The system of patenting has both pros and cons. It is supposed to help inventors to protect their original ideas and innovations from unscrupulous, frauds but at the same time, it can create a lot of trouble. Unnecessary lawsuits delay the progress of technology. Even the chairperson of Google Eric Schmidt considers patents nonsensical and troublesome. Google itself owns the patent of some great tech innovations. However, some of the patents owned by Google are simply weird and on the verge of being bizarre. In the following, we have listed five of the most quirky patents owned by Google.
Virtual Assistant:
We all want to stay connected with our friends and acquaintances via Facebook and Twitter. However, it is impossible to reply to all the tweets and status updates of friends. At times, it seems that a virtual assistant is required for taking care of our busy virtual lives. In 2011, Google expressed their desire for getting a patent for ‘Automated Generation of Suggestions for Personalized Reactions in a Social Network’. The innovative technology will check out your Facebook and Tweeter notifications and suggest automated, personalized responses to new posts.
Pay-per-gaze advertising tracking system:
Google won a patent in 2013 for a wonderful gaze-tracking system. This technology helps in tracking the gaze of wearers of head devices like the Google Glass. It will help advertising agencies to understand what attracts the buyers and which advertisements they look at for how much time. Though it sounds weird, tracking the emotional responses of consumers on seeing different advertisements has become a necessity.
Software for splitting restaurant bills:
Not all restaurants are equally customer friendly. Some of them do not allow customers to pay in split checks. You may offer to pay the entire amount but your friends or colleagues may not pay you the amount they owe you back. Last year Google patented a new technology named ‘Tracking and Managing Group Expenditures’. It is an app, which helps in tracking the expenses a group of people share and then transfers the owed amount to the payer’s online account.
Gadgets that projects keyboard onto your hand:
Voice commands are helpful and let us control the smart phones and tablets without using our hands. In a noisy or crowded place, voice commands cannot help us. That is why Google has patented the ‘Methods and systems for a virtual input device’. Wearers of Goggle Glass will be able to access a virtual keyboard with the help of this technology.
Floating wave-powered server Farm:
In 2008, Google patented water based data centers in the year 2008. It is probably Google’s attempt at using technology for bringing down their present utility bills. Google’s four-storey barge under construction at the San Francisco Bay is probably going to use this technology.
Summary:
Google has come up with awesome tech innovations and given us wonderful gadgets. It has patented some weird yet innovative technologies in the past few years that can change our lives.
