I wonder when the corporate “do no evil” happy talk rolls into a corporate PR statement about protecting our intellectual property.
Via IO Error, I read that Nelson Minar of Google has filed a patent on targeted ads in RSS feeds. The patent application number is 20050165615. This was filed in December of 2003.
The abstract reads:
“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.”
[Note: IO Error pointed out that the patent application was done in Nelson’s name and he is a Google engineer, hence the leap. It’s possible it’s a different Nelson Minar in which case the south of France is a great place for the yacht during the spring.]
[Note 2: I hope Dave Winer has some prior art somewhere in all the Userland stuff. Dave, yer kidding, this can’t be happening right?]
kinda like the infamous Amazon one-click checkout patent :-(
Posted by: Zoli Erdos | July 30, 2005 at 19:52