Google patents Map/Reduce

Heise and others report today that big G has acquired a patent on the Map/Reduce algorithm,  a critical algorithmic building block to their high scalability as a distributed system built from commodity nodes. Map/Reduce is recognized as a major advance to organizing distributed computations these days, useful for many different application scenarios besides search.

From their perspective, it  is understandable that Google would want to protect such a crucial piece of their success from abuse by patent trolls. However, given the ubiquitous usefulness of the approach, it have been great to see this approach formally opened for anyone to use and benefit from.

But, hey, that’s not the business world we live in these days.

So for the next 20 years, anyone using this great approach is formally at the goodwill of  Google. Another reason to pray that they won’t change their motto anytime soon.