Google’s Home Page Clears United States Patent Office

Gawker reports Google’s home page patent application, which was filed back in March 2004, has finally been approved yesterday, September 1, 2009. The patent is for the simplicity of the Google home page.

Here is a picture of the patented home page:

Postscript From Danny Sullivan: It’s unclear yet whether Google intends to enforce its patent against other search engines that might feature a “clean” home page, such as Bing. If they tried, I think the patent would get defeated. Plenty of search engines prior to Google’s 1998 launch had clean pages. I’m kind of amazed they got a patent here. If we have more, we’ll update.

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Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.