7 replies to this topic

[harpsound]

JimWorld

This is the best theory yet for the "why" of Florida,

S

[Jill]

Ya think?

It's original that's for sure, but not sure that it's accurate.

Jill

[harpsound]

Why time the florida change for pre christmas? They knew that whatever they were going to do was going to cause disruption and would be controversial. Pre IPO they would not want this kind of flack. They did not delay it for a critical reason. Keeping the IPO on track would warrant such timing.

S

[cbp]

The only problem with the theory is that no one (including the author) outside of Google, Stanford and their lawyers are privy to the details of the contract between Stanford and Google. There could very easily be no problems or issues what so ever.

[Grumpus]

If there were a problem with the contract and Google wasn't allowed to use PR anymore, wouldn't the PR indicator be gone from the toolbar? When that goes away, then we'll know there's a problem.

The problem with this, also, is that PR, for the past year or so, is predominantly used in the realm of the "selecting the initial set of documents" and topic sensitive PR began replacing regular PR (though they are still related) on the sorting end. You still need some kind of measure of inherent value of a page to come up with that initial set of 1000 documents that the sorting is applied to. PR is a key part of that and I haven't seen anything to suggest that there is anything close to being able to take it's place. If you could present me with something plausible that will take PR's place on the inherent value of a page end, I'll be happy to entertain this theory. I don't see it, though.

G.

[Ron Carnell]

If there were a problem with the contract and Google wasn't allowed to use PR anymore, wouldn't the PR indicator be gone from the toolbar?

Nope.

Stanford owns to the patent to the process we currently called Page Rank. But Google (as of December, I think), owns the trademark to Page Rank. If they chose to compute PR in a manner that didn't use the patent, it would very likely still be called Page Rank.

If you could present me with something plausible that will take PR's place on the inherent value of a page end, I'll be happy to entertain this theory

What does any other search engine taking link popularity into account use? It sure ain't likely to be Stanford's algorithm for computing a specific value.

I don't necessarily buy into the theory, but that's largely because I haven't bothered to give it any thought. I have to assume changes at Google are an attempt to increase relevance, and really don't care about any reasons beyond that. Any conspiracy theory that is self-defeating, i.e., one that can't possibly be used for SEO (my favorite is the anti-commercial term one), is useless to me. If I deny such a theory and I'm right, I have a chance of winning. If I accept such a theory, whether I'm right or wrong, I'm pretty much hosed. It's Pascal's Wager for SEO, if you will.

[Grumpus]

Stanford owns to the patent to the process we currently called Page Rank. But Google (as of December, I think), owns the trademark to Page Rank.

Cool beans. I didn't know that. Thanks.

What does any other search engine taking link popularity into account use? It sure ain't likely to be Stanford's algorithm for computing a specific value.

That's the crux of my point. I was under the misimpression that the name went with the math.

The theory presented, though, is that TSPR and the other things were done so they didn't have to use PageRank anymore. I can't see how you could generate that initial set of documents to be sorted without link-pop or something figured in to give the page a natural value that differs it from the others. Topic sensitive PR is something that (according to the other patent - Hilltop?) is done on a preselected set.

Anyway. Not really a critical issue, either way, I guess.

G.

[Steve Sardell]

Hi Guys,

Stanford owns to the patent to the process we currently called Page Rank. But Google (as of December, I think), owns the trademark to Page Rank.

Not sure of the exact date, but you are absolutely correct Ron, the little green bar is G's. Let us not forget why page rank is named page rank. Hi Larry! Are you lurking out there?