January 19 2001. Update February 1 2001.

An AltaVista search engine monopoly?

Imagine there was only one search engine in the world, and that search engine was AltaVista. Far fetched, isn't it?

Think again! What if this search engine had patents on:

• Indexing duplicate records of information of a database
• Parsing, indexing and searching World Wide webpages
• Mapping an index of a database into an array of files
• Ranking documents in a hyperlinked environment using connectivity and selective content analysis
• Searching an index
• Adding new entry to webpage table upon receiving webpage including link to another webpage not having corresponding entry in webpage table
• Optimizing entries for searching an index
• Memory storing an integrated index of database records?

AltaVista actually has such patents.

AltaVista is owned by the CMGI company, and in an interview with Internet World CEO David Wetherell announces that AltaVista will pursue its patents during the first quarter of 2001.

To Internet World Wetherell says that "[AltaVista] happen to own 38 patents, many of which we think are fundamental in the search area. They were the first to spider and index the Web. And [the previous owner] Digital did a good job of recognizing the potential value of that intellectual property..."

Now comes the really interesting part. He says: "So we believe that virtually everyone out there who indexes the Web is in violation of at least several of those key patents."

When asked about specific examples of the types of patents, he answers that "if you index a distributed set of databases -- what the Internet is -- and even within intranets, corporations, that's one of the patents."

He then points to the list of bullet points listed above. In practice this will implement all Internet search engines, probably even human made directories like Yahoo! and the Open Directory.

In a comment, the Internet site the Register says that if CMGI really does push this, there will be "an almighty stink and if a court decision is ever made (rather than settling out of court like ever other bleedin Internet case), it could affect the entire functioning of the Internet."

Exactly! The fact that American patent authorities actually have granted patents of this kind, has given AltaVista a mighty weapon CMGI may use in order to extract money from its competitors.

However, we find it hard to believe that they will actually be able to close down Google, Inktomi, Infoseek and other search engines. Even if these search engines uses a technology that is very similar to the one implemented by AltaVista, the threat of a search engine monopoly will make a total AltaVista victory very unlikely.

It can also be argued that AltaVista should never have been given such patents, as there existed similar search technologies even before the advent of the World Wide Web.

Alan Emtage, the man behind one of the earliest search engines (from 1989), points out that his "Archie" used FTP to crawl public sites and index them for Internet users. Some of us also remember Veronica, a search engine which used to index Gopher-sites, a predecessor to the World Wide Web.

"Several people half-joking told me I should take patents out on crawling the Net and indexing data on other machines," he says in an interview with Wired. "Our response at the time was we didn't want to stifle the environment. We thought it would not be in the spirit in which everyone was contributing in the common good."

Emtage has said that he will help anyone contacted by AltaVista or CMGI lawyers about possible patent infringement.

One thing is certain, and that is that this will not benefit Web searchers like you and me. In our opinion AltaVista should hire more search engine specialist and try to make a better search engine. Instead they are hiring lawyers...

• AltaVista
• The Register: AltaVista to become only Net search engine.
• Internet World: Interview with David Wetherell, CMGI
• CMGI
• AltaVista press release on patents
• Pandia on the alternative AltaVista
• Search engine veteran poo-poos AltaVista patent claims (The Register)
• CMGI Claims Patently Wrong (Wired)
• AltaVista patent bogus (Boston Internet.com)
• Senior staff abandon AltaVista (Guardian)

More search engine news...