Hypostion: Does Google Steal Ideas Via Search Terms?
Published by MaxBro on Tagged Random—Hypostion - A merging of the words “hypothetical” and “question” for the purpose of brevity—
As I lingered seconds from sleep last night a disturbing hypothetical question crowded my mind like a sumo wrestler stuck in an elevator. It’s a question I’m sure many have wondered:
Is it possible that part of the reason for Google’s amazing success since 1998 is due to the company stealing business ideas or creative input from the search terms used in its search engine?
I am by no means accusing Google or any other search engine of doing this, but considering that virtually everyone on the planet with a computer has used Google, the idea that anything you’ve ever searched for being held on a server somewhere like a long shopping list of your inner most thoughts is quite real.
Millions of search terms pour through Google’s servers everyday. Most of them are useless or relate to trivial, topical type stuff. But let’s say you’re an entrepreneur. You come up with a great idea for a website. However, you don’t know if your idea has already been done. So what do you do? Search Google, of course. You plug in relevant search terms for the purpose of finding a website at least similar to the one you want to create with your idea.
You think you’re being careful. You think you’re being clever by searching for your idea first before plunking any money into it. But in reality you are leaving behind bread crumbs for Google that may very well give away your entire business plan.
Example: Let’s say it’s 2002 and you come up with a brilliant idea for a social news website that lets you submit your own news stories and then vote on other stories (Digg). The most popular submissions hit the front page. You don’t think anyone’s done this before, but hey, the internet is a big place, so it’s worth checking out. So, you start searching through Google with search phrases like this:
“Social news site that lets you vote on stories.”
Or, something less specific but nonetheless obvious:
“News stories vote on.”
The list could go on here with relevant search phrases, but let’s say after a good hour of searching for a similar site you come up with nothing. Awesome! You cheer yourself for being so brilliant and immediately start crafting your site.
Meanwhile, what if Google has paid hundreds of people somewhere in India to monitor all search terms? What if these people are trained to sift through the terms and report any that look “creative.” Supposing an employee finds your search terms and thinks “Hey, that’s a good idea.” So they forward it their bosses, who forward it to their bosses. Up and up the food chain until wham—it’s sitting on the desktop of Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
A social news site? What an awesome idea, think the Google founders as they light cigars with burning $100 bills.
One month later, just after you’ve assembled a coder and web designer, and accumulated enough funds to start your website, Google unleashes a brand new website that looks awfully similar to the one you wanted to do.
Now what?
It’s just a hypostion. I’m not saying it does, would, did, has or will happen. But it is a possibility.
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January 24th, 2008 at 10:08 am
You had to keep digging didnt you? Now that you know the truth we’re coming to get you. I’m the truth-seeker-killer google hired to destroy people like you! I will bombard you with millions of Adsense related mumbo jumbo until you spit search terms and die!!
January 24th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
yes, excellent hypostion!
Like do you ever feel uncomfortable when typing awesome domain names into GoDaddy? I sure do, like there’s a guy on the other end thats going to sell it back to you for more if you don’t buy it today.
but thats ridiculous…
…right?
January 24th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Absolutely agree… very possible. The same question has been presenting itself to me more and more over the past few months. It’s kinda’ scary, isn’t it?
January 27th, 2008 at 12:21 am
I don’t know about the specific scenario you describe, but I don’t trust Google one iota.
You hear a lot of groaning about Microsoft, but nary a word about Google, and yet Google are coming pretty damn close to establishing a monopoly over the entire Internet, which is of greater concern than a monopoly on desktop computers.
Clusty (http://www.clusty.com) is a decent search engine, and unlike Google, the people running it don’t appear to be obsessed with tracking users. Clusty’s privacy policy is hard to beat.
May 17th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I wouldn’t use google search if I were you. Chance are they are mining the collective intelligence of every careless entrepreneur out there. Better to use direct searches of USPTO.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:48 am
how about this ” Bob Parsons of GoDaddy.com was one of the first to raise hell about domain tasting. He focused on what he calls “domain kiting” - repeatedly registering a domain and dropping it right before the end of Verisign’s 5 days refund period, only to reregister it shortly thereafter. This strategy ensures that the domain taster never actually pays for the domain, even though his payment is “on deposit” with Verisign and therefore tied up permanently.” http://www.dailydomainer.com/200775-domain-tasting-monitoring-searches.html
March 8th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
a very real possibility indeed. back in 1998 someone told me that if you search for something that yielded none or low results, google would try to do a better job next time for that term. not sure how they go about with ‘do a better job’ or get notified of low yield terms.