Stupid: Amazon Tries to Patent mod_rewrite
Posted by Jon Lee in Offtopic, tags: amazon, mod_rewrite, patent
A few days ago, Amazon applied for a patent for “Search engine system supporting inclusion of unformatted search string after domain name portion of URL“. This means a search engine that will allow users to enter a query as part of the URL and it will perform a search on that query.
For example, to perform a search, one would enter the following into the address bar
http://www.somesearchengine.com/bacon recipe
will lead directly to the search results for “bacon recipe” instead of an actual folder on the site named “bacon recipe”.
This will save you a page load per search which can be substantial but I doubt it will catch on without some mass marketing and a very short domain name which Amazon actually has with A9.
My real gripe with this is the fact that this already exists and people have been using it for years! Amazon did not invent it, it’s been around nearly as long as the Internet. Here is Amazon’s so called technology in one line inside .htaccess:
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+) /search.php?query=$1 [L]
Essentially, Amazon is trying to patent mod_rewrite!
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Yes it does sound ridiculous what amazon is trying to patent, but what i don’t understand is why this is a feature that anyone finds convenient to use at all. I find that doing a direct search from the google toolbar saves time and because of the drop down menu of popular searches I get a lot of ideas, especially when my search is a bit vague.
By the way your headline STUPID AMAZON really caught my eye, for some reason it really amused me:]
Yay! Let’s start patenting technologies that have been around forever! I call TCP/IP!
Well … maybe not (there are already lots of different patents on TCP/IP technologies), but it doesn’t make much sense. Unless Amazon wasted time by creating some other way of doing this, the patent should fail. Even if it passes, I highly doubt Amazon would be stupid enough to pull a SCO and start attacking anyone that’s ever used mod_rewrite
Re-inventing the wheel! Do you think that they will get the patent? I doubt it!
Great article! First they tried to patent one-click and now this? What are they thinking?
Switch to opera and you can just type “g search term” in the address bar for a very fast one step google search. Likewise in FF typing a phrase in the address bar usually automatically takes you the first page that would have benn returned if you had done a convenctional google search.
Opera’s solution seems much smarter to me than the alternatives.
You can actually do this with any bookmark on Firefox by giving it a “Keyword” under bookmark properties.
Actually their patent adds a LITTLE bit of extra…. it detects to see if the “search term” is actually a folder on the site first.
So http://www.domain.com/index.html will still go to the index page instead of searching “index.html” on the site.
But yes if they pull a SCO I’ll flip out!
Wow thats definitely dumb of them, next they will be patenting the way we run and walk. However it is a good idea to use mod_rewrite in such a way. Never thought about a way like that. I wonder what it does in regards to search engines mind u.
I really surprised by seeing your headline. But the writing is absolutely great.
Didn’t Amazon also try to patent the “one click” shopping thing years ago? That was also around for a long time before them.
how ridiculous, one again the BIG “BRAIN” showed the megalomaniac behavior in order to keep their hegemony. How disgusting.. same case but in different way with the big G over there…. Capitalism Machines never learn from history.. sigh