Tired of annoying windows or documents opening up every time you click on a new link – those brightly coloured, flashing eyesores advertising something totally irrelevant to what to you are looking for? Well it seems so is Google.
In 2005 Google filed a patent for the censorship of ‘annoying’ content, on 28 June 2011, they were finally granted the rights to the patent. This patent, should Google choose to make use of it, will allow them to detect and reject annoying documents. This means that these documents would never even make it to your screen – sounds good to me.
Google’s patent basically describes various databases, including image, characteristics, link, rating, etc which are then linked to comparison and rating modules. It will then conclude whether a document will be considered as annoying, based on similar documents or previous documents that have been pre-determined to be annoying. It will work something like a spam filter.
Amazing… the sweet bliss of using the Internet without needless and annoying experiences. However, one does have to wonder, what will be the definition of annoying. Something that annoys you may not annoy me. For instance when I am on Facebook and I get notified about someone’s new high score on some game, or app, that annoys me, but clearly it wouldn’t annoy them or someone else who plays that game. It also stands to reason that the millions Facebook messages and Tweets that move around daily, may be deemed as annoying by this filter, causing you to miss some deeply important piece of information.
Well, all we can do now is wait to see what Google will do with this patent. Perhaps it will be archived, or perhaps it will be used to revolutionize the Internet as we know it.
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