Comment Prior Art from Blue Squirrel (Score 2) 150
I read the patent and WebSeeker from Blue Squirrel appears to me to be prior art.
It was developed in 1994 and released in 1995. It is a meta search tool that pre-dates the patent and pre-dates Google. It is web and browser based. It has a toolbar that allows you to enter a search term. The pages are modified to highlight the search terms in the browser. While it was never patented, it is prior and appears to be the same thing as the patent claims.
It was developed at a time when every search engine such as Lycos, HotBot, AltaVista, etc. had a portion of the web indexed. WebSeeker searched them all simultaneously, and combined the results into a single list while removing duplicates. The "Filter Find" feature of WebSeeker would downloaded every page, re-index, and display the pages with your keyword highlighted in an embedded IE browser instance.
WebSeeker still exists, still sells, but does not have the market that it once did. Ironically, the dominance of Google meant that searching using multiple search engines wasn't needed anymore. It still works great to keep on top of a specific narrow search term because it remembers what you've seen and monitors for new pages. Still useful for research or competitive analysis in a narrow field.
I was one of the original developers on the project.
It was developed in 1994 and released in 1995. It is a meta search tool that pre-dates the patent and pre-dates Google. It is web and browser based. It has a toolbar that allows you to enter a search term. The pages are modified to highlight the search terms in the browser. While it was never patented, it is prior and appears to be the same thing as the patent claims.
It was developed at a time when every search engine such as Lycos, HotBot, AltaVista, etc. had a portion of the web indexed. WebSeeker searched them all simultaneously, and combined the results into a single list while removing duplicates. The "Filter Find" feature of WebSeeker would downloaded every page, re-index, and display the pages with your keyword highlighted in an embedded IE browser instance.
WebSeeker still exists, still sells, but does not have the market that it once did. Ironically, the dominance of Google meant that searching using multiple search engines wasn't needed anymore. It still works great to keep on top of a specific narrow search term because it remembers what you've seen and monitors for new pages. Still useful for research or competitive analysis in a narrow field.
I was one of the original developers on the project.
