they’ve never visited before can prepare for their travels better thanks to the invention disclosed by U.S. Patent Application No. 20140282043, filed under the title Providing Local Expert Sessions. The patent application describes a method of initiating a local expert session by identifying available local experts relevant to a geographic location of the user requesting the expert session and establishing video communications between the parties. Local experts could view video captured from a wearable camera worn by the user so as to provide information on the user’s present location. We were also intrigued by a technology enabling better communication among people from different countries outlined by U.S. Patent Application No. 20140288919, simply titled Translating Languages. The invention is designed to achieve real-time electronic translation of speech transmitted through a mobile telephone. The technology would require the use of a computer-implemented method of receiving first audio data in a first language by a server and presenting that audio data in a second language to a client device.

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Issued Patents of Note: From Adaptive Keyboards to Trending News Content

Google is one of the larger corporations featured in IPWatchdog’s Companies We Follow series in terms of intellectual property development. The USPTO issued 1,851 U.S. patent grants to the American computing technology developer during 2013, the 11th-highest total of U.S. patent grants issued to any single entity that year. Many of the patents we explored in our recent survey of Google’s recently protected innovations involve Internet- or computer-implemented methods, which have been under greater scrutiny in the months following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Alice Corporation v. CLS Bank International. Since the day of that ruling, there have been at least 11 federal judicial rulings deeming software patents to be abstract and unenforceable under Section 101. On September 3, Google won two court cases in which the judge found that a software patent held by an opposing party to be protecting jobs which have been performed for years without a computer, including one claiming the concept of a computer to buy surety bonds. It should be pointed out that, relevant to the ‘919 patent application for translating languages, that the translation of foreign languages has been performed without a computer for thousands of years. It remains to be seen how that fact will affect Google’s ability to secure the patent rights for their technology.

From U.S. Patent No. 8850350, titled “Partial Gesture Text Entry.”

Digital text entry, especially for computing devices with touch-sensitive display screens, were a focus among a couple of patents that we noted in our latest foray into Google’s recently patented inventions. U.S. Patent No. 8850349, which is titled Smart User-Customized Graphical Keyboard, protects methods for individualizing a graphical keyboard on a touch screen so as to accommodate users who consistently make the same typing error. The patent protects a method of outputting a keyboard display and receiving data on tap gestures made by a user as well as determining the corresponding keys. The system is capable of outputting a second graphical keyboard display so as to align the proper keys with their corresponding tap gestures. Improvements to continuous-gesture or “swipe” keyboards are discussed within U.S. Patent No. 8850350, issued under the title Partial Gesture Text Entry. The technology is designed to address shortcomings in conventional continuous-gesture keyboards in which a user must input all letters of a word before the proper word can be selected by the keyboard, which can be tedious when inputting longer words. The patent protects a method of selecting a candidate word before a gesture has been terminated based on a plurality of letter chains.

A couple of other recently issued patents protect intriguing improvements to user interfaces for Internet resources. Issues regarding network latency when accessing applications with multiple windows are addressed by the invention protected by U.S. Patent No. 8850354, which is titled Multi-Window Web-Based Application Structure. The method of providing a multi-window application protected by this patent involves application and interface logic and a way of establishing relationships between frames to utilize the application logic in a resourceful way. Techniques for encouraging interaction between people and important elements on a web page are described within U.S. Patent No. 8850305, entitled Automatic Detection and Manipulation of Calls to Action in Web Pages. The patent protects a computer-implemented method of rendering a web page in a browser, identifying calls to action within that page. The technology is designed to accommodate automated methods for redesigning a web page to encourage more efficient interaction with users.

From U.S. Patent No. 8849809, which is titled “Automated Identification of News Events.”

We’ll close our look at Google’s recently patented inventions with a couple of technologies aimed at improved methods of presenting content published by newspapers and magazines to computing device users. Techniques which are more effective than keyword clustering for presenting news of interest are disclosed by U.S. Patent No. 8849809, which is titled Automated Identification of News Events. The patent protects a computer-implemented method of calculating respective article scores for a plurality of articles and determining time periods corresponding to the publication of an article. The technology is better capable of providing a range of news stories around a single topic without containing redundant information. Another technology developed to help computing device users sift through the immense amount of digital content online to find what interests them is explained by U.S. Patent No. 8849829, issued under the title Trending Search Magazines. The method for generating trending search magazines protected by the patent involves identification of a trending topic and generating an edition of a trending topic as specified by a publisher. The final published product can include a news section, a user-generated media section and an about section for descriptive information on the topic.

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